The main objective of logistics and supply chain management is to eliminate redundancies, reduce the cycle time and inventory, and provide excellent customer service at lower costs rendered by the best logistics BPO company. 

However, it didn’t take much time for the focus to shift from grabbing the maximum share in the market paradigm to the garnering share of the customer attention in the market; wherein the goal is to create customer value and increase corporate profitability, shareholder value, and sustained competitive advantage in the long run. 

Logistics is all about selling the right product, in the right quantity, the right quality, in the right place, at the right time, to the right customer, and at an affordable cost. 

And you know what can supplement this inevitable race to success in the market?

An adept and accomplished logistics BPO service provider! 

Logistics isn’t just about connecting suppliers, retailers, and users; it is also about maintaining the reputation of the extravaganza called ‘Online Shopping’. The purpose of the logistics network in a supply chain is to fulfill customer orders in a utility-friendly manner. And, a logistics BPO company can ensure that your business operations are directed in the right direction. 

What does a logistics BPO company comprise of?

Managing the BPO operations of a logistics company is just about entertaining guests; it is also about demand management, inventory management, transportation, warehousing, order processing, and information management. 

If a logistics company need to improve their performance, then outsourcing some functions to a reputed BPO service provider is the best idea. 

When your business includes multiple tasks like transportation, inventory, packaging, supplies, etc., why don’t partner with a good logistics BPO company on board and ensure high-quality results, efficient services, and delivery! 

Moreover, the rising costs and the falling productivity have urged logistics companies to look for BPO outsourcing options, embrace the entire concept, and the range of benefits that come with it. 

Amidst the growing business competition and customer base, data accumulation has become inevitable for the logistics business. And then there is the challenge of maintaining and manage everything in a spick and span manner. It is why a logistics BPO company that isn’t just an affordable option but a necessary one. 

Factors you need to consider when finding the best logistics BPO company! 

Do you think moving goods from one place to the other is an easy job?

Well, it might just become when you have the best logistics BPO service provider by your side. 

BPO companies are really talented these days. They can marvelously handle back-office and in-office operations, so much so that most of the Fortune 500 companies delegate a chunk of their tasks to a logistics BPO company. 

But the question isn’t whether a logistics BPO company is good for your business or not; it is how to find the best amongst the offshore call center outsourcing companies. 

However, there are some factors you need to consider when looking for a logistics outsourcing company. These include:

Are they experienced enough?

Before you hire any BPO company, consider their expertise and specialized proficiency in the process. Ensure that the outsourced company possesses a deeper knowledge about the logistics industry and help with documentation, marketing, finance, customer support, auditing, delivery, and other requirements. Modern BPO enterprises are learned enough in freight payment, logistics data entry, pre-auditing, etc. it is always better to opt for a logistics company with a few years of experience so that they know how to handle unexpected issues and queries. 

Their history in the market.

It pertains to their presence in the market and their previous work record with other clients. So, before you sign in a contract, consider their project management skills, connect with the clientele, and check upon previous logistics data entry, bill of lading, freight management, etc. Determine the accuracy and outcome of the project before hiring any logistics BPO company. It gives you a fair idea of how the outsourcing company will contribute to your logistics business and whether they are worthy of it. 

Customer service is the key.

Customer service is one of the prime USP of a BPO company. It is one of the most important aspects of any company before hiring them. Customer service is predominant for any logistics company. Customers are always eager to know where their purchase is and its delivery date. And, as a logistics company, you will be dealing with several calls, texts, messages, emails, etc. So, make sure all your customers have the correct information about their product deliveries, and you’re indulging with the right company that knows how to handle your customers, provide them with all the information they need, and expand it further. 

The technologies used:

Technology is one other aspect that must be taken into account. 

• Are they using any modern technologies to attend the customers?
• Do they follow an integrated approach to business management?
• Can they improve the process efficiency and productivity with their services?

Several modern technologies have made their announcements to the BPO business, and you need to make sure that your pick follows a seamless path to manage the various processes. Several proven technologies can prove to be more successful and increase efficiency. 

Their vision and values:

The two big V’s of any corporate infrastructure are vision and values. That is unique for every company and guides them throughout the success ladder. It invigorates their philosophies, culture, and decision-making process. Working with a BPO organization isn’t just about delegating some tasks to a company; it is a partnership, and that company is an extension of your own business. So, you need to make sure that the logistics BPO service provider you choose has a similar philosophy, loves challenges, is a team player, and delivers seamless service most cost-effectively. Even when you outsource business functions to a customer, it must long like a single page and not like a pattern stuck to it. They shouldn’t be able to tell the difference and receive quality services at the same time.

