There are more than 200 MAS providers available in the global market catering to the needs of B2B and B2C marketers. What is interesting is that the number of Indian service providers is also growing at a faster pace, with India ranking third in terms of MAS providers after USA and UK with more than 10 companies offering MAS solutions.

The report, being first-of-its-kind, produced by Research NXT in association with Netcore, is based on a survey from more than 150 top marketing professionals and CMOs of leading brands from different sectors across India.

With ROI as the key parameter to measure investment, 57 per cent of marketers have allocated well-defined budgets for marketing automation spends. The latest B2C Marketing Automation Report India 2017 reveals that 70 per cent marketers in India have adopted Marketing Automation Solutions (MAS) to increase lead conversions. It further states that 48 per cent of marketers in India have already decided to include MAS in their marketing strategy.

The report highlights that more than 70 per cent marketers state that Email and SMS marketing are crucial features of the MAS mix. App engagement and segmentation are other two features that are gaining preference among Indian marketers.

Capturing the insights in a nutshell, Kalpit Jain, CEO, Netcore, said, “It is exciting to know that the trend of marketing automation is gaining momentum in the India market. The rate at which it is growing, we are sure that in the next couple of years or sooner India will be on the same platform as US in terms of usage of technology in marketing. India is at an early stage of adoption and we have observed high level of awareness on the need and benefits of MAS among marketers. We believe 2017 will be the year of marketing automation adoption for majority brands in India.”

The report highlights that 61 per cent of marketers are evaluating MAS with cloud based platforms, and 28 per cent of marketers are looking at a mix of in-house along with – cloud based platform. Campaign Execution, Implementation and Integration are the top three activities which marketers who are evaluating MAS would like to outsource. This clearly reveals that lack of internal skills and expertise are the biggest barriers in MAS implementation in India, hence choosing a MAS provider offering Marketing Technologist Consultancy to deliver the required results for brands is recommended.

Though predictive scoring and machine learning, workflow builder and unified customer view are not widely used as of now; this trend is expected to witness a change. With the advent of technology in business steering the evolution of marketing channels rapidly, more than 60 per cent of marketers feel that paid digital media, social media and website are the most effective channels for marketing campaigns. Digital channels like browser notification, In-App / web messaging are gaining importance due to the ease of measurability and real time engagement among customers.

The report is available for public access at: http://bit.ly/2r4GfsB

netcore solution has undergone a brand refresh

Having pioneered the internet communications and online marketing space for over 18 years, Netcore has transformed its brand identity to reflect the seismic changes in the ever-changing marketing technology landscape.

Today, Netcore seeks to be a marketer’s pathfinder through innovative and intelligent marketing automation solutions, with a goal to create infinite experiences for its ever growing list of marquee clients.

With the arrival of smartphones, the balance of power has shifted from marketers to consumers. It is the ‘age of the customer’ and today’s customers demand personalised, relevant and engaging experiences. To help their clients create customer delight and achieve their strategic business goals, Netcore had created India’s first and leading full-spectrum omnichannel marketing automation solution in 2015 that puts customer experience at the centre of marketing strategy. This philosophy is captured in the company’s new tagline ‘Experience the Infinite’ and its new logo which features the infinity symbol at its centre.

The company has built a profitable track record and has witnessed 40 per cent year-on-year growth over the past 5 years. With an employee strength of more than 450; serving over 3000 brands as clients along with over 50 Netcore Smartech Clients, Netcore is India’s largest digital marketing company enabling 7 billion customer connects across various sectors through email, SMS, mobile, push notifications and digital marketing solutions. Given the industry expected growth estimates of about 340 million smartphones and over 225 million Facebook users in 2017, it is critical for brand owners to explore the power of Netcore’s infinite marketing and gain a first-mover advantage in the market.

Commenting on the new brand identity, Rajesh Jain, Founder and Managing Director, Netcore Solutions, said, “The company has led from the front with innovative services throughout, starting from way back in 1998. Over the years, we have kept our promise to evolve with the market’s needs by introducing email marketing, mobility (SMS, IVR and voice based) marketing to India’s first and leading cross-channel marketing automation platform (Netcore Smartech) that helps brands create personalised and real-time customer experiences. ‘How do I make every customer feel special?’ – That’s the direction in which marketing has started to move. And we have got some very interesting early case studies including from companies like HDFC Life, Pfizer, Cover Fox, Lemon Tree Hotels, among others.”

