Eccentric Engine Collaborates With Citroën India To Offer Captivating Realtime 3D Product Visualization

 Eccentric Engine, the renowned Technology Incubator and Product Visualization company has joined hands with leading French automobile company, Citroën to provide next-level immersive and interactive experience for its newly launched Citroën C5 Aircross SUV in India.

The proprietary, algorithm based, One 3D Visualization Platform by Eccentric Engine is seamlessly integrated at both online and in-dealerships touchpoints to provide a superior product experience by means of real-time 3D visualization. The latest technology upgrades of the One 3D leverages ‘Photorealism’ to render vehicle visuals in a realistic and captivating way, making the experience a first-of-its-kind in the Indian and global automotive industry.

The 3D Configurator, which is engaging customers right from the start, resides on the company’s’ website and offers a cinematic experience of the Citroën Advanced Comfort Program, class-leading product features and exciting accessories options to bring alive a true ATAWADAC experience for its customers.     

Saurabh Vatsa, Brand Head, Citroën India said, “We are excited with the customer response to the High Definition 3D Configurator developed by Eccentric Engine. This extremely realistic visualisation experience ties up very well with our brand ethos of Citroën 360-degree Comfort to enhance the overall customer journey through our AnyTime AnyWhere AnyDevice AnyContent [ATAWADAC] strategy. While the new C5 Aircross SUV is our first vehicle to adapt this technology, our continuous endeavour will be to provide Indian customers unique and ingenious experiences across our brands, reiterating our commitment to be the digital reference in the Indian automotive industry.”

Excited about the new collaboration, Varun Shah, co-founder & CEO, Eccentric Engine, said, “We are excited to partner with Citroën and contribute to their digital journey as they mark their debut in India. While developing Photorealistic CGI Images has been a common practice in the automotive Industry, with the new Citroën C5 Aircross SUV, we have democratized Photorealistic 3D Visualization for the Internet. This is first in the Industry not only in India, but across the world. The latest update takes vehicle exploration to a whole new level.”

In current circumstances, where showroom visits are limited, the new virtual 3D                   e-commerce trends are encouraging and testify the significance of this cutting-edge digital interface. 

Within a 3-month launch of the 3D Configurator on the company website, the web engagement grew manifold, setting new benchmarks: 

• More than 250,000 people from multiple Indian cities such as Bengaluru, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune and Mumbai were hooked online to explore the 

C5 Aircross SUV in 3D from the comfort of their own homes.      

• Explorers nearly spent 5.9 Lakh minutes evaluating and considering the product

• Recorded over 38 Lakh interactions.

Besides online, showrooms are being prepped with personalized 1:1 Experience Zones that has been set up at all La Maison Citroën dealerships across India to ensure a seamless 3D experience with specially trained staff to exhibit the 3D Configurator to accentuate the user experience with the power of One 3D Visualization. 

Citroën customers will be ‘Phygitally’ up-and-close and immersed as:

• The materials, textures and elements used in the vehicle are authentic and give an account of the real car

• The lighting, shadows and reflections give an added sense of realism

• Citroën Advanced Comfort Program is explained immersive with interactive demonstration of differentiated features

• Multiple product variants and trims can be seen back-to-back in 3-Dimensional

• Accessories can be easily overlaid, previewed in real time to aid decision making to book their preferred choice, removing ambiguity and ensuring customers get what they see and desire. 

Customers can explore the power of One 3D Visualization by clicking on the link below

https://www.citroen.in/car-configurator-online

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Flipkart introduces ‘Back to College’ program to offer an enhanced learning experience to students

 Flipkart, India’s homegrown e-commerce marketplace, has introduced a Back to College program to facilitate the educational needs of millions of students as they begin their classes virtually this year. Under the program construct, Flipkart is making available a wide selection of computing devices and bundled education content through tie-ups with leading edtech players including Edukemy and Simplilearn. As part of the initiative, over 400 courses across coding, AI and competitive entrance examinations will be available to students among a plethora of learning choices. This initiative aims at enhancing the learning potential of students as digital learning takes precedence.

As students prepare to move into a new academic year, the “online learning” scenario, triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, continues to lead them to upgrade their education essentials with the best computing devices to make their learning process more intuitive and impactful. As part of the nearly 3-month initiative which started in June, Flipkart has curated a special page on the platform to help students select the right computing and electronic items such as laptops, tablets, printers, audio devices and IT peripherals along with online learning materials depending on one’s primary use case. As part of the campaign, students looking for laptops and tablets will receive options post purchase to pick relevant courses from the edtech partners in an affordable manner.