Scalability:

You never know a company established in an apartment can achieve tremendous success and growth and transfer in a top-notch IT park. So, you need to make sure that your outsourcing company can handle that business expansion, even if your products and services are seasonal. 

Business expansion is one of the predictable aspects of any business, an inevitable reality as well. So, no matter whether your is at peak or trough, a logistics BPO service provider must be able to demonstrate that it possesses qualities of agility and scalability to meet the demand and deliver the same level of service to your customers. 

Their geography:

The location of a logistics BPO company does not matter until they provide you with services that add value to your business operations. So, look for a BPO provider that can manage the warehouse operations in global locations be in the States, EMEA, Asia, etc. In this increasingly competitive global business environment, opportunities don’t announce their locations; they can come from anywhere and anytime. So, you and your outsourced partner must be ready to welcome it with open arms and salient services. Associate with a company that can cater to your company’s global footprints with the right tools and exploits the bowl full of opportunities whenever and wherever they arise. 

Stay awake and alive in the game with the right logistics BPO company! 

Aligning with the right logistics BPO service provider offers ample opportunities like cost reduction, boost productivity, improved customer service, add value to the otherwise stagnant business operations.

Take note of the above factors and find a company that’s the right fit for your organization. 

The post How to Choose the best Logistic BPO service provider? appeared first on Cyfuture Blog.

Figure 1: The following pie shows the market share (%) of different airline players in the Indian aviation industry up until 2019. After the shutdown of Jet Airways temporarily on 17th April 2019, the aviation industry in India is living through a haphazard situation. With government organizing bids for the leftover Air India operations and its two subsidiaries, the future of aviation industry in India appears to be gloomy. IndiGo, on the other hand, holds a good margin of the market share and stays unaffected by the falling aviation yields. 

Amidst the crisis faced by the aviation industry in India, as a whole, is India still on the right track to become the world’s third-largest aviation market by 2024, as predicted? 

It was reported by the Indian Aviation Department, in October 2018, that 20.1% growth was witnessed for the Jan-Oct tenure, as compared to 2017. This growth was further divided into 13.3% of monthly growth. However, this was all before Jet Airways surrendered 15000 crores of dues to its lenders, and the talks of privatization of Air India circulated the Indian aviation market air. At the end of 2019, the domestic air traffic in India recorded a growth of 3.74%, closing the number of domestic passengers with 1447.17 million as opposed to 1389.76 lakh passengers in 2018. 

Source: Network Thoughts

Figure 2: The following chart shows the Market share gain and loss statistics 2019 for the most popular airlines in India, Air India, Jet Airways, SpiceJet, GoAir, IndiGo, AirAsia India, Vistara, and Others. Air India had a flat 2019, in terms of market gain/loss. Jet Airways subdued a huge loss and was subsequently shut down, Other than Jet Airways and Air India, other airlines had a pretty turbulence-free year.

Source: Network Thoughts

Figure 3: The following chart shows the Domestic Passengers flown in 2019. In terms of the total number of passengers, TATA Airlines (Air India) flew 21 lakhs, IndiGo flew 100 lakhs, and SpiceJet flew 44.3 lakhs more passengers in 2019 than in 2018. This data plays an important note in how the Aviation industry of India will be mapped out for 2020. 

With the closing of Jet Airways, the lack of complete digitalization of the airports, and the inability of the government to lend any more funds to Air India, more than 25% of the aviation industry in India is under threat. However, the question that bothers an Indian mind is, does the future of aviation industry in India need a new airline to make things better?

Every Aviation Industry has its Own Ailing Story

During the summer of March 2009, the Indian airports put together handled a total of 68 million passengers. As of today, the New Delhi Airport can along handle this much traffic. Furthermore, according to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation said that from January 2018 to September 2018, domestic Indian airlines flew more than 10 crore passengers, a growth of 20.94%, the highest in the world. Although the air passenger numbers are booming, the sector itself is struggling, trying to keep pace with the changing dynamics of the Indian aviation industry.

Figure 4: The following article is dated for April 2019, after the collapse of Jet Airways. The Indian carriers whose market share increased after the shutdown of Jet Airways is IndiGo and Air India.  SpiceJet saw the lowest domestic share in April 2019 in the last five years.

