TCS will digitally transform India Post's 1,50,000 post offices with ERP solutions.

Indian MNC Tata Consultancy Services has received an order to digitally transform India Post's 1,50,000 e-postal network with next-gen ERP solutions. TCS has partnered with the Department of Posts in its multi-year transformational journey to become a multi-service digital hub, modernize the delivery of mail and packages, enhance customer experience, and launch innovative services that will drive new revenues.

At the heart of this transformation is the Core System Integration (CSI) program designed and implemented by TCS. This involved deploying an integrated ERP solution that caters to mail operations, finance and accounting, and HR functions, and connects its vast network of more than 150,000 post offices, making this the largest distributed ePostal network in the world.

The integrated solution is built to cater to the Department’s immense scale, and future needs. It supports the HR needs of over 500,000 employees, services over 40,000 concurrent users, and processes over 3 million postal transactions a day, making this one of the largest SAP implementations in the world.

On the front-end, TCS has implemented its Point of Sale (PoS) solution across 24,000 post offices with over 80,000 PoS terminals, making this amongst the largest such implementations in the world. Additionally, TCS has built a web portal with consignment tracking capabilities, and set up a multi-lingual call center for customer support.

To enable India Post to benefit from the burgeoning ecommerce opportunity, while fulfilling a vital social obligation, the web portal has an e-marketplace to help rural artisans, self-help groups, and women entrepreneurs reach out to buyers throughout the country.

An important objective of the transformation is to use the Department’s nation-wide reach to drive financial inclusion and accessibility of citizen services in remote areas. This is being accomplished through over 130,000 DARPAN hand-held devices that Gramin Dak Sevaks use to provide postal, banking, insurance, and cash management services in remote villages, even those without network connectivity.

Salim Haque, Member, Postal Services Board, said, “A program of this scale, spread and complexity, required meticulous planning and adroit execution. The TCS team has shown sheer rigor, passion, dedication and attention to detail, which have been commendable. Their maturity in understanding the requirements of India Post has been par excellence, yielding a robust design, which makes the solution state-of-the-art and adaptable to future needs.”

Department of Posts is pioneering in an initiative to build a world class, future-ready digital platform that the nation can be proud of. With the implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning solutions, the department can offer smart postal services, enriched customer experiences, and innovative value-added services to the citizens of India.

YES BANK Datathon unites professionals and academia to co-create next-gen data driven products.

Technology and Banking are no longer poles apart. Over the last few years, innovation in the fintech industry has taken the world by storm, becoming a global phenomena not limited to one region. The Asian fintech space was dominated by innovations from Indian and Chinese firms, especially from the new-age startups. Being a software superpower, Indian startups and MNCs are contributed immensely towards the development of innovative products and models.

This year, we all have witnessed the growth of game-changing technologies like UPI, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence and Open Banking. Global technology giants like Google, WhatsApp were wooed by the United Payments Interface, making India a top destination of digital payment adoption. Blockchain, which is also the underlying technology for all cryptocurrencies is implemented by banks to secure financial transactions.

Experts who have closely followed these trends believe that the next wave of fintech would be in the field of data science. YES BANK, India’s fourth largest private bank has been at the forefront for adopting next-gen technologies to service its customers better. YES BANK believes that the best of outcomes in the field of technology is received from the engineers and data scientists of tomorrow – the students. The idea generation from aspiring data scientist and its execution under the mentorship of CIOs and CTOs would be key in building scalable models in the data science ecosystem.

Data scientists, engineers, students from Top colleges, all compete at the Datathon.

Datathon, India’s first bank led Datathon collaborated aspiring data scientists and professionals from IT field to augment YES BANK’s 600 TB anonymized and embedded data stack to create new Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) prototypes in a period of just 100 days. In its inaugural season, more than 6000 aspiring data scientists/ engineers and developers joined this competitive initiative. The top teams include not only students from top technology institutes like the IITs, BITS, ISI Kolkata and University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka but also 150 plus professionals from top IT organisations.

Participants at Datathon got an opportunity to access unstructured and anonymised data on Cloudera and AWS dashboards. YES BANK had also onboarded a pool of 20+ data science experts and leaders across industries, to support the data science teams as well as to help the bank identify relevant use cases for product development using Big Data Analytics, AI and ML. After the detailed scrutiny of models, top 15 teams were invited to Bengaluru to present their models in front of esteemed panelists at Datathon Finale.

