HCL Technologies Appoints Prabhakar Appana Global Head of AWS Ecosystem Business Unit
HCL Technologies (HCL), a leading global technology company, announced the appointment of Prabhakar Appana as Senior Vice President and the Global Head of its AWS Ecosystem Business Unit to further accelerate the company’s #HCLCloudSmart journey.
An industry veteran with about 23 years of experience in various leadership roles across geo sales, consulting, technology practices and program management, Prabhakar will drive HCL’s business growth and provide solutions and services to its global clients in reimaging their businesses for the digital age.
“As HCL continues to drive its strategy to be the digital partner of choice for global enterprises and reinforces its industry-leading portfolio of innovative cloud services, it is vital to strengthen our leadership team too,” said Kalyan Kumar, Chief Technology Officer and Head Ecosystems, HCL Technologies. “Prabhakar brings rich experience in the area of cloud transformation from advisory to implementation, digital transformation, new business development, leading strategic initiatives and building teams. We are thrilled to welcome him to our ecosystem leadership team.”
Prabhakar joins HCL Technologies from Accenture, with a successful track record building technology business for telcos, media, high-tech, and aerospace and defence industries and later in London driving and transforming the cloud business. He started his career in 1997 and held multiple leadership positions across various IT and technology companies. He has a reputation for his deep industry experience, technology enterprise digital transformation, cloud adoption, unwavering client focus and passion for continuous learning.
HCL’s recently launched dedicated AWS Ecosystem Business Unit will help enterprise clients modernize and migrate at scale, sustain cost advantages and focus on experimentation by combining HCL’s experience and expertise in building adaptive cloud smart portfolios, and AWS’s depth and breadth of services and rapid innovation.
“As we continue to witness rapid digitization and modernization across enterprise IT, 5G network, Industry 4.0, IoT, AI/ML and ISV ecosystem, the lines between industries are diminishing and rapid pace adoption is happening across cloud ecosystem platforms,” Prabhakar said. “It is for us to capitalize and bring fast-paced adoption to the client’s ecosystem. I'm excited to be part of this journey with HCL Technologies by bringing dedicated focus through AWS Ecosystem Business Unit to help clients in their digital and cloud transformation efforts and bolster leadership position in the cloud business.”
JUBILANT FOODWORKS LAUNCHES THE ICONIC US CHICKEN BRAND POPEYES® IN INDIA
Jubilant Foodworks Limited (JFL), India’s leading food services player, has launched the iconic US Fried Chicken brand Popeyes® in India, with the grand opening of its first restaurant in Bengaluru today. Popeyes®, best known for its spicy New Orleans style fried chicken & Chicken Sandwich, aims to delight Indian guests with the bold and delicious flavours of its Louisiana-style chicken.
Bringing Cajun Flavours to India Louisiana born, Popeyes® was founded in 1972 and has been one of America’s most popular and fastest growing Chicken brands.
The success of Popeyes® lies in its traditional and unique technique of hand breading, battering, and marinating its fresh chicken for 12 hours in bold Cajun seasonings. The Cajun seasoning has a blend of cayenne pepper, garlic, onion, black pepper, celery and white pepper and offers an unbeatably bold and flavourful culinary experience.
The Popeyes® India menu will feature the signature Cajun flavoured, world-famous Chicken Sandwich, which took the internet by storm in August 2019 in the United States
Complementing the menu is Popeyes® signature Chicken in Classic and Spicy flavours. The Indian menu will also feature an array of vegetarian options. It will also have Rice Bowls and Wraps as part of the wholesome meal options to ensure all guests enjoy the Popeyes® Cajun experience.
The entire India menu has no MSG, and the chicken is antibiotic-free
Popeyes® will start with its flagship store in Koramangala today, followed by opening of stores in New BEL Road and Kammanahalli soon thereafter. The brand will have its own App (Android and iOS) and Mobile Website (www.popeyes.in) allowing customers to experience the food at home as well. In order to ensure a smooth and seamless Delivery experience, JFL has built its own in-house Delivery fleet with 100% use of E-Bikes, enabling a zero-emission Delivery of the Popeyes® experience.