• Jet Airways had impending 15,000 crores of dues leading to which, the company had to close its quarters, sacking the careers of 20,000 Indian employees in an instant. 
• Air India is already lined with 9000 crores in dues. The privatization of Air India is of utmost importance in 2020 otherwise it will, under no circumstances, be able to handle the pressure. 
• GoAir has grounded 10 of its 48 planes due to no network availability to fly them. 
• More than 15 top executives have bid their goodbyes to the aviation sector. Almost all the airlines in India are running with an empty CEO seat. 
• The country’s largest market shareholder of the aviation industry, IndiGo, is flying aircraft suffering from several technical glitches. The case is much worsened by the public spatter between the two shareholders of the IndiGo. 
• SpiceJet’s fleet consisting of Boeing 737 Max craft has been grounded by the aviation authorities after the two plane crashes of Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air.
• Furthermore, since IndiGo holds 33% (72 aircraft), and GoAir holds 61% (30 aircraft), grounding these planes will affect 15% of the industrial capacity of the aviation industry in India. 

Why are the Indian Airlines Losing Money Instead of Making Some?

Since 2014 India has had a constant GDP growth of 8%, surpassing China in being the fastest-growing economy. However, there have been some instances that have made it difficult for the aviation industry in India to achieve the same stardom. First, the revoking of the license of Kingfisher Airlines in 2012, then the bankruptcy of Jet Airways in 2019, and then the talks of privatization of the Maharaja, Air India. This has left India with only two full-service carriers, IndiGo and the newly established Vistara. 

So, what is ailing the Indian aviation industry? What makes such high passenger count an uncertain future of aviation industry in India?

Figure 5: The following shows the fleet size and the operated fleet of all the major airline players in the Indian aviation market. The combined fleet is not much to fund the domestic travel population of India. 

With a booming Indian population of 1.3 billion, Air India’s fleet of 136 aircraft for passenger transport doesn’t make any sense. The Indian aviation market consists of a huge hollow when it comes to its fleet of aircraft. It is easy to blame the fragility of the sector, but with the rising fuel costs, the depreciating value of Indian Rupee (INR), and low yields Indian airlines are not able to make up for the losses. However, the elephant in the room is government intervention and their act of protecting Air India despite huge debts. 

The domestic airline model that works for Indian passengers is the low cost one. 80% of the Indian aviation market is a low-cost market. Both Kingfisher and Jet Airways tried to expand their route to raise more cash, rapidly eroding the financial assets of their companies. IndiGo and SpiceJet might have succeeded in their low-cost model, however, to stay solid the race, they will have to abstain from making the same mistakes that airlines before them did. Moreover, the Indian government will have to privatize the Indian aviation sector, for the future of aviation industry in India to flourish independently. Until the government allows the sector to flourish on its own, it will remain inefficient and unhealthy for competition. 

Figure 6: The following figure illustrates the growth of the Indian aviation industry in the last decade. Despite popular airlines suffering through the crippling debts, it is said that the market will boom in the coming years. The major problems suffered by the aviation industry lies in the fact that they are chasing to acquire market share and not profits. 

Air India for Sale Again: Is it the Dawn of the Indian Aviation Market?

Air India, the crowned prince of the Indian aviation market, the government-protected airline company, is again entering the bidding market, after the failed attempts in 2018. However, in this fresh bid, the Indian government softened the terms to make sure that the debt-laden Air India is sold to private buyers easily.

As per the documents released by the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management, Air India will be sold as an unprofitable carrier along with its entire interest in a low-cost arm and 50% in the ground handling unit. The most important change from the last time is the lowered debt amount that a prospective buyer will take on. The previous bid saw no prospective buyer for the nation’s third-largest air carrier by market share. Supposedly, Air India has more than 8 billion debt on it. The last date for the submission of the application is March 17, 2020.

Figure 7: The government has sweetened the terms of selling the national carrier, as opposed to 2018. In 2018, it invited bids for selling 76% stake of the company. IndiGo showed some interest in the prospect but later backed out. This time the government has invited bids for 100% stakes, including a 100% ownership in the overseas budget carrier and a 59% stake in ground handling. 

The government has also reduced the fixed debt amount. Each buyer will have to take 23,286.5 crores along with certain identified current and non-current liabilities. This is a substantial reduction in the debt amount from 33,392 crores, in 2018. 

This time the government has also lessened the eligibility criteria for prospective buyers. In 2018, a buyer needed to have a net worth of 5,000 crores which, in 2020, has been reduced to 3500 crores. 

Figure 8: The sweeter terms from 2018 to 2020 for Air India bid.