Data models developed during the Datathon were aimed at addressing the current business and service requirements. For instance, team Django Unchained has created an AI based application for sales representatives of the bank which enables them to measure share of wallet reserved for every retail customer, predict customer attrition and provide customized products to different classes of customer. Team Prayaas, a mix student team from NMIMS Mumbai and ISI Kolkata worked on a proactive model which predicts individual customer deliveries like cards, cheque books, statements by reducing human interference and service requests. Majority of models presented at Yes Datathon pointed towards improving customer satisfaction and reducing overheads; a facet of fintech.

And the winners are...

Oracle, a team of professionals from IBM and two students from IIM Bangalore bagged the top spot of Yes Datathon challenge. Team Oracle presented a ‘master product’ which creates a single 360 degree view of every retail customer. Upon analysis, the model provides customised product and service recommendations for every individual retail customer along with the resolution of pending service requests. Team Data Pros and Data Acers from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka were honoured with runners-up and Best Student Team (position) at Yes Datathon challenge.

YES BANK plans to deploy the selected data models in the real-time banking ecosystem by March 2019. YES BANK believes in the ideology of consistently adopting next-gen technologies to deliver superior products and services. Datathon is also actively partnering with top technology institutes, and has partnered with top IITs and BITS Pilani, and will also host AI/ML challenges and data engineering workshops to deepen practical and technical knowhow of future technology leaders and widen the data science ecosystem. Yes Datathon is a part of a long-term strategy of YES BANK of ‘becoming a technology company in the banking business’.

- Chaitanya Kulkarni.

#DialDforData: YES BANK’s Data Science Initiative Collaborates with 200 Data scientists to create 20+ data models in just 100 days.

Over the years, data has been an analytical tool to record and gather information from our surroundings to optimise our lives. The millennials would recall how we as society shifted from being predominantly ‘analog’ to ‘digital’ in just a few years. Today, thanks to technologies like the cloud and the algorithm-based infrastructure, data evangelists are talking about storing and analysing thousands of terabytes of data within a matter of minutes. This exponential growth of data is referred to as Big Data.

Big Data is our present and our future. In this age of information, data will fundamentally change the way businesses compete and operate. The analysis of this data could help businesses in making key management decisions which drive scalable transformation. Data scientists funnel vital data from terabytes of unstructured information to understand consumer buying patterns, likes and needs, and create scalable models which reduce systemic bottlenecks.

If data is a new oil then analysis is the refinery. The Internet of Things, Machine Learning, Predictive Analytics, Hadoop etc. are leading industrial trends which are shaping the data-driven economy.

Data Analytics: the next frontier.

The impact of data analytics will be beyond one sector, be it manufacturing, healthcare or finance. For instance, data science has today become a vital part of sports management industry. Each and every player of Indian Cricket Team is analysed on his current and past performance to predict behavioural patterns in an effort to rectify human error. BFSI firms are one of early pioneers to adapt data analytics.

With data science and analytics gaining importance across sectors, YES BANK reached out to the global developers, coders and data science community to work on Yes Bank’s data stacks. Datathon, an initiative of YES BANK is India’s first bank-led Datathon with a mantra of decode-derive-develop. Launched in September 2018, Yes Datathon has witnessed participation of over 6000 plus data scientists and engineers both from academia and corporate background. In a competitive selection, top 15 teams qualified for the Datathon Finale will be given 60 days to create working data models/prototypes which will be trained, tested and deployed by the Yes Bank.

The top teams include not only students from top technology institutes like IIT Bombay, IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur and ISI Kolkata but also 150+ professionals from organizations like IBM, Walmart Labs, Oracle, Amazon Development Centre, TCS, Accenture and Infosys among others, who are taking on the challenge beyond their professional duties. A student team from University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka presented their model at Yes Datathon finale held in Bengaluru.

Teams participating in Yes Datathon presented innovative models which were previously not thought-off. For instance, Team Data Pirates created an alternative method to credit score customers pooling in LinkedIn and external APIs. Team Greenity has developed an ML algorithm which analyses credit card history transactions to service customer better and predicting new target customers for YES BANK credit card.