Safety First
Popeyes® will be following some stringent processes to ensure the safety of its customers
and employees. All staff members have been fully vaccinated and are proactively and
frequently tested for abundant safety. Safety protocols like daily temperature screening for all
employees and frequent sanitization of restaurant are being implemented . To ensure 100%
safe delivery frequent sanitization of bikes will be conducted. All delivery riders will be
compulsorily wearing face mask and gloves while following the frequent hand sanitization
protocol.
Speaking on the launch of the iconic Popeyes® in India, Shyam S. Bhartia, Chairman and Hari S. Bhartia, Co-Chairman, Jubilant Foodworks Limited, said, “We are excited to introduce the Popeyes® Louisiana Kitchen brand to chicken-loving Indian consumers. We are confident that Popeyes® will not only delight guests but also strategically complement our portfolio and fortify JFL’s leadership in the QSR domain.”
Pratik Pota, the CEO and Wholetime Director, Jubilant Foodworks Limited (JFL), said, “At JFL, we are committed to bringing the best in taste and quality from across the globe to excite the discerning Indian taste buds. The unique, delicious, and wholesome Cajun flavours of Popeyes® are certain to appeal to the Indian audience. Over the years, Popeyes® has emerged as one of the most loved brands across the globe, and we aspire to recreate that same excitement and loyalty for Popeyes® and its signature dishes in India as well.”
‘We are thrilled to bring Popeyes® to India’, commented David Shear, President RBI International, parent company of Popeyes®. “This new country entry illustrates our commitment to serving more guests around the world with our signature blend of spices and flavours. We are confident that our India guests will love their Fried Chicken from Popeyes®, and we look forward to this launch.”
Lupin Signs First Partnership Agreement with Foncoo for China
Global pharma major Lupin Limited (Lupin) today announced that it has entered into a partnership with Shenzhen Foncoo Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd (Foncoo). This is Lupin’s first partnership arrangement in China and reinforces Lupin’s commitment to bringing high quality generic and complex generic medicines to patients around the world.
Dr. Fabrice Egros, President – Growth Markets, Lupin said, “Lupin continues to invest in key growth markets. With China’s growing commitment to affordable and accessible healthcare, Lupin is committed to serving the healthcare needs of the Chinese population by providing high quality generic and complex generic products. We are very excited about our partnership with Foncoo. We will continue exploring additional partnership opportunities in China to leverage our global portfolio including complex generics and specialty medicines.”
Mr. Peng Yan, General Manager, Foncoo said, “Foncoo’s successful experiences on importing registration and marketing of the generic formulations and Lupin’s strong capability of making highquality medicines make us perfect match to each other and our collaboration will have a bright future most likely. We expect that the successful launch of our first product in China will come smoothly and soon. We will also continue exploring more opportunities to work with Lupin for providing more and more high-valued and complex medicines to the Chinese physicians and patients.”
TCS a Leader in Enterprise Blockchain Services: Everest Group
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) (BSE: 532540, NSE: TCS) has been recognized as a Leader in the Everest Group PEAK Matrix® for Enterprise Blockchain Services
The report highlights that TCS continuously develops a vast array of intellectual property and tools for enterprises to adopt blockchain. It says that TCS’ verticalized approach coupled with its flagship products such as Quartz™, results in the development of accelerators for many use cases. It goes on to say that TCS demonstrates thought maturity through the propagation of innovation use cases and emerging concepts in its market-facing thought assets.
According to the report, clients commend TCS for its depth of technical expertise and capabilities across a wide variety of platforms as well as its ability to tightly integrate blockchain applications with other parts of the software landscape. Cited as a strength is its continued investment in expanding its talent base through regular trainings, certifications, opening a new CoE, and growing internal blockchain expertise across its vertical teams such as in hi-tech, manufacturing, and insurance sectors.
“Blockchain along with adjacent next-gen technologies is fundamentally changing the way enterprises collaborate and create value across extended ecosystems. By designing innovative solutions that are interoperable and can co-exist with current application estates, we have provided a seamless pathway for our customers to harness the power of these new technologies. Quartz blockchain solutions have been deployed across multiple industry use cases, ranging from digitization of the complete lifecycle of bank guarantees, tokenization and provenance in supply chains, to running a renewable energy certificate platform integrated with IoT for solar energy tracking,” said R Vivekanand, Global Head, Quartz, TCS. “This leadership position is a reflection of our strong vision, investments in innovation and developing intellectual property, strong partner network, expertise across a variety of blockchain technologies and the resultant market success.”