Furthermore, according to the foreign direct investment (FDI) norms, foreign carriers are allowed to invest up to 49% in a carrier. In this situation, Indian shareholders will constitute more than 50% in Air India. Even if the government relaxes the FDI norms, a foreign buyer has to look for an Indian shareholding to take up more than 50% of the stakes to avail bilateral agreements. To avail bilateral benefits, it needs to be owned by an Indian national (as per the Substantial Ownership and Effective Control guidelines). Bilateral agreements are set between the government of two countries.

Figure 9: This table illustrates what a buyer will get in this bid. In 2019, Air India increased its fleet size, primary coverage, and secondary coverage. Also, it had a 50.6% share on international routes and 12.7% on domestic ones. 

Unabsorbed depreciation is what cannot be claimed as expenditure in the P/L accounts due to the lack of income. Such a cost is carried forward for several years. It has also reduced the tax liability for prospective buyers. 

How Does the Future of Aviation Industry in India Look Like?

If you think that with such a huge and ever-increasing population, the aviation industry in India is going to remain stagnant, then you are mistakenly ignoring the growing statistics Indian aviation domestic market. India is the second-most populous country and therefore, the air traffic is bound to increase. The Indian airline industry indeed has a rollercoaster ride in 2019, but there is still a strong gleam of light. The ups and downs endured will not pollute the air holding the future of aviation industry in India.

2020 can lead to some remarkable changes in the Indian aviation market picture, making it emerge, stronger than ever.

The post The Bleeding Bid for Air India: What is the Future of the Aviation Industry in India? appeared first on Cyfuture Blog.

While people are talking about the reeling impact of the virus on human life, the massive disruption to the economic activity of various countries is also worth mentioning. The biggest supply shock is handed over to the Indian market, with 13.7% of the Indian imports at risk due to the outbreak in China. 

The biggest question over here is, “With India importing goods worth more than USD 356.77 billion from China, now with the extended shutdown of factories, how is the Indian market going to brace itself with this Chinese supply shock?”

The Importance Of China In India’s Foreign Trade Market

China has been the largest source of imports for the Indian market since 2004-05, according to the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CIME) database. Furthermore, as per the latest annual data of the Indian import available, 13.7% of the country’s total imports is from China. 

As per an analysis of the World Bank’s World Integrated Solution database, the average share held by Chinese imports is:

• 40% of India’s capital goods
• 1/5th of the consumer goods 
• 15% of the intermediate goods 

This data is powerful enough to understand the fact that any major disruption in China will cast a glooming investment impact on the supply chains, manufacturing, and supply of the consumer goods market. 

Furthermore, the Chinese units are an integral export market for India. According to the data released by CIME, China is the third-largest export market for India, after the US and the United Arab Emirates. The biggest setback will be suffered by the raw material export division of the country if China doesn’t recover from the Coronavirus disruption. With China acquiring more than 10.03% of India’s export potential, the raw materials producer will be slapped by the slowdown in the Chinese manufacturing units. 

According to the Founder and CEO, PrimaDollar, “India will suffer not only because its health care system might be overloaded, but also because efforts to contain the virus will be disruptive. This will, in turn, lead to an increase in the price of the commodities. It will also lead to rising interest rates because the policy response to the supply-shortage inflation is to dampen the demand.”

The Indian Import Market To Suffer The Economic Nightmare Of The Decade

Figure 2: The persistent prevalence of the locked doors of the Chinese manufacturing units will hamper the Indian import market far more than its exports. Furthermore, the total value of the India-China imports in 2018-19 was $87 billion, 18 times more than that in 2002-03 ($4.8 billion).

CoronaVirus was first reported in China, in December, eclipsing the global death toll from its variant, SARS, that started in China almost two decades ago. Since most of the factories are locked, the production units are sitting idle in China. According to Ajay Sahai, Director, Federation of the Indian Export Organizations, those Indian sectors that maintain a low inventory, like electronics, might start experiencing the trade trauma of the outbreak in Wuhan, China shortly.

Furthermore, the Indian economy, mostly imports, is highly dependent on its northern neighbor, China, mostly because of the establishment of trade links between the two countries. The trade scale has expanded to more than 18 times, from $4.8 billion in 2002-03 to $87 billion in 2018-19. 

Since most of the phone companies, depend on parts, that are imported from China, they will soon run out of the electronic components, within 15 days. The initial plan was to import parts every month, but with the worsening situation, ramifications like price surge, supply shortage, and slow demands are a bit obvious aftermath.

How CoronaVirus Outbreak Will Impact the Supply Chain Structure Of India?