Moving from buzz to biz

Artificial Intelligence has moved from buzz to biz. YES BANK has deployed AI based chatbot named Yes Robot to disseminate information about loan offerings to prospective customers. It currently helps users with instant 20+ banking services and 2,000+ banking queries. Next-gen technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing and bots enables YES BANK to serve their customers and clients with greater depth, sophistication and efficiency.

Yes Datathon is a part of a long-term strategy of Yes Bank of ‘becoming a technology company in the banking business’. Data scientists and engineers would have an experience of a lifetime handling 600 TB of anonymised data. Datathon provides a rare opportunity to build algorithms and data models on Terabytes of ‘real data’ in a deployment-ready environment. The collaboration between academia and corporate would deepen practical and technical know-how of future technology leaders and widen the data science ecosystem.

- Chaitanya Kulkarni.

Saudi Arabia invests to develop World's largest Oil refinery in Ratnagiri.

RIL's Jamnagar Refinery is currently the world's largest.

An Indian Consortium consisting of IOCL, BPCL and HPCL and Saudi Aramco signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) here today to jointly develop and build an integrated refinery and petrochemicals complex, Ratnagiri Refinery & Petrochemicals Ltd. (RRPCL) in the State of Maharashtra.  Saudi Aramco may also seek to include a strategic oil partner from other Gulf countries to co-invest in the project.  

The strategic partnership brings together crude supply, resources, technologies, experience and expertise of these multiple oil companies with an established commercial presence around the world. A pre-feasibility study for the refinery has been completed, and the parties are now finalising the project’s overall configuration. Following the signing of the MoU, the parties will extend their collaboration to discuss the formation of a joint venture that would provide for joint ownership, control and management of the project.

The Ratnagiri refinery in Konkan region of Maharashtra will be the World's largest Oil refinery with the capacity of processing 1.2 million barrels of crude oil per day (60 million metric tonnes per annum, or MMTPA). Reliance's Jamnagar Refinery, which is currently the world's largest, has a maximum capacity of 34 MMTPA. It will produce a range of refined petroleum products, including petrol and diesel meeting BS-VI fuel efficiency norms. The Refinery will also provide feedstock for the integrated petrochemicals complex, which will be capable of producing approx. 18 million tonnes per annum of petrochemical products.

In addition to the refinery, cracker and downstream petrochemical facilities, the project will include associated facilities such as a logistics, crude oil and product storage terminals, raw water supply, as well as centralized and shared utilities.

Ratnagiri Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd. (RRPCL) will rank among the largest world refining and petrochemicals projects and will be designed to meet India’s fast-growing fuels and petrochemicals demand. The project cost is estimated at around $44 billion.

This a joint partnership between the consortium from India consisting of IOCL, HPCL and BPCL and Saudi Aramco & an additional strategic partner on a 50:50 basis. This project, with an estimated investment of over Rs. 3 lakh crore, would bring huge benefits to the Region, the State of Maharashtra and the entire country in terms of large-scale employment generation, direct and indirect, as well as the all-round economic development of the Region.  This project is in line with the vision of Hon’ble Prime Minister of India and His Highness the King of Saudi Arabia. - Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Govt of India.

Investing in India is a key part of our company’s global downstream strategy, and another milestone in our growing relationship with India. The signing marks a significant development in India’s oil and gas sector, enabling a strategic joint venture and investment partnership that will serve India’s fast-growing demand for transportation fuels and chemical products. Participating in this mega project will allow Saudi Aramco to go beyond our crude oil supplier role to a fully integrated position that may help usher in other areas of collaboration, such as refining, marketing, and petrochemicals for India’s future energy demands. - Amin Nasser, CEO, Saudi Aramco.

The refinery will be situated in two villages namely Nanar and Babulwadi. Activists and local political party are protesting the upcoming project over land acquisition issues and alleged 'destruction of the environment'. A fear among locals is created as the mega refinery and petrochemicals complex is just 14km away from World's largest nuclear power plant at Jaitapur. The project is expected to give 40,000 direct and indirect jobs in the Konkan region. These two projects are important to turn around the financial fortunes of the Konkan region. Among this political slugfest, the Union government and Maharashtra government has clarified that it will go-ahead with Ratnagiri mega refinery project.

- Chaitanya Kulkarni

Source - Saudi Aramco, PIB.

Give your data the security it deserves

As per Global Information Security Survey 2016-17 by EY, 33% of Indian companies don’t have any Security Operations Center (SOC) as compared to 44% worldwide. Besides, 44% companies in our country don’t have any or minimum vulnerability identification capability.