Students can now get learning modules from leading edtech companies along with their purchase of laptops and tablets during the 3-month long campaign

Rakesh Krishnan, Senior Director, Electronics at Flipkart, said, “As students get ready for the new academic year and are now better acquainted with virtual learning, we are closely working with our brand partners to bring the best-in-class computing products, combined with courses and content to enhance their learning experience. With nearly 40-45% of the demand for electronics coming from the student community and the significant rise in the adoption of online learning since last year, the industry is now shaping its offerings to cater to this fast-growing customer segment and bring various interventions. Through our “Back to College” program, students will benefit from the wide variety of courses offered by partners along with a large selection of computing devices available on Flipkart that will cater to their diverse needs and support them in choosing the best learning materials available.”

In the past year, the demand for computing devices including laptops and tablets has grown multifold, as students switched to learning from home on the back of the pandemic. Interestingly, while school students prefer to purchase budget laptops, college students are looking for premium options to undertake complex tasks which require high processing power.

At the same time, online education offerings for classes 1 to 12 are projected to increase 6.3X by 2022 from the base of 2019," according to an industry report*. It added that the post K-12 market is expected to grow 3.7X to touch $1.8 billion.

Flipkart’s customer insights also corroborated a growing demand for online learning materials among the customers of computing devices. Earlier in April, Flipkart partnered with Codingal, Avishkaar, Prograd and Vendantu to offer online courses for school students and witnessed good traction among customers. 

To better cater to the students’ needs, Flipkart also introduced its Student Loyalty Program with wide-ranging benefits. Students will have to sign up on the electronics page on the Flipkart app using their student identification card and after verification, they will be eligible for 3 months of Flipkart Plus membership along with a host of other benefits on the purchase of electronics, gadgets and backpacks.

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Airtel, TCS to collaborate for Made in India 5G

 Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”), India’s premier communications solutions provider and Tata Group, today announced a strategic partnership for implementing 5G networks solutions for India. 

Tata Group has developed a ‘state of the art’ O-RAN based Radio & NSA/SA Core and has integrated a totally indigenous telecom stack, leveraging the Group capabilities and that of its partners. This will be available for commercial development starting Jan 2022. 

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) brings its global system integration expertise and helps align the end-to-end solution to both 3GPP and O-RAN standards, as the network and equipment are increasingly embedded into software.

Airtel will pilot and deploy this indigenous solution as part of its 5G rollout plans in India and start the pilot in January 2022, as per the guidelines formulated by the Government of India.

These ‘Made in India’ 5G product and solutions are aligned to global standards, and inter-operate with other products based on standard open interfaces and those defined by the O-RAN Alliance. The 5G solutions, once commercially proven in Airtel’s diverse and brownfield network will open export opportunities for India, which is now the second largest telecom market in the world.    

Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO (India and South Asia) Bharti Airtel said, “We are delighted to join forces with the Tata Group to make India a global hub for 5G and allied technologies. With its world-class technology ecosystem and talent pool, India is well positioned to build cutting edge solutions and applications for the world. This will also provide a massive boost to India becoming an innovation and manufacturing destination.” 

N. Ganapathy Subramaniam from the Tata Group/ TCS said, “As a Group, we are excited about the opportunity presented by 5G and adjacent possibilities. We are committed to building a world-class networking equipment and solutions business to address these opportunities in networking space. We are pleased to have Airtel as our customer in this initiative.”

Airtel is a Board member of the O-RAN Alliance and is committed to explore and implement O-RAN based networks in India. Earlier this year, Airtel became the first telecom company in India to demonstrate 5G over its LIVE network in city of Hyderabad. The Company has started 5G trials in major cities using spectrum allocated by the Department of Telecom.

The Tata group's telecom and media enterprises cater to the communication requirements of global business houses to SMEs, and from wholesale to home networks. Tata Consultancy Services Limited (TCS) is a member of the O-RAN Alliance.

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PicsArt offers exciting tools and music soundtracks for an unforgettable Father’s Day and World Music Day

 PicsArt, one of the world's leading creative platform and social editing app, is looking ahead to make your Father’s Day celebrations unique by offering a range of stickers and templates for the upcoming holiday. PicsArt is also releasing special AI music features to make celebrating both Father’s Day and World Music Day more colorful this year. 

For many of us, both of these special occasions have played a very important role in our bonds with our fathers. Until recently, picking out the perfect gift and sending a card with a sweet message was how we celebrated Father’s Day, but with our new reality that has hit us in recent times, we have learned that the best thing is to make sure our loved ones feel special while keeping them safe. For those staying apart from their families, the closest way of being connected is digitally. To make sure that you don’t miss out on showing gratitude to your father in the coolest way possible this Father’s Day, PicsArt has got you covered.