As per the India Ratings and Research, the economic shock of the CoronaVirus on the Indian supply chain wasn’t predicted to be such a disaster. Also, it is said that if the virus is contained in China over the next three to four months, the impact on the Indian supply chain could be higher than that during the 2003 SARS outbreak.

The impact of the CoronaVirus can be devasting for various sectors of the Indian market. Among imports, organic chemicals will be the most affected commodities since India imports 40% of its organic chemicals from China.  Although mobile handsets, the largest category by sales value in the Indian market, is still untouched by any immediate threat. However, if the conditions further than February, it will surely hamper the electronics sector of the country. In 2019, 158 million units of smartphones were shipped from China and only 145 million were sold. All in all, these sectors will experience a swell up in their production over the near medium term. 

CoronaVirus Threatens To Stall The Asian Economy

China accounts for 11% of the global import and 13% of the global exports in 2018. If the outbreak continues for more than two quarters, it will highly impact China’s industrial activity due to a fall in labor availability and low consumer demand. 

Figure 5: The Indian economy will get impacted by the massive outbreak of the CoronaVirus. India will, however, remain insulated as compared with the other Asian countries. India is the least exposed and dependent on the Chinese vendors amongst the others, and so its supply chain will not be impacted in the near term. However, if the virus is transmitted in the next three to four months, then the disruptions will be much worse than the 2003 SARS outbreak. 

Furthermore, with China being the 2nd ranked nation with the highest GDP, it will experience a 0.5%-point decline in its economic growth this year. This will lead to a 0.2%-point decline in the expansion of GDP in the 10 countries of Southeast Asian Nations including China, South Korea, and Japan. 

Is CoronaVirus an Opportunity for India?

While the hard commodities sector is facing a tough blowout from the CoronaVirus outbreak due to a pause in their imports, the soft commodities market of India is currently on a boom. Global buyers are exploring the Indian market for ceramics, homeware, fashion and lifestyle goods, and furniture. 

Indian manufacturers and exporters of such goods have received an increasing number of inquiries, mostly from the US and European Union, to replace China as a supplier. Even the textile market is ready for a boom, enough to compete with China. 

Furthermore, Indian exporters of chemicals, engineering goods, and marine products will benefit the most from the CoronaVirus outbreak. 

What Level Of Impact Will CoronaVirus Have On The Indian Market?

The impact of the CoronaVirus on the Indian economy is ongoing speculation around the world. Indeed, an uneven calm is still prevailing amongst businesses, including India, as the outbreak, has the potential to derail bilateral trade worth $87 billion. Furthermore, $70 billion worth of goods is imported by India on an annual basis. With China as the second-largest trading partner of India, the dependency index of the latter on the former has the power to shut down the local markets and shops. 

However, India might have found its importing options apart from China, the outbreak will have a significant impact on the Indian markets. It is predicted by many economists, that CoronaVirus can further slowdown the already struggling economy of India. But others believe that it is a great opportunity for India to scale up their game. What happens next can either be beneficial for India or disastrous. 

The post CoronaVirus: The Economic Aftermath on Indian Market appeared first on Cyfuture Blog.

Probably, when the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, chose John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham, and Akira Yoshino as 2019’s proud victors of Nobel Prize of Chemistry, they knew the power of lithium-ion batteries, their need in the market, and the electrifying world it will create in the years to come. 

Is Indian Automobile Company Ready for EV?

India’s automobile division is pushing forward to an EV makeover. The government is pressing ambitions to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles. They are doing so by reducing the GST rates from 12% to 5% on electric vehicles, and from 18% to 5% on electric charges. Furthermore, many private and public sector enterprises have started investing in the development of an ecosystem for electric vehicles.

But the viable question that remains over here is, ‘With India importing lithium-ion cells from China, Taiwan, and Korea, constituting to USD 1.23 billion (2018-19), is such a dependence on imports, worth an Electric-powered India?’ While the Indian Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi, is working towards his grand EV mandate, by reducing taxes, it is not the only obstacle in India’s journey towards launching an electric environment.

Several public sector companies like BSES Rajdhani Power, IOC, Hindustan Petroleum, BHEL, Energy Efficiency Services (EESL), Union Housing Ministry and private sector companies like, Tata Power, Ather Energy, Vakrangee, Magenta Power, ABB, Acme Industries, and Fortum India are developing EV charging stations. The availability of lithium-ion batteries which accounts for more than half the cost of the EV are, currently, almost entirely imported from China.

According to a report by Clean Technica, India will need a minimum of 10GWh of cells by 2022 and 50GWh by 2025. India has already increased its importing costs of lithium-ion batteries, from China, six times more in 2018-19 than in 2014-15.