India is at risk of cybercrimes and data breaches. And increasingly, the situation is getting worse. Recently, the food delivery app, Zomato, was affected by a major data breach incident, which resulted in the information theft of 7.7 million users. Over the past one year, our country has seen many data breach incidents, including Mirai botnet malware, Petya, and the most infamous, ransomware WannaCry.

Undoubtedly, it will be the job of a CISO to place the enterprise-level security agenda on the company’s priority list, communicate its urgency across organizations, drive various remedial programs, and most importantly, ensure the timely deployment of various security measures.

However, when it comes to cyber security, every employee should be responsible. Awareness is the key. Spreading awareness about enterprise-level security in particular and data security in general help dealing with cybercrimes.

Moving a step ahead, some organizations are promoting this issue on a massive level. For example, the latest campaign of Dell EMC on data security, #DataSuraksha. The campaign is getting enthusiastic participation from professionals across sectors and cities, even from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities. Some good ideas about data security which I found quite insightful include:

• Don't allow your app to access your phone contact book unless it's absolutely necessary.
• Automate end user backups, with multiversioning, whitelisted apps.
• Don’t allow the Internet Server remember passwords
• Use encryption technology and store data at several storage devices.

Going a step further, Dell EMC is also rewarding such great ideas with fascinating goodies. The campaign has already taken social media by storm to fulfill its objective. To know more about the campaign or participate in it, visit Dell EMC India’s Facebook and Twitter.

It’s time for all of us to do our bit and aim for a cyberthreat-free nation. 

India will be an early adopter of 5G technology

Recent trends in 4G LTE mobile telephony has shown that dependency on data is increasing at an immense rate. The telecom war started by Reliance Jio has forced telcos namely Airtel, Idea- Vodafone to increase their data usage limits and rival down the prices. Those who refused to change are now a history in the Indian Telecom industry. The rivalry between the operators is now focused on to deliver excellent user experience. Telecom companies have started thinking out of the box. Today, they no longer just provide you with the data but are also building entertainments and health apps.

The wireless communication services are expected to expand into new market segments to facilitate the digital economy, e.g. smart grid, e-health, intelligent transport systems, traffic control, agriculture, retail, trade and tourism which would bring requirements beyond what can be addressed in today’s 3G/4G connected environment. To meet these new challenges, there is a need to understand these requirements with respect to Indian consumer perspective and create and support standards which enable implementation of these next-generation services. This needs to create a new generation of network systems and radio technology which could deliver extreme broadband, ultra-robust, low latency connectivity and massive machine to machine networking and create a seamless platform for the Internet of Things (IoT). It is expected that next generation technology (5G) will handle vast variations in different use cases. However, different use cases will have different spectrum requirements in terms of frequency, coverage, bandwidth, etc.

Cellular Operators Association of India has laid crucial benchmarks for use cases of 5G. It should be able to work flawlessly on systems other than mobiles. The technology needs to be supporting use cases such as:

• New form factors, wearables and massive proliferation of sensors and machine to machine type communication, or human to machine communication.
• Sensing what is around for new services and experiences, autonomous vehicles, with connectivity for example for collision avoidance.
• Smart homes/buildings/cities that require various connectivity needs, from high definition surveillance video to simply connecting parking meters.
• Control of critical infrastructure such as the electric grid, and industrial process automation
• Remote control of vehicles, such as cars, drones and other flying vehicles.
• Health services, emergency response and remote control of critical medical procedures where failure is not an option.
• Extreme mobile broadband both indoor and outdoor that no longer makes the distinction between fixed and wireless access meaningful.

The increasing web of high-speed fibre optic network will help in early adoption of 5G architecture. It may be easy for a country like Japan or South Korea to deploy 5G tech but India is a different case. It all depends on commercial viability as recharge patterns in India are different than other countries. Nonetheless, experts believe that the telecommunication services will migrate to 5G architecture sooner or later, and time has come to start serious preparation for standardization and network upgradation. Consumers side demand, resource deployment and commercial viability will be the main drivers for the operators for 5G rollout.