Providing an industry perspective, Kalpit Jain, CEO, Netcore Solutions said, “As per the latest NASSCOM report, Indian players’ share in the global Martech industry can grow to USD 45-55 billion by 2025. This is the age of the connected consumer. So, brands must shift their primary focus from the traditional, unidirectional, one-to-many broadcast-style of marketing and move to one-to-one, interactive, and hyper-personalised communication and conversations with their target customers. Our feedback from marketers’ told us that the most important need is to enable personalisation at scale. And so we created Netcore Smartech – our proprietary, full-spectrum, omnichannel marketing automation solution, which can help marketers get their job done to map customer journeys and thereby create rewarding customer experiences on a one-to-one basis.”

Kamini Rupani, Chief Marketing Officer, Netcore Solutions opined, “When we introduced Smartech in 2015, it evangelised the marketing technology industry in India. Our value proposition to our customers has evolved greatly, and so we decided to give our brand a completely new visual expression and fly a new flag. Netcore’s services have grown phenomenally in size, scale and impact, and our brand personality too has evolved to reflect that growth and promise. Netcore projects a brand’s personality which is agile, reliable, intelligent, empathetic, and resourceful. With Netcore Smartech, the possibilities are infinite, and we can give our customers infinite experiences. That is not just the promise of Smartech, it is also our motto.”

This year’s report analyzes the impact of:

• A brand new botnet campaign that Forcepoint is calling “Jaku” that was discovered as a result of a 6-month investigation by Forcepoint’s Special Investigations (SI) team
• A new crop of opportunistic ransomware, anti-malware tools and issues caused by the ever-dissolving perimeter that are posing serious challenges to cybersecurity professionals and the organizations they aim to protect
• Increases in data breaches caused by both malicious and “accidental” insiders
• Inconsistent security controls between cloud providers and businesses, which are complicating data protection
• The continuing convergence of email and web attack vectors as nine out of ten unwanted emails contain one or more URLs and millions of malicious macros are being sent

“The rapid evolution of the cyber threat environment has consequences that are much broader than just technical, operational, and financial – they can impact every piece of a business,” said Forcepoint Chief Scientist Dr. Richard Ford.  “With this Threat Re
port, we want to demystify these threats and help enable businesses with tools, recommendations and, quite simply, knowledge, so they can continue to move forward without fear.”

The Forcepoint 2016 Global Threat Report details multiple behavioral and technique-based trends and provides guidance on today’s most impactful threats to assist security professionals in planning their cybersecurity defense strategy.

Top findings include:

• Malicious content in email increased 250% compared to 2014, driven largely by malware and ransomware
• The United States hosts more phishing websites than all others countries combined
• Ransomware focus is sharpening, targeting countries, economies and industries where a high ransom is more likely to be paid
• “Insiders” – malicious and accidental – represent the biggest threat to company security and the one for which businesses feel least prepared
• Advanced evasion techniques are gaining in popularity and are combining multiple evasion methods, such as IP fragmentation and TCP segmentation, to create new ways to bypass access controls, attack watering holes and disguise traffic

The Forcepoint 2016 Global Threat Report data was collected and evaluated using the Threatseeker® Intelligence Cloud, working behind-the-scenes 24x7x365 to provide Forcepoint visibility into the very latest threats. The Forcepoint team provided expert interpretation, with researchers and engineers in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and North America performing interviews and investigations that examined attack activity and its impact across the full Kill Chain.

To download the Forcepoint 2016 Global Threat Report, visit www.forcepoint.com/threatreport. For ongoing research updates, be sure to follow the Forcepoint Security Labs blog at https://blogs.forcepoint.com/security-labs.

Gen-X life is about technology & fitness. Technology leaders are coming out with best in class fitness gadgets that would be your companions in your run towards fitness. Those who are trying hard in order to go fit may now find their chase towards fitness goals easier with these new PTron wearable accessories from LatestOne.com.