For a country that hasn’t revived from the economic constraints of demonetization, such huge import costs coupled with the worst air pollution numbers are a worrying aspect. While the Indian government is pressing hard on setting up of Giga factories in the country. However, the cost of such a surplus domestic demand is highly unlikely to be a price competitive with the Chinese imports. 

The Global Lithium-ion Battery Market

Lithium-ion batteries have had a significant impact on the Indian audiences since they first entered the market, in 1991. A lithium-ion battery consists of three basic components; the basic cell, the battery pack, and the battery management system. A complete battery unit consists of several cells packed together and controlled by the battery management system. In recent years, lithium-ion batteries are taken up to a new task, liberating the transport industry and transforming the automobile market dynamics of India. With companies like SmartCell entering the market with their own AA batteries collection, the prospect of having an electrically-equipped India doesn’t seem very far away.

China holds the major share of the lithium-ion battery market, right from the extraction of the minerals to the export of the cells and batteries. Australia and Chile are prominent producers of the lithium-ion cells. However, Chinese battery firms control almost half of the lithium-ion production and 73% of the global cell manufacturing capacity. 

Furthermore, the lithium-ion battery market size is expected to grow from an estimated value of USD 37.4 billion to USD 92.3 billion by 2024, with a CAGR of 16.2%. The major reason for market growth is an increase in the demands of plug-in vehicles and the need for automation and battery-operated equipment in the manufacturing industries.

With the increasing need for energy storage solutions, the price of lithium-ion batteries will decrease in the future. The impetus of the lithium-ion battery growth in this field is because of higher energy density, longer lifecycle, and low costs.

Amongst the lithium-ion battery market, Lithium cobalt oxide batteries will be the most used ones followed by Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt (Li-NMC) cells.

The lithium-ion cell market needs will be divided into consumer electronics, automotive, aerospace and defense, medical, power, marine, and industrial.

The Impact of Amazon Rolling out 10,000 Electric Rickshaws in India

Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, after the successful completion of its pilot program in several cities, has announced that its delivery fleet will consist of 10,000 electric rickshaws, by 2025. This decision came as wake to the disastrous climate change around the world and Amazon’s pledge to reduce the carbon emissions of its delivery operations. The project will start from 2021, in 20 cities of the country, including Delhi NCR, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, Nagpur, and Coimbatore. The delivery fleet will include 3-wheeler and 4-wheeled vehicles, designed and manufactured in India. Amazon will roll out the project until it achieves its benchmark of 10,000 electric vehicles running on Indian roads by 2025.

In a release, Amazon said that it spends 18 months analyzing the electric delivery truck operations before it decided to roll out its van for the delivery business.

With Amazon, powering a supply chain, to minimize the environmental impact of the delivery operations, its 10,000 vehicles benchmark will help the company in becoming an energy-efficient leader in the market. With the Indian government, encouraging the adoption of EVs in India, and the setting up of charging stations as per the FAME 2 policy, Amazon will be easily able to accelerate and expand its vision of carbon-free deliveries in India.

What Lies Ahead of the EV Rush in India?

The Indian EV growth will be mainly witnessed in the passenger cars segment, by 3400 points, by 2025, with a CAGR growth of 34.5%. The passenger car market will acquire more than 40% of the market revenue share. The Indian electric car market size is valued at USD 71.1 million in 2017 and is projected to reach USD 707.4 million by 2025. The major reason for rolling out electric vehicles in India is high pollution levels in major cities.

Is the Indian Transport Industry Ready for EV Ecosystem?

This sudden upsurge in the EV segment in India is highly understandable. The age-old automotive industry built on the internal combustion engines, and powered by fossil-fuels is on its way to exhaustion and disruption.

Issues clouding the fuel-powered vehicles include pollution, energy sources depletion, crude import bill, energy security, global warming, and climate change. At the national level, India is struggling hard to maintain its oil import bill, and an option as energy-efficient as EV is a good alternative for India’s import costs and transport industry.

In the words of Amara Raja Batteries CEO, S. Vijayanand, India missed the magic of manufacturing consumer electronics and the renewable energy sector. Therefore, as a country, Indians cannot miss the vast opportunities in the EV sector. As per the government initiatives, it wants all three-wheelers to run on batteries, by 2023, and by 2025, it wants to apply this rule to all the two-wheelers as well. However, with the country disregarding the need for lithium-ion cells manufacturing units, such changes are going to cost a lot, mostly on an Indian pocket. 

The Indian Government, in the wake of having its lithium-ion battery production unit, is offering incentives to carmakers, to develop new EV models and lithium-ion batteries. 

