Archive: March 1, 2023

R Discovery becomes the largest repository of Open Access journal articles in the world

India, March 01, 2023: R Discovery, a Researcher.Life solution by Cactus Communications (CACTUS), is now the world’s largest library of Open Access (OA) journal articles. R Discovery has partnered with top academic institutes and publishers, including Springer Nature, NEJM, JAMA, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), KARGER, SAGE, The BMJ, and many more across major research disciplines with over 40 million OA journal articles available.

OA publishing is a global strategic movement for students and researchers to overcome the challenges of accessing information for their research papers and to ease the availability of updated journals or information irrespective of their location. OA also solves the financial inequality across different geographies, which otherwise makes it difficult to access paywalled content.

Commenting on this milestone, Abhishek Goel, CEO & Co-founder, CACTUS, said, “With R Discovery, we want to build a community where researchers can access all relevant information about their field of study, area of research, or maybe even about a hobby, geography agnostically. The milestone of becoming the world’s largest repository of OA journal articles reassures our partners that R Discovery is an important tool in the academic environment. R Discovery will continue to provide personalized reading guides, smart research abstracts, and access to 9.5 million+ topics from across various research disciplines. This tool also showcases the advanced AI technology we are working with— where we understand the researcher’s interests and searches and present a personalised experience. It is a tool that is potentially a game changer in the OA movement, and we are extremely confident about its capabilities.”

R Discovery by CACTUS has been downloaded more than two million times by researchers from over 190 countries. Researchers regularly use R Discovery to find new content and read and access the full text. Currently, there are over 100 million papers from 32,000+ journals covering more than 9.5+ million research topics across various subject areas, such as life sciences, biology, medicine, philosophy, political science, environmental science, social sciences, and psychology. It is also the largest OA repository, with more than 40 million OA journal articles available. Users can access paywalled articles through their university credentials. R Discovery is one of the largest repositories of research content accessible on the go.

Dan Rosensweig joins Asia’s Edtech major upGrad’s Board of Directors

Bangalore, 1 March 2023: Asia’s largest Integrated Learning Skilling & Workforce development company upGrad today announced Dan Rosensweig, a longtime Silicon Valley Executive joining its Board of Directors. He comes on board as an Independent Non-Executive Director and joins the current senior representatives from Singapore-based investor Temasek and International Finance Corporation (IFC).

As President and CEO of Chegg (NYSE: CHGG) since 2010, Dan Rosensweig has transformed the company into the leading, student-first connected learning platform. Dan also serves on the Board of Adobe and is a senior advisor to TPG Growth Ventures & Kleiner Perkins.

“I am excited to be joining upGrad’s Board of Directors as there has never been a better time to provide accessible and flexible higher education and skills training to learners around the world. By working in partnership with key universities and major technology enterprises, particularly in India, upGrad can help transform the workplace of tomorrow,” said Dan Rosensweig, President, and CEO of Chegg.

Adding to the development, Ronnie Screwvala, Co-founder & Chairperson of upGrad commented, “The US and India along with Asia are the two largest markets for Skilling & Learning Development and Dan brings with him a powerful global overview of this sector which in turn, shall continue to cement our corporate governance as we march ahead in our mission of disrupting the future of jobs and careers of tomorrow.”

Ericsson named a Leader in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for 5G Network Infrastructure for CSPs report

Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) has been named a Leader in the 2023 Magic Quadrant for 5G Network Infrastructure for Communications Service Providers report by Gartner. This is the third year in a row that Ericsson has been recognized by Gartner in this report.

Published in February 2023, Ericsson is recognized in the Leaders’ quadrant and positioned highest for Ability to Execute.

Vendors offering 5G solutions for communications service providers (CSPs) were comprehensively and independently assessed and evaluated by Gartner experts on their Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute, to provide a market snapshot on 5G infrastructure abilities.

Around 50 percent of 5G traffic outside of China runs on Ericsson networks. R&D investments over the past four years have led to Ericsson increasing its market share outside of China to 39 percent in 2022, from around 33 percent in 2017.

There are currently 235 live 5G networks in commercial service, and Ericsson is powering 143 live 5G networks. In addition, Ericsson has been driving the cloud-native and dual-mode technology introduction for core networks.

Fredrik Jejdling, Executive Vice President and Head of Networks, Ericsson, says: “Being recognized once more as a Leader by Gartner feels truly rewarding. We believe it shows that investing in technology for performance and cost leadership continues to pay off and make an impact.”

Ericsson’s commercial 5G leadership and technology evolution leadership is independently known industry-wide. Ericsson has been recognized in Gartner 5G Magic Quadrant 2022, and Frost Radar Global 5G Infrastructure 2021. The company also ranked highest among telecom vendors in the latest ABI Research sustainability assessment.