Currently, Airtel and state-run BSNL have partnered with Nokia for developing 5G architecture in-line with future-proof smart cities and IoT infrastructure. 5G is supposed to be the next level of evolution in wireless broadband technology, but at speeds which are much higher than the current 4G LTE networks. The idea with 5G is not just fast internet, though the speeds will be at upwards of 20GBPs, but it will also be an ultra-low latency network. VMWare is also mulling its Network Virtualisation common platform for 5G deployment to Indian telcos. Ericsson India has set up a Centre of Excellence with a 5G test bed and incubation centre at IIT Delhi to drive the development of the country’s 5G ecosystem.

A report by communication technology and services provider Ericsson said, the revenue from 5G-enabled digitisation in India will reach $25.9 billion by 2026. The Indian operators can generate additional revenues of $13 billion or half of the stated potential if they take up roles beyond being connectivity and infrastructure providers to become service enablers and service creators.

– Chaitanya Kulkarni

Originally published on DigiCookies.com | Tech that transforms life.

BUILDING THE CONNECTED COW FOR OPERATION FLOOD 2.0

Each and every task we do today will be transformed tomorrow with the Internet of Things. With its unlimited applications with various genre of industries, IoT has today become the Internet of Everything. With the use of technologies like sensors, high tech camera, Global Positioning Systems and big data, the source can be mined for meaningful information. Connected Cow concept has become a globally accepted technology in precision agriculture space.

The advent of technology can create ‘food for everyone’ keeping in mind the outburst of the ever-growing population. The quality of the food is deteriorating with continuous manual intervention. But technology has helped us to increase food production due to technologies like tractors, accurate weather forecasting and biotechnology. By 2050, the world will need to produce 70% more food than it did 10 years ago.

For hundreds of years, the dairy business remained essentially the same. A family would milk its own cows and sell any surplus to neighbours or the local community. But over the last century, new machines were invented, urban populations exploded and the price of land and manpower has skyrocketed. These trends and others put pressure on farms of all types to consolidate, specialize and increase production to keep supermarket shelves full. The connected cow concept has the potential to manage 1000s of cows by a handful of people.

Launched in the 1970’s, the Operation Flood mission by India’s Dairy Development Board has helped India to be the largest producer of milk in the world. Not just the largest consumer of milk, but today we are also the largest consumer of cheese, butter, buttermilk and ice-creams made by milk. Our love of milk is associated with the exponential sales of Shrikhand, Basundi and Mithais. To meet the demands of ever-growing middle-class Indians, we need to re-launch Operation Flood with the mix of Artificial Intelligence.

The concept of the connected cow was first introduced in the Startup Nation of Israel. With geo-tagging of cows and accurate use of big data, an average cow in Israel gives 12,000 litres of milk per year i.e whopping 32 litres per day. An average Indian breed of cow has the capacity of giving only 3 litres per day. Although, the milk quality of Indian desi is A2, which is much superior to of Israeli cows. Agricultural experts are of an opinion, Desi Indian cows can give 5 times more milk if proper care of cow nutrition and health is guaranteed.

SCR Dairy, Israel uses Microsoft Azure on a windows software. They have a software named HealthCow24 which is a modern breakthrough for a traditional industry. It transmits big data through RFID tags which are located on the ear of the bovine. This cow-monitoring system gives farmers insights that can boost milk production, smooth the calving process and ensure healthier cows — all while saving time. All you need is PC to check updates about the status of the cow. The system aggregates data from the sensors and conveys it to the farm’s office, and it’s available through a mobile application so farmers have access to data about cows’ heat cycles and health from anywhere at any time. It also allows farmers to make lists, prepare reports, sort cows by category and track each animal’s overall history.

Pune’s Chitale Dairy which is famous for awesome Bhakarwadi and milk products has been an industry first in India to implement connected cow solution. Chitale Dairy produces 400,000 litres of milk per day, as well as cream, butter, and yogurt—all from a remotely managed herd of almost 200,000 cows. Only 1,000 of the animals are kept at the company’s facility in Maharashtra state, the rest are owned and cared for by 10,000 small family farmers. Chitale is helping its satellite farmers keep their cows healthy and productive through its “Cows to Cloud” program. The cow-cloud connection is enabled by a radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag attached to the animal. Data on each cow (such as blood profile, nutritional needs, and milk production) is automatically collected daily and sent to Chitale’s data centre which is powered by Dell VMWare. The data can be easily accessed through a secured web or even mobile app.