India is on its way to Become a Rechargeable Nation

However, according to the Jayadev Galla from the Amara Raja Batteries Ltd, “The electric vehicle ecosystem needs to be in place first so that there is a predictable and growing demand for electric vehicles before we go into cell manufacturing.”

Since India lacks the supporting infrastructure to get EV on roads, it should start with ‘urban mining’, a process of extracting minerals from waste, as an alternative, not just for lithium but for other needs as well. 

According to Nomura Research, the investment required for developing charging stations values to 13,000-14,000 crores. Furthermore, private sectors alone are expected to add 50,000 to 60,000 charging stations in the country. As said in the electric mobility policy, FAME 2, the Indian government will allocate 10,000 crores to set up charging stations to both the public and private sectors.

EV charging stations will indeed be the future of gas stations in the country, but the prospect right now is a money-spinner. Further, the non-availability of lithium-ion batteries will be a major bump for the EV market in the country, and will also lessen its adoption rate. According to research, India will require six plants of 10GWh each by 2023, and 12 by 2030, for the emerging EV market. With Tata Chemicals, to set up a 10 GWh plant at Dholera, Gujarat; established and new-age companies are more likely to venture into this market with government aid.

The post Amazon’s Milestone 10,000 Electrical Rickshaws: Is India Ready for EV boom? appeared first on Cyfuture Blog.

— Alan Perlis

In this day and age of digitalization, humans and machines are living together. As far as we, i.e. humans, are concerned, we have been evolving by learning from our past experience for millions of years. On the flip side, however, the era of machine learning has just started.

Since the arrival of avant-garde technology, the job of managing processes has become quite easy for humans. For instance, we can do shopping, banking, etc. from our comfort zone. Actually, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that living without the present state-of-the-art technology could be very difficult for us.

Read More : Chatbots & Live Chat | A Sprint to Sublime Customer Service

Expectations from machines have been increasing with every passing day. Many developed countries like USA, Australia, etc. have been working on artificial intelligence (AI) to make those things possible which were beyond our imaginations just a few decades ago.

With the help of AI, machines can learn from their own experience without being programmed for new things. This is known as Machine Learning (ML).

Machine learning, an application of artificial intelligence, lets systems learn from the stored data and give outcomes according to the situation. Seeking some real-time examples related to ML? Here’re some that may act as eye-openers:

While checking desired products on e-commerce websites, generally, similar products of other brands also come out as suggestions. Have you ever thought who decides those recommendations? Well, pal, it is machine learning at work!

Another example: Sometimes, people get contacted by banks or finance companies regarding a loan or an insurance policy. But the question that arises here is ‘Do they contact all their customers?’ Of course not! They select only those customers who seem potential loaners or borrowers. In doing this, the underlying basis is none other than machine learning algorithms.

Machine learning helps build models from sample data which can help automate the decision-making process and be used for prediction and forecasts. There should be constant machine learning model management after training an ML model to make it perform efficiently.

Curious about the types of machine learning algorithms? Let’s get the ball rolling:

Supervised Learning  

You may already have got an idea about supervised learning, as its name is self-explanatory. To leave nothing to chance, however, we like to mention that these machines require a ‘supervisor’ to learn. Here, a dataset acts as a teacher, and essays the role of a ‘trainer’ of machines.

After the training, the output generated by the machines gets checked against the intended result. If there’s some difference, a process gets initiated to find errors. After identifying and rectifying the ambiguities, the machines run again to check whether accurate results are being generated or not.

Unsupervised Learning

Contrariwise to supervised learning, these machines don’t need a teacher in order to learn. In unsupervised learning, all that needs to be done is giving an initial protocol and dataset to a machine. Once it’s done, the machine automatically starts learning by creating clusters after finding out patterns and relationships in the dataset.

Here, it is worthy to note that machines cannot add labels to the created cluster. For instance, they cannot say if an object belongs to ‘apples’ or ‘mangoes’ without prior classification; however, they can separate all the mangoes from the group of apples.

Informative Blog: The Enigma of AI-backed BPS

Semi-supervised learning

To describe semi-supervised learning in the simplest manner, you can say it is the combination of supervised and unsupervised learning. In supervised learning, a machine gets labeled data to learn, while unlabeled data gets provided to a machine when unsupervised learning is used.

By means of semi-supervised learning, learning accuracy can be improved very easily. Customarily, semi-supervised machine learning gets preference when the labeled data isn’t enough to train a machine.