The smart bands have grabbed a wide market worldwide by shipping 45.7 million units in 2015. Global smart wearable devices market is estimated to grow at Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 25.38% during the period 2015 to 2019. By 2020, there will be over 100 Million users of fitness trackers. PTron wearable accessories deliver a wide range of capabilities like track a person’s heart rate, calories burned, step pedometer, distance tracker, goal setter, sleep tracker, and sleep quality monitor etc. Health conscious middle class group of Indian society is gradually picking up with major share in the demand for smart wearable devices. Interestingly, elderly educated are developing penchant for wearable gadgets.

The “trending now” attitude has expanded to demographics like gender and age. Customers need and desire for wearable gadgets  is ever increasing. It is a task for companies to cater to this need of a customer. LatestOne.com, with its in-house brand PTron have successfully managed to inspire existing and prospective customers in offering state-of -the-art tech accessories at affordable prices while creating trend in wearable technology.

Mr. Ameen Khwaja, the CEO and Founder of LatestOne.com  said ,“Fitness is not just a trend, it is becoming a habit and lifestyle. We have launched PTron fitness bands with affordable price tags and amazing colors in order to satisfy the needs of a wide customer segment. We expect 15% to 20% revenue to be generated from fitness wearable devices in the current quarter. The PTron fitness bands on LatestOne.com, blend technology and comfort in compact wearable devices. The display unit on the band makes it convenient to use and read the metrics easily without going back to the mobile device.”

1. Portronics POR 341 Power Brick (13000 mAh Battery): A must-have that tops the chart is a portable charge of a high mAh ( 10000 and above) to be able to take care of your handheld devices while travelling. This power bank offers multiple protection features; it is equipped with protection against overcharging, excess voltage and excess current.  Another important feature is short circuit protection.  The device also deploys LED lights to indicate remaining battery. This is a perfect gadget for when your phone dies right when you need it the most.

2. Lifestraw: This would probably not be your first choice when you are off to a luxurious kind of holiday. But if you like adventure and camping, this could be your tool and even life saver. Containing no chemicals, no batteries and no moving parts, the Lifestraw is a gizmo that no adventure enthusiastic can do without. The Lifestraw’s microbiological water purification system means it can filter 1,000 litres of water sucked up through the straw, removing 99.9999% of waterborne bacteria, including E. coli, and 99.9% of waterborne protozoa. It does take a good hard suck to get the water up, but that’s hardly a problem when it’s a matter of life or death, right? Perhaps save this one for emergencies.

3. Lechal shoes: Lechal – World’s first haptic footwear, and allows you to navigate hands-free and also tracks your fitness metrics. For users visiting a new city, or looking to rediscover their own, the footwear allows users to tag locations, set destinations and get real-time data on landmarks all around you. Lechal also boasts unique voice commands and an inherently social nature, enabling you to share your location with other users.  The footwear is also ideal for groups of families and friends that want to keep track of everyone. For example, if a group is scattered across an amusement park but plans to meet at the same restaurant for dinner, Lechal can provide real-time location data. It’s a boon for additional convenience and safety.

4. GoPro Hero 3+: If you love surfing or skiing, what better than to be able to capture every moment of your adventure. GoPro Hero 3+ is a gadget for some serious action-adventure and wide landscapes in HD. For the ones who do not want to go all pro with f-stops and focusing, this is your magic pony! It allows you to connect via WiFi and syncs to your iPhone, iPad or smartphone device for remote viewing and it has longer battery life. Just push the button and create amazing memories.

5. Divoom Airbeat 10: This portable bluetooth speaker has a suction cup that turns any hard surface into an extra subwoofer to amplify the bass. This one is perfect to enjoy your time in the hotel room or on a beach with some great foot tapping music. Since it is small and powerful, it won’t consume too much space in your luggage.

Key Highlights

• Average order value increased by 50%
• Average order value for the quarter Oct – Dec 2015 was INR 500.00
• For the current quarter average order value is INR 750.00
• High value products (above INR 1,000) have rapidly increased from 10% of sales to 50% of sales, by value.

Mumbai, 14^th march, 2016: LatestOne.com announced that the average order value has increased by 50%, from INR 500 to INR 750 per order in the current quarter, as compared to the preceding quarter (Oct-Dec). This was achieved by changing the product mix of online sales, with the introduction of high value products like smart watches, fitness activity trackers, Bluetooth headsets, mobile camera lens etc. LatestOne.Com has successfully shipped / delivered more than one million orders since commencement of operations 18 months ago. Strong and established customer base, good will and trust, with growing repeat customers has played a vital role in increasing average order value. The trust that the valued customers have developed, from their earlier purchases on LatestOne.com, has made the process of introducing and selling, high value products online, easy. During the corresponding period, the Alex ranking of LatestOne.com has also steadily improved to 1,700 in India.