India is investing big in big data analytics to improve its milk production. The government has decided that all 88 lakhs bovines in India should get mandatory ear tags enabled with RFID tags along with Unique Identification Number (Just like Aadhaar Card) which then can be tracked through an application. It is spending more than Rs 150 crores for the project. The UID tags are tamper-proof made of a polyutherine material with UID number. The project could double the production of milk by improving the health of Indian cows/buffalos. Within a few years, cattle owners using connected cow tech will see tangible benefits of precision agriculture.

– Chaitanya Kulkarni

Originally published on digicookies.com | Tech that transforms life.

In every way, Dell EMC Forum 2017 was a journey to realize transformation, faster.

Keeping pace with competitive pressure and capitalizing on emerging opportunities today demands the fast uptake of digital transformation at the enterprise level. With digital imperative steadily redefining the rules of the game, digital transformation has gone beyond mere a technology initiative to be a part of the business strategy. In view of this changing business as well as technology landscape, this year’s Dell EMC Forum focused on the next step of the transformation journey. More specifically, how we could realize digital transformation, faster.

While preparing to attend the event, I thought to myself how the idea of enterprise-level digital transformation resonated powerfully with the digital India initiative—aimed at bringing transformation to realize. Or in other words, transforming India into a completely digitally powered society as well as the knowledge economy.

At the event, I got a chance to interact with some IT practitioners to understand their perceptions. They explained that the sessions of the Forum would help them solve business problems with a more cohesive approach.  Furthermore, I realized how vigorously each of them was transforming their business to be more dynamic and serviceable to their customer-base.

All these ideas were nicely included in this year's India Dell EMC Forum, at the core of which was the theme "Realize your digital future,” with a clear intent to see how emerging technologies worked reshaping lives and entire industries. The entire forum was divided into several sub-themes, with DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION, MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE: BEST OF BREED PLATFORMS, CLOUD STRATEGY & CONVERGED SYSTEMS, and WORKFORCE TRANSFORMATION being the prominent ones.

Every session revolved around these subjects was not only insightful but also helped me gain a first-hand look at the future of digital transformation. Moreover, I got some real hands-on experience and understanding of industry-leading Dell EMC consulting, Dell's Cloud Client Computing Portfolio, more specifically its Cloud Solutions for Microsoft Azure Stack, Dell PowerEdge Servers, Dell's midrange storage portfolio, just to name a few.

The discussions around 'Workforce Transformation' I found to be very intriguing for larger enterprises who are struggling hard to transform their workforce. It assisted them in understanding how to keep up their workforce with the rate of change. Indeed, it is an important aspect to understand, as the intersection of latest tools, efficient processes, and a dynamic culture is all set to help organizations bring the most out of their workforce.

And there are good reasons too. In 2030, every organization is likely to be a technology organization and as such businesses need to start thinking today about how to future-proof their infrastructure and workforce, according to a report published by Dell Technologies. The report, titled ‘The Next Era of Human-Machine Partnerships’, forecasts that emerging technologies, supported by massive advancements in software, big data, and processing power, would reshape lives. And the society would enter a new phase in its relationship with machines.

Given all things, participating in this year’s Dell EMC Forum was a valuable experience for me.

Originally published on digicookies.com | Tech that transforms life.

Chatbots are transforming Insurance tech space.

We all text more than ever before with our family and friends. It is now time to take the conversation to the whole new level. Conversations help us build effective relationships in a business environment. Uber’s Chris Messina has coined the swanky term for robotic texting as ‘conversational commerce’. It refers to the trend of interacting with businesses through messaging and chat apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Zendesk or voice technology like Amazon Echo. Introducing Chatbots, a computer program which is designed to have conversations with the end user. A set of text algorithms ensures that the end user feels like texting with a human.

‘’We’re in the midst of a once-in-a-decade paradigm shift. Messaging is the new platform, and bots are the new apps. The shift radically changes end-user experiences and developer frameworks and inevitably will change business models, how we monetize, and how we advertise.’’ – Sundar Pichai, Google.

A chatbot is a computer program that maintains a conversation with a user in natural language, understands the intent of the user, and sends a response based on business rules and data of the organisation. Mobile messengers like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and WeChat have gone global with more than a billion users of each. Users prefer to transact on messengers than on apps as it is an effective form of direct communication. TechCrunch data reveals that average user has about 20 apps installed on his phone. The app boom has resulted in consumer reluctance especially in a country like India where data deficiency is common.