Reinforcement learning      

Reinforcement learning, a type of dynamic programming, trains a machine as per the system of reward and punishment. For better understanding, if machines perform in the way which they are supposed to, they get reward points and vice versa.

Actually, the idea behind this is to make certain that machines act appropriately in the environment they are put in. Furthermore, machines are deemed to swing into operation once they start scoring maximum reward points and making negligible errors.  

Wrapping up:

After understanding machine learning’s basics, we hope that you have got a better insight into machine learning (ML). Here, we would like to mention that many enterprises have been using machine learning applications so that business growth can be achieved in an effective manner.

There are many reputed vendors like Amazon, Google, IBM, etc. that have immense experience in handling ML activities that include data collection, data preparation, etc. For these activities, they are being approached by those companies that really want to achieve their business objectives as quickly as possible.

Are we done here? Nope. After going through several research reports, we have got our hands on some stats that have the potential to leave you stunned. So, take a gander:

• 85% of customer interactions will be handled without any human intervention by 2020.
• In 2017, Netflix had saved $1 billion by using machine learning for making individualized recommendations.
• 20% of the C-suites are already making use of machine learning.
• 72% of business leaders say that AI lets humans focus on more productive work.
• 84% of organizations believe that investing in AI can help gain significant competitive advantages.

Finally, we are finished with elaborating upon the prominence of machine learning. Hope you have got all the information that you were seeking, and enjoyed the whole tour of this write-up.     

Thanks for staying connected till the end!!

The post Machine Learning – A New Wave of Intelligent Automation appeared first on Cyfuture Blog.

Artificial Intelligence has made the leap from science fiction to real life in a short matter of time. It was initially envisioned as a panacea for the intricate but repetitive processes that aided scientific research and technological advancement – a role it has fulfilled and, in many instances, surpassed.

Training a program by making it understand a variety of sensory inputs, whether in the form of digital or analog data, does not mean that program has ‘intelligence’. The result of this factor being used to decide the intelligence of software leads to various technologies that were quite revolutionary at their inception now being classified as routine programs, because their previously groundbreaking tasks have become rudimentary in today’s advanced day and age.

A Brief History of AI

Automation has been a pursuit of humanity since classical Greek antiquity. The word ‘automaton’ itself is used by Homer to refer to machines acting according to their own will. There is ample evidence in literature and history that shows how we have striven to recreate machines that not only look like us, but walk, talk and act like us. The more successful efforts towards such aims are said to be in the ‘uncanny valley’, an uncomfortable state which results from the almost, but not entirely, accurate depiction of human beings by doppelganger machines.

Interesting Article to Read : Chatbots & Live Chat | A Sprint to Sublime Customer Service

Alan Turing was instrumental in making artificial intelligence a practical field. Approaching AI in purely mathematical binary terms, digitization was used as the platform to erect expert systems, which use inference engines and knowledge bases to make decisions. Moore’s Law, which predicted computing power rising up while component sizes reduced, still remains applicable, albeit to a slightly lesser extent.

Now, with data surging forth from all sorts of sources right from our handheld devices to astronomical observations and literal rocket science, machines that have been developed specifically to ‘think like a human’ are rapidly being deployed in a variety of fields, form bioengineering to synthetic medicine. Nearer our daily lives, search engines [one (followed by a hundred zeros) in particular, but all of them in general] and flagship smartphones use all the learnings gleaned from AI to deliver ‘personalized experiences’ right into our hands!

We Are Already AI-ed, Daily!

In 2014, Stephen Hawking gave a subliminal quote on AI: “It [AI] would take off on its own and redesign itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded.”

While such a day still seems far off as of now, the quest for replicating human thought patterns and response heuristics continues unabated. Programmers in diverse fields toil away every day at their projects, attempting to reproduce the thought processes that make up the human mind. They have to take many factors into consideration, not the least of which is the ethical complication in ‘fooling’ a human into thinking they are conversing – or, at basic levels, interacting – with a machine.

We are already carrying out a great deal of everyday interactions with artificial intelligence. The level to which it affects the technology in the palm of our hands is difficult to identify at the user level. To delve deeper, we have to break down the integral components of interactions amongst humans and machines – a task easier said than done.

The question I asked at the beginning is hard to answer, because it is rooted in the future. At Cyfuture, we are accustomed to asking questions that require a certain kind of ‘never giving in’ mindset to answer – for laterally solving problems or creating innovative solutions to increase the effectiveness of existing legacy systems, as well as drive businesses better.

The post AI: Can A Machine Ever Be Human, Convincingly?  appeared first on Cyfuture Blog.