Mr. Ameen Khwaja, the Founder and CEO of LatestOne.com said, “While our traditional customer base for mobile accessories and cables continues to grow steadily, we are seeing an increased appetite for high value products and gadgets. Living up to its expectation, LatestOne.com introduced innovative designs and products such as 2A charging cables, high end charging dock stations and OTG pendrives in the Jan-Mar quarter.”

About LatestOne.com

 Founded in October 2014, the Hyderabad based LatestOne.com is India’s only e-tailer specialized in tech and mobile accessories. Be it Bluetooth devices, mobile covers, tablet accessories, cables, power banks, Android TVs, headsets, smart watches or CCTV’s, LatestOne.com stocks over 10,000 different products in its inventory and operates through its own warehouses.

Emerges as the highest rated news app in Google’s list of top 50 apps in India

India’s highest rated news app – Inshorts which curates important news items of the day and serves them in 60 words, has been included by Google in its list of 50 Best Apps of India. Inshorts is India’s highest rated news app and among the only 2 news apps who have made it to the list. The other popular apps in the list include Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, Skype, TrueCaller, Zomato, and Gaana to name a few. The Google apps list is a ready reckoner listing the best apps and games (both free and paid format) that were featured this year on Play Store, thus enabling the audiences to see how their favorite apps and games have fared throughout the year.

On this achievement, Azhar Iqubal – CEO and Co-founder, Inshorts said – “The inclusion of Inshorts in Google’s list of top 50 apps for 2015 validates our brand promise of keeping our users informed by the means of simple, precise and short form content which could be consumed in less than 15 seconds. In 2016, our focus would be upon serving relevant content to relevant users.”

Inshorts has witnessed exponential growth in 2015 and has grown from less than 100,000 downloads at the beginning of the year to more than 3 million downloads by December 2015. The app serves more than half a billion page views everyday and 80% of its users as of today come from New Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad, Chandigarh and Jaipur. The app has recently launched a Hindi interface to make inroads in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities and based on its success, plans a foray in Marathi, Kannada and Tamil by mid 2016. With these initiatives, Inshorts aims to increase its reach by an additional 5 million users by April 2016.

Inshorts is currently working on building India’s first intuitive content recommendation engine and is testing its efficiency with the help of its community of beta users called ‘Insiders’ which has more than 20,000 users. With the content recommendation engine, Inshorts aims to identify its users based on their content consumption habits and serve them more alternative content in the genres of their interest. The company is also in the process of partnering with popular alternative content publishers and helping them to increase the reach of their content through the Inshorts platform.

To preview a timeline of Inshorts, Click Here

Hansa Cequity, India’s first customer marketing company headquartered in Mumbai, has announced that it has joined the Adobe Solution Partner Program as a Business Level Partner. This will allow Hansa Cequity to work more closely with Adobe to provide digital marketing solutions and integrated technologies to its pan-India customers.

Hansa Cequity will use Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions such as Adobe Audience Manager (a data management platform), Adobe Analytics (a leading marketing analytics solution), Adobe Campaign (for multi-channel campaign management), to provide integrated customer marketing solutions to its clients in retail, automotive, banking and travel and hospitality domains. In strengthening its relationship with Adobe, Hansa Cequity will receive greater levels of support from Adobe and in turn be able to pass that along to its clients.

“Hansa Cequity is excited to build our relationship with Adobe, and in signing this enterprise agreement, we will have a great Digital Technology partner in Adobe as we continue to expand as a full service Customer Experience Management Company,” said S Swaminathan, CEO and Co-Founder, Hansa Cequity.

“With customer centricity gradually becoming an integral part of organisational thinking, marketers are looking to partner who can provide integrated services for enhancing their customer’s experience. And that is what we aim to achieve with this partnership,” added, Ajay Kelkar, COO and Co-Founder, Hansa Cequity.

Commenting on the partnership Umang Bedi, MD – South Asia, Adobe Systems said, “Hansa Cequity has been one of the pioneers of data-driven marketing in India. This partnership will enable customers to act on the insights to deliver differentiated customer experiences in this rapidly changing digital world.”