“People-to-people conversations, people-to-digital assistants, people-to-bots … that’s the world you’re going to get to see in the years to come.” – Satya Nadella, Microsoft

Brands are constantly looking for efficient user experience. India’s leading private general insurer, ICICI Lombard is constantly innovating for holistic experience to its customers by building effective conversational commerce. Chatbots are transforming customer acquisition and retention with smart interactive responses. ICICI Lombard has four chatbots under implementation which are part of their digital innovation strategy. Chatbot projects in focus on fire insurance and two-wheeler insurance has already gone live.

ICICI Lombard has automated the process of purchasing two-wheeler insurance through a chat bot. Users can proceed with the chat on ICICI Lombard official website where the chatbot would require your basic information and policy number, in case of renewal to assist you well. The chatbot can assist you in pricing, terms and conditions and regulatory requirements. The facility allows you to upload necessary files and photos which are required as per IRDA mandate. ICICI Lombard Facebook chatbot for health insurance is currently under-development.

Chat based assistance is fruitful for individual customer but when it comes to corporate clients, email is the way-to-go. Email based chatbot by ICICI Lombard is transforming the ease of doing business in fire insurance. This chatbot enables faster quote generation with prospective clients without any human interference. Transaction time has drastically reduced. Since fire insurance quotes depend upon the area and the line of business the client operates in, email based chatbots ensures EODB for both client and insurer.

Chatbots were initially designed to automate business function. ICICI Lombard, in an industry first has deployed HR chatbot which works as an add-on on Yammer, a social networking site for corporates. Employees can access HR services on-the-go. The HR chatbot helps you connect with your teams and natural groups and have live conversations with them in a secured way. Employees can raise queries, schedule leaves and manage emoluments 24/7, giving employees on the field instant access to transactions and HR data, regardless of location or time zone.

ICICI Lombard has been the early adopters of fintech in multiple functions. Technology plays the role of enabler in the enterprise. Chatbots are currently in initial stages of functioning. In future, we would see more interactive conversations with regional understandability and support. In India, the accessibility of chatbots in regional languages would ensure last mile reachability. It is an undeniable fact that Artificial Intelligence will take financial services business in India to the whole new level.

The #IRA of robotic banking is here

Digital processes have been a boon for banking and financial services industry. The introduction of automation has been a decade long practice which drastically reduced turn-around time and operational costs. The age of innovation was not merely a coincidence. Processes and operational costs were ever increasing the budgets were decreasing. The new wave of technology is making it easier, quicker and cheaper to automate. In addition, machine learning and cognitive capabilities has opened the door of automation for basic customer centric processes.

HDFC Bank, India’s premier private sector bank has entered in the field of robotic banking. IRA, an intelligent humanoid was introduced by HDFC Bank Kamala Mills Branch in Mumbai. IRA, which stands for Intelligent Robotic Assistant, will help branch staff in servicing customers. With this launch, HDFC Bank becomes the first bank in the country to introduce a humanoid for customer service.

IRA will be positioned near welcome desks to greet and guide customers to the dedicated counters. Customers can tap on display screen placed on IRA and select the service she wants to avail. IRA will personally assist you to the dedicated counter. In coming months, IRA would also assist customers on balance enquiry, mini statement and cheque deposits. In next phase, IRA would able to speak and understand regional languages for the ease of customers. Innovative features like voice recognition and face recognition are also in planning.

IRA is developed and designed in Kochi which is considered as hub of start-ups in India. The human sized robot was built together with Artificial Intelligence by Asimov Robotics. This interactive robot is in-line with government initiatives like Make in India, Digital India and Start Up India. HDFC Bank plans to introduce up to 20 humanoid robots in its branches in next 18 to 24 months.

We’re excited to announce the deployment of our first humanoid, IRA in the Kamala Mills branch. IRA is quite unique and will serve as a technology demonstrator in the field of artificial intelligence and robotics,” said Mr. Nitin Chugh, Country Head, Digital Banking, HDFC Bank at the launch event in Mumbai.

For financial institutions in challenging market, use of robots in repetitive and compliance driven work will improve reliability, quality, scalability and reduce costs. Robots as seen in Sci-Fi and animated movies will soon become part of our daily lives. Humanoids like IRA drive high on the ‘awww factor’. The more automation and reliability banking can bring into customer experience will define the industry’s success for many years to come.

- Chaitanya Kulkarni