“Celebrating Father’s Day is a very new thing in India because in a traditional Indian family, children were much closer with their mothers than their fathers who were usually at work, but this has changed. In modern India, fathers have become more involved in their children’s lives. To celebrate this special bond and further strengthen it, PicsArt has come up with special Father’s Day templates and stickers for making customized social posts, images and videos to celebrate the contributions our fathers have made in our lives and our memories together. To make it all the more colorful and fun, PicsArt also has a new AI Music feature that can add unique soundtracks to your video content,’’ said Ravish Jain, Country Head of PicsArt.

With the new Father’s Day stickers and templates, PicsArt users can now design their own custom cards celebrating their fathers’ lives and recreate the beautiful moments they had together with creative tools and quotes. As Father’s Day and World Music Day fall one day apart this year, you can celebrate both occasions by creating a Father’s Day video with a great soundtrack to make him feel super special — an extra treat if your dad is a music lover.

For all the dads who love bollywood music, PicsArt has added an ‘Indian Music’ section in the app, where you can find some amazing melodies. PicsArt’s AI algorithm comes with more than 500,000 song samples, beats, and patterns to automatically generate an unlimited library of new tracks and millions of minutes of unique music. You can post your PicsArt-edited Father’s Day video with a cool music soundtrack and select from 20 moods/genres in addition to the Indian music available in the app per your fathers’ preference, to make a magical tribute he’s sure to love. The AI Music feature is currently available on iOS, and will soon be released on Android.

PicsArt is free to download for Apple, Android, and Windows and can also be accessed on the web. PicsArt Gold is available on a monthly or annual subscription basis for those wishing to enjoy premium editing. With PicsArt Gold, subscribers have access to millions of stickers, hundreds of fonts, frames and backgrounds, and an entire library of free-to-edit content and stock photography. 

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How I succeeded in getting vaccine slot on cowin portal

 India is undergoing a very difficult phase at this point of time, with Covid positve patients increasing exponentially, our resources are exhausted beyond imagination. One would think what went wrong in otherwise slowly but steadily picking up pace of normalcy. After year long WFH routine, offices were opening up, markets were all live and not to forget we planned mega events like elections, protests, religious congregations as if corona is a thing of past. In all this dull atmosphere, only ray of hope is the vaccination program rolled out by govt. of India. 

From 1 May onwards, authorities has opened registration for 18 years to 44 years candidates. After initially crashing down the servers due to mad rush for registrations, the portal is stable however users are still complaining of not getting slots. I have myself tried different combinations before coming to conclusion that there are no slots but its just a scam, as the centers would either show no availability or suddenly it will be completely booked. However I was wrong, wrong in concluding it to be scam and wrong in my approach for booking slots.

What should you know before going for slots booking.

As with anything else, people rush to get things done as soon as they can do, we are talking about a country where mobile phone flash sale records just don't matter now. Don't expect to open the app any time of your choice and find slots available near you. In my experience (Location Gurugram, Haryana), all free vaccine slots are opened a day before only, so don't bother yourself by searching for future dates you will find all unavailable. The slots are opened gradually for all the centers, for instance today first of the slot was available at around 11:30 AM and for the center when slots were opened last was 9:35 PM. The slots are booked within 5-10 mins of availability even the ones having 300 slots.

So, with above you can see even refreshing the screen all day is not going to help, you keep refreshing one center and some other center might get full without you knowing. I then looked up in the internet to find solutions and got to know that few techies are actually solving this very problem by making use of cowin API which are available for public to use. While most of the solutions work by searching on a portal and providing a consolidated status of vaccine centers by pincode or district, the one I found best was under45.in . 

How to use under45

Using this is very simple, just that you need to have a telegram account as pre-requisite. Once you open the url you will be directed to page as below to select your state and district.

Next step is to select your desired State and District combination where you are looking for registration.

Click on button with Telegram Icon and you should be able to join channel for your district, please not if your district is not in the list you can click on reply on this tweet link and request to add it.

Once you are added to the channel, you will get notification of each center whenever slots are opened in real time. Which will not only save you from searching all day, but also allow you to plan your centre wisely rather than booking just any center which may be far away from your place.

I was able to reschedule my appointment from Jhajjar (~ 30 Kms from my place) to within Gurugram in my proximity. Hope this will help you too to plan your vaccination. 

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