Ericsson continuously evolves its end-to-end 5G offerings, which include 5G RAN with the energy- efficient Ericsson Radio System, Cloud RAN, Ericsson Silicon, 5G Core, Orchestration, and 5G

Transport as well as professional services. The company has launched innovative software solutions such as Ericsson Spectrum Sharing, 5G Carrier Aggregation and Uplink Booster, which significantly improve coverage, user throughput and spectral efficiency.

At a pre-MWC event on February 9, the company unveiled further enhancements to its 5G indoor, macro and mobile transport portfolios: more than 10 new macro and transport solutions that reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions while boosting network capacity; and three additions to the Ericsson Radio Dot System that boost 5G coverage, capacity, and capabilities across the interior of any indoor environment.

Kotak brings on board Unilever veteran Rohit Bhasin as Chief Marketing Officer

Bengaluru, March 1, 2023: Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. (“KMBL” / “Bank”) today announced the joining of Rohit Bhasin as President and Chief Marketing Officer to lead the Bank’s Marketing, Corporate Communication & Media initiatives. A veteran from Unilever, Rohit brings over two decades of experience in building iconic consumer brands in India and several Asian markets.

Rohit is considered a digital evangelist with a successful track record of scaling large, complex global consumer businesses and setting up high growth businesses from simple initiatives. In his last stint as Global Brand Vice President of Ponds, he was instrumental in leading the digital transformation journey through data driven and influencer marketing to build a strong appeal with younger consumers.

Shanti Ekambaram, Whole Time Director, Kotak Mahindra Bank said “Rohit joins us at a pivotal time in our journey as a customer centric, digital-first bank, underpinned by three pillars of customer, technology and talent. We are happy to have him join our vibrant Kotak leadership team and take on the responsibility of driving a purpose-driven brand strategy that will embrace our values yet adapt to newer times.”

Rohit Bhasin, President and Chief Marketing Officer, Kotak Mahindra Bank said “I am excited to join Kotak as it embraces change with customer centricity as a strategic pillar. I look forward to working with the team and enhance the bank’s identity through new age and digital story telling.”

Rohit has won multiple advertising awards at Cannes, Effies, London International Awards, Asia Ciclope festival and Spikes Asia. He is an engineer in Computer Science from Delhi College of Engineering & an alumni of Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi. He is married to Shefali, a seasoned digital strategist, and has twin daughters who are enthusiastic national cricket players.

Make UPI payments of up to Rs 200 without pin — Paytm makes single click payments possible with UPI LITE

Paytm UPI LITE enables users with quick and seamless transactions at a lightning fast speed on Paytm Super App. Users can carry out multiple transactions of smaller values of up to Rs 200 at one point. It allows users to add a maximum of Rs 2,000 twice a day, resulting in a total daily usage of up to Rs 4,000, at a single tap.

Paytm UPI LITE offers faster real-time transactions as no 4-6 digit PIN is required to make any payment. Owing to the ease, convenience, superior user experience, security and interoperability, Paytm UPI is the most preferred choice of users. Paytm UPI LITE is an ‘on-device wallet’ which enables real-time small value payments which reduces the load on the core banking system.

Currently, customers of UPI can only set up UPI LITE accounts. Also, users need to ensure that their bank supports UPI LITE features. Users can transfer UPI balance back to the same bank account anytime, without incurring any charges. It also declutters bank statements, with only one entry for all UPI LITE payments.

Paytm UPI LITE aims to make smaller value transactions hassle-free, quick and seamless. It also improves the success rate for UPI transactions while reducing the infrastructure load on the remitter bank’s systems. The process is so simple that users will be able to make smaller value transactions while paying for the groceries or topping up the phone balance with one-click single-factor authentication.

Making the entire experience quick and seamless, the company enables the users to conduct multiple transactions in a day up to Rs 4,000 in a single click without worrying about cap on the number of bank transactions. Paytm is the fastest in the industry with one of the lowest transaction failure rates in carrying out UPI transactions.

Conrad Pune Welcomes Abhishek Sahai as the New General Manager

Pune, Maharashtra – March 1st 2023: Conrad Pune, the flagship luxury hotel for Hilton Worldwide is delighted to announce the appointment of Abhishek Sahai as its new General Manager. Mr. Sahai brings with him over two decades of experience in luxury, leisure, and business hotels, making him the perfect fit for the role.

A luminary alumnus of IIM-Lucknow and the Oberoi Centre of Learning & Development, Mr. Sahai has traversed an exceptional trajectory in Business Administration, Operations, and Asset Management. With an astute focus on Finance, Sales, HR & Training, he has garnered mastery across multiple sectors, including Luxury Hospitality and Real Estate.