TCS offers a unique value proposition by bringing together its blockchain smart solutions suite, comprehensive portfolio of tools and accelerators, and services, through a consulting-led, integrated framework. This framework empowers customers with a 360-degree view of their blockchain adoption journey. It gives customers the opportunity to leverage TCS’ cross-industry domain knowledge and experience across multiple blockchain platforms, protocols, and partner ecosystems to help accelerate enterprise business transformation
Quartz, The Smart Ledgers, is a startup incubated by TCS and provides foundational technology, tools and business components for creating distributed ledger solutions across varied industries. The suite comprises Smart Solutions, a set of ‘designed for blockchain’ business offerings for different industries; the Quartz DevKit, a smart contract development kit to enable programming of high-quality code on multiple blockchain platforms, with preconfigured ‘ledgers’ for accelerated deployment; the Quartz Gateway for the integration of existing solutions with blockchain ecosystems; and the Quartz Command Center that can administer and monitor entire ecosystems.
Together, these solutions help organizations set up truly connected ecosystems that run on blockchain technology, delivering real-time, efficient transaction processing based on a single source of truth on the ledger.
“The frenzy of blockchain Proof of Concept launches and the debate on moving away from PoC to production has radically subsided in the last 18 months, as the industry made great progress on pragmatic blockchain use cases focused on immediate value generation potential,” said Ronak Doshi, Partner, Everest Group. “The market shifted towards using a combination of emerging technologies, including distributed ledger technology, to build inter-enterprise and, in some cases, also inter-industry networks. TCS continues to aid enterprise adoption of blockchain through its verticalized IP and tools. TCS’ focus on expanding technical expertise, experience in integrating blockchain into existing enterprise applications, and its overall thought leadership maturity has led it to secure a Leader position on Everest Group’s Enterprise Blockchain Services PEAK Matrix® 2022.”
TVS Motor Company launches TVS Star HLX 150 Disc variant for Egypt customers
TVS Motor Company, a reputed two-wheeler and three-wheeler manufacturer, globally announced the launch of its motorcycle TVS Star HLX 150 Disc Variant in Egypt. The company is launching the product to offer an attractive personal mobility option to rural and urban Egyptian commuters.
TVS HLX has recently crossed a sales milestone of two million units across global markets. TVS HLX series, launched in 2013, has stayed true to the brand’s promise of being a sturdy product that is highly reliable across rugged terrains.
Speaking on the occasion, Mr. R Dilip, President - International Business, TVS Motor Company, said, “TVS HLX series is a testimony to our customer experience and quality. Egypt is a very important market for us in Africa. As a customer-focused company, we endeavour to fulfil varied customer requirements of the market with superior products with best-in-class technology. TVS HLX has played an integral role in transforming millions of lives by catering to evolving commuting needs across the globe. We will strive to be the most admired two-wheeler brand for Egypt customers setting a benchmark of quality products and customer experience.”
Mr. Amr Ezzelarab, Managing Director, Ezz LCV, said, “We are happy to be the distributor partner for TVS Motor Company in bringing a wide range of mobility solutions catering to broad customer segments across the country. ‘Customer First’ is our top priority, TVS Motor products always deliver what the customers need for their daily mobility. We are excited to launch the TVS Star HLX 150 Disc Variant with best-in-class product attributes, a great fit for rural and urban Egypt customers. Egypt is the first country in the world to get this variant.”
The all-new TVS Star HLX 150 cc Disc variant will join the two-wheeler portfolio in the Egypt market, offering unique propositions like high durability, comfort, and attractive attributes. TVS Star HLX 150 comes with a powerful 150 cc Ecothrust Engine with IOC Technology delivering superior mileage, better startability, refinement, and durability. The motorcycle gets a battery saver DC Headlamp for better brightness and less flicker. It is equipped with a wide range of best-in-class features like a black-themed alloyed wheel and engine, black-themed front fork with sporty rim tape, USB mobile charging port, mobile holder and pilot lamp. The solid rear suspension with Dura Grip wider and tubeless tyre enhances the ride stability and comfort even with a higher load. The new front disc brakes offer better braking power making it easy to control the motorcycle.
TVS HLX series is available in the variants of TVS HLX PLUS (100 cc), TVS HLX 125, TVS HLX 150 and TVS HLX 150X in over 42 countries in Africa, the Middle East and LATAM