The Adobe Solution Partner Program is designed to create a successful relationship between Adobe and digital marketing companies to help build customer experience solutions and facilitate exchange of resources and support.

Hansa Cequity and Nasscom jointly released the report that includes case studies from nearly 250 global companies

To showcase how organisations are creating value by leveraging analytics across industries, The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) and Hansa Cequity on 25 June, 2015 announced the release of a report on “Application, Innovation and Maturity of Indian Analytics”. The report was released as part of the Big Data & Analytics Summit organised by NASSCOM at Hyderabad. Orgaisations, including global in-house centres, analytics providers, and Indian buyer enterprises across different industry sectors participated and showcased the innovation and business impact created by them by leveraging Indian analytical capabilities. The submissions were received in application areas of Customer Experience & Lifecycle Management, Revenue Maximisation, Operational Efficiency, and Compliance & Risk Management. Key findings of the study:

•  Organisations are increasingly ‘competing on analytics’ based on Insights from integrating institutional data, social media data, and machine data.
• Analytics solutions have matured from business intelligence and reporting into the realm of predictive and prescriptive analytics such as forecasting, scenario planning, simulation, optimisation, complex risk modelling, NLP etc.
• The industry is enhancing capabilities and moving towards productized analytics solutions by embedding domain expertise, understanding of customer business and deploying deep analytics expertise.
• Industry is offering solutions spread over industries such as Agriculture, Banking, and Mining to Government agencies.
• Many local government agencies, on a very positive note, have been early adopters of analytical solutions to provide better citizen centric services.

As part of the study, 12 pioneering examples were selected for special recognition and the companies that executed those projects were honored at the NASSCOM Big Data & Analytics Summit. The ‘Top 50’ case submissions are featured in the ‘Application, Innovation & Maturity of Indian Analytics’ Report. MohanaKrishnan, Director, NASSCOM, said “Disruptive technologies, informed customers, rapidly changing business models are presenting challenges as well as opportunities for enterprises to explore innovative solutions available in the ecosystem. The need for drawing better insights from huge volumes of data has fueled the need for innovative analytic solutions. Companies selected for special recognition include Agora Analytics, Capgemini India, Citibank India, Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System, EXL Services, Fractal Analytics, Genpact, Gramener, iConcept Software Services, Rolta India, Siemens, and  Swiss Re Shared Services The depth, breadth, innovation and maturity of analytics solutions from India is not only fascinating and has led industries such as banking, retail, mining, aviation, agriculture, government, transportation, hospitality, and energy and utilities to quickly adopt and bring enhanced competitive advantage.” Swaminathan, Co-founder and CEO, Hansa Cequity commented that, “At Hansa Cequity, we believe that Data is the new fuel and competitive advantage for the enterprise and Data-driven marketing will become the new normal in companies. The study proves that India is now ready to make the big difference in the way global companies make decisions.” While sharing his views on the initiative, Ajay Kelkar, Co-founder and COO, Hansa Cequity, said “Data scientists were ranked by HBR as the sexiest job of the 21^st century. Cequity assessed the work done by participating Data science teams along with NASSCOM and used their Smart Analytics Impact framework to assess the more innovative case studies. This Research demonstrated that a vibrant ecosystem for analytics has developed in India”

The PM is due to visit Europe from April 9 to 14. Even as the India-EU Summit at Brussels earlier proposed during Modi’s Europe tour has been postponed, the regional body is upbeat about the future of ties between the two entities. Cravinho said that Europe is very much on the radar of the new government in India which will complete one year in May.

“EU is today the biggest source of investment to India and the biggest trading partner of Delhi as a bloc. Besides, it can be the biggest source of advanced and high technology to India which comes with investments,” Cravinho told ET.

While French investments in India touched $19 billion last year, Germany has been the eighth largest foreign direct investor in India since 2000. German FDI in India between 1991 and September 2014 was valued at $7.57 billion. There are more than 1,600 Indo-German collaborations and over 600 Indo-German joint ventures in operation. Hannover Fair, where India is the partner and which Modi will jointly inaugurate with Chancellor Angela Merkel on April 12, is expected to generate additional investments and boost ‘Make in India’ initiative.