Mr. Sahai’s global outlook and multifarious experience stem from his extensive tenures with eminent establishments such as Marriott International, Hyatt Hotels, The Oberoi Hotels & Resorts, The Leela, DLF, and GOCO Hospitality Thailand. During his most recent stint as the General Manager at the Hyatt Ahmedabad, he led the hotel through a resilient recovery from the pandemic, reaffirming its position as the top luxury business hotel in its market. His adept leadership earned the hotel a plethora of awards and accolades for Business Excellence and vibrant F&B offerings.

Active participation in numerous industry bodies, including his recent executive committee membership for the Hospitality of Gujarat Chambers of Commerce and Industry, showcases Mr. Sahai’s profound engagement and commitment to the hospitality sector. He brings an unflinching ardour for hosting, characterised by an unwavering dedication to excellence and a relentless pursuit of perfection. Personally, he finds great pleasure in indulging in fine music, delectable cuisine, and refreshing beverages, all of which enhance his social experiences.

Abhishek Sahai’s appointment marks an exciting new chapter for Conrad Pune, and the hotel looks forward to the future under his leadership.

IDEMIA’s facial recognition ranked #1 in NIST’s latest ranking

New Delhi 01st March, 2023: IDEMIA today announced that its facial recognition algorithm 1:N came top among 114 tested systems in NIST’s latest FRVT1. FRVT test results are acknowledged to be the gold standard of the global security industry. The results reconfirm the company’s ongoing 40-plus year history as an industry leader in biometrics and illustrate its place as the leader in biometric technology and innovation.

The test results reported facial recognition technology performance in one-to-many (1:N) scenarios, comparing one face image against a large database of face images to return one or more matching images. IDEMIA achieved the best accuracy score of 99.88% correct matches out of 12 million face images.

One of the important aspects of AI-based automated facial recognition is to teach its various algorithms not only to be accurate but equally important fast and optimized for fairness. It is all about striking the right balance when dealing with large volumes of face images. IDEMIA’s facial recognition solutions work with or without a mask and with the best trade-off between speed and accuracy, demographic parity, and can process face profile images. FRVT evaluated IDEMIA’s core algorithms underlying all its systems using facial recognition which addresses access control, public security and border control needs, proving that IDEMIA has one of the leading identification systems on the market.

IDEMIA is truly committed to the highest level of technology to provide fast, accurate, and fair solutions. These FRVT results come on the heels of other high-ranking NIST benchmarks already recently achieved, further demonstrating IDEMIA’s technology leadership. The following awards speak to IDEMIA’s innovation and best-in-class solutions in security and public safety :

FACE: #1 in Fairness the latest NIST Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) in 2022;
FACE acquisition: #1 in the US Department of Homeland Security annual’s biometric technologies rally in 2022;
FINGERPRINT: #1 in mFIT Challenge in 2022.
FINGERPRINT: #1 on most of data sets in the latest PFT III benchmark (Proprietary Fingerprint Template) for our AFIS-class algorithms in 2022.
IDEMIA’s algorithms achieve the most accurate performance for fingerprint and palmprint datasets, with 7-60% better accuracy than any other algorithm at NIST’s ELFT test in 2022.

Jean-Christophe Fondeur, IDEMIA’s Chief Technology Officer said : These results are further evidence that IDEMIA is committed to the highest level of technology for its AI solutions in line with its mission to make the world safer through developing state-of-the-art identity technologies. We are very proud to outperform the market in line with our long-standing and ongoing 40-plus-year pledge to provide law enforcement agencies with the very best systems on the market.

Huawei Launches 3 Solutions to Embrace F5.5G and Stride to 10Gbps Everywhere

[Barcelona, Spain, March 01, 2023] During MWC 2023, Huawei launched three solutions — Huawei FTTR OptiXstar F30, industry’s first commercial 50G PON, and Huawei OptiX Alps-WDM, solutions designed for all-optical home, ultra-broadband access, and all-optical metro network fields. While helping operators build E2E green all-optical networks to support high-quality development of all services, these solutions also support smooth evolution to F5.5G networks and striding to 10Gbps Everywhere.

Richard Jin, President of Huawei Optical Business Product Line, is launching 3 solutions

In the all-optical home field, Huawei FTTR OptiXstar F30 is the industry’s first all-optical FTTR networking product that runs on the C-WAN architecture to achieve six major improvements: ü

Aesthetics: Four colors and three installation modes allow it to blend in perfectly with the design of a modern home.

Speed: Hardware acceleration and algorithm optimization ensure 2000 Mbps connection throughout the entire house.
Coverage: Multi-beam smart antennas improve coverage by around 30%.

Roaming: Huawei’s innovative seamless roaming coordinated network (SRCN) algorithm enables imperceptible roaming in the entire house.

Concurrency: Multi-device collaboration minimizes Wi-Fi interference and allows up to 128 devices to connect concurrently.

Service: One-stop premium 5A service capabilities enable operators to deliver premium installation, maintenance, and operation services. Huawei FTTR OptiXstar F30 enables users to enjoy a digital life and helps operators to enhance broadband competitiveness. It has opened up a trillion-dollar market.
In the ultra-broadband access field, Huawei 50G PON is the industry’s first commercial solution to implement the following functions:

It provides high-density symmetrical 50G PON to meet the increasing bandwidth requirements in future campus, industrial interconnection, enterprise, and home scenarios.

It uses an innovative tapered amplifier and a superlattice reflection structure to increase the optical power budget by around 25% and enable ODN deployment on the live network without re-cabling.

It integrates GPON, 10G PON, and 50G PON into one port, allowing for service upgrade on demand and minimizing investment costs for operators. As a next-generation PON technology defined by ITU-T, the 50G PON effectively supports 10Gbps Everywhere. Huawei’s innovative 50G PON solution provides a TCO-effective evolution path for operators to upgrade their networks to 10G.

In the all-optical metro network field, Huawei OptiX Alps-WDM solution provides four capabilities:

Agile: This capability extends OXC to the network edge and enables one-hop optical connection and flexible grooming on the entire network, improving network connectivity performance and shortening service provisioning time from months to minutes.

Long-Term: The metro-oriented innovative 100G coherent module helps move 100G OTN to CO, improving bandwidth by 10 times and reducing costs remarkably.

Pooling: By using the wavelength selective switch (WSS) technology to integrate nine traditional subracks into one module, this architecture allows nine access rings to share 96 wavelengths, significantly improving wavelength efficiency and reducing equipment room footprint.

Simplified: This capability attaches digital optical labels to wavelengths and uses a centralized management and control unit to achieve automatic planning, construction, and O&M, thereby reducing OPEX.

Huawei’s OptiX Alps-WDM solution with these four capabilities build a simplified architecture and provide the ultimate experience. They help redefine green all-optical networks and meet operators’ requirements for developing B2C, B2H, and B2B services. They will support service evolution in the coming decade.

Richard Jin, President of Huawei’s Optical Business Product Line, said, “From F5G to F5.5G, more than planning the future, we create it. Today, gigabit connectivity is rapidly growing more popular around the world. Looking towards 2025, diversified network requirements will require ubiquitous 10-gigabit connectivity. All industries need to work together to embrace F5.5G and stride to 10Gbps Everywhere. Huawei will join hands with global operators to accelerate network upgrade and the application of new technologies, helping operators continuously expand their business boundaries and seize opportunities with ultimate user experience to lead the future.”

MWC 2023 will run from February 27 to March 2 in Barcelona, Spain. Huawei will showcase its products and solutions at stand 1H50 in Fira Gran Via Hall 1. Together with global operators, industry professionals, and opinion leaders, we will dive into topics such as 5G business success, 5.5G opportunities, green development, digital transformation, and our vision of using the GUIDE business blueprint to build on the success of 5G for even greater prosperity of 5.5G.

L&T Financial Services adds 29 lakh customers in Micro Loans business between April 2022 and January 2023

March 1, 2023, Mumbai: L&T Financial Services (LTFS), one of the leading Non-Banking Financial Companies, has added 29 lakh customers in the Micro Loans business between the period of April and January in the financial year 2023 recording a growth of 85 percent year-on-year.

On an average, the Company has added a customer base of around 3 lakh every month in the period between April 2022 and January 2023. The Company has disbursed Micro Loans of around Rs. 13,900 crore between April 2022 and January 2023 recording a growth of 91 percent year-on-year.

Out of the 29 lakh customers added during April 2022 to January 2023, over 18 lakh customers added are first cycle customers i.e., those who have taken loan with LTFS for the first-time.

While onboarding customers, LTFS follows a robust process with multi-layered structure which includes instant internal and bureau checks, physical appraisal process checks and risk control unit checks before taking the decision to sanction the loan to customers.

Mr. Dinanath Dubhashi, Managing Director & CEO of L&T Finance Holdings Ltd. said, “We are amongst the leading financiers in Micro Loans today and continue to expand in the unserved and under-served regions of our nation. We are committed to empowering micro-entrepreneurial women and enabling sustainable livelihood at the grassroot level through our innovative and digital lending solutions. Our customers are primarily engaged in responsible end-use like dairy, grocery shops and similar allied activities for earning their livelihood. We have done well in this business, and going forward we expect to sustain our growth momentum by further launching new products, in line with the Lakshya 2026 strategy.”

LTFS launched its Micro Loans operations in July 2008 and since then, has been actively involved in enabling a sustainable livelihood for women entrepreneurs. The loans are sanctioned to women in the age group of 20 to 60 years with a ticket size ranging between Rs. 35,000 and Rs. 1,10,000 and with flexible re-payment tenure from 24 to 36 months for customer’s convenience.