Kerala’s first homegrown Edu app

 Kerala’s first homegrown Edu app ‘HomeSkul’ eyes pan India reach 

 

Kerala based EduTech startup HomeSkul has launched first home-grown after school e-learning app which provides Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR) powered personalized learning experience for students. HomeSkul brand ambassador and popular Malayalam actor Prithviraj introduced the app in an event held at Kochi. The app comes with several unique features and is packed with high-quality content prepared by experienced faculty and subject experts for CBSE and state board students. Besides recorded classes, HomeSkul also runs live classes on a two-way interactive smart classroom platform using AR technology. The assisted learning feature of HomeSkul facilitates the easy clearing of doubts and questions during and after the live sessions. The app also has an extensive e-library of study materials on all topics covered and is the first in the segment to introduce chapter-wise revision videos that would help students for last-minute preparation for exams. The app’s repository of study materials also includes chapter-wise question answers for all NCERT textbooks.

 

Commenting on the app launch, founder and CEO of HomeSkul, Jaganthan Ram said “Innovation in quality content, pedagogical approach and affordability are the key factors that make HomeSkul unique. The classes are handled by trained subject experts with more than a decade of teaching experience and not by presenters. We are providing rich content with concept building and reinforcement through real-life examples. Short notes, mind map for preparing for examinations, interactive video classes that ensure student’s attention in the class, chapter-wise revision videos are some of the unique features of HomeSkul.”

 

 

 

Launched in English and Malayalam, the app will soon add Hindi for the students across the country. HomeSkul also plans include classes in more regional language. HomeSkul addresses the needs of students from 8th to 12th standard of CBSE. Apart from after school tutoring HomeSkul also runs coaching classes for competitive exams such as NEET and JEE.

“HomeSKul offers equitable, easy and affordable access to students of urban, semi-urban and rural alike. We are charging only less than 50% of average fees of offline tuitions and thus have an edge over competitors. HomeSKul is aiming to reach 50k paid users by October 2022. We are aiming to become a unicorn company within 3 years and strong presence in semi-urban and rural areas all over India in order to ensure affordable access to underserved community,” said Dr. Biji Kumar R, COO, HomeSkul.

“We have a large audience watching the live streaming of our program all over India and across GCC countries. HomeSkul is designed to ensure the best quality of education and intelligently curated engaging educational content. The next academic year HomeSkul will be targeting the pan India market and will reach the backward area where internet is not available,” said Ananthu Sunil, Director of HomeSkul.

 

HomeSkul will also introduce new features to monitor health, portability and accessibility of HomeSkul content across other devices such as Smart TV and wearable gadgets.

HP introduces unique AI powered digital solutions to

                 HP introduces unique AI powered                 digital solutions to transform                             learning for students & teachers

Highlights

• New Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled literacy assessment tool identifies, measures, and corrects the reading and comprehension challenges amongst young students
• Bouquet of solutions include – HP School Coach – encompassing Digital pedagogy, Literacy Attainment and School Improvement Coach; HP Classeasy – a comprehensive, modular Learning Management System
• HP School Coach solution can assess early literacy challenges such as dyslexia, while also assisting with remediation
• HP’s innovative solutions will allow educators and parents to monitor students’ performance based on insights, efficiency, and transparency

HP India today introduced new technology solutions to empower educators with digital tools that will unlock every student’s unique potential. With widespread switch from physical classrooms to online learning prevalent during the pandemic, HP's new digital learning solutions help education institutions in the transition to a digital learning environment and offer students 24/7 access to knowledge, courses, and collaborative resources. It will also enable schools to use a blended model for remote and classroom learning. 

Through new technological innovations, HP focuses on addressing primary need gaps in the education system, and helps educators augment their teaching style through an insight-based tracking of academic progress of students. These solutions will enable students to consume knowledge in enjoyable ways and help them retain information more effectively.

To launch a comprehensive learning service called HP School Coach, HP collaborated with Mirai Partners, a leading learning and development organization. The solution helps schools and students improve their performance through high-impact digital learning, school governance, and literacy attainment. The program's pedagogical transformative technologies will be integrated into school curricula, resulting in a rich, immersive teaching, and learning experience.

The tool has been designed based on deep insights from school principals, teachers, senior leadership teams across the world for three decades and will assist in three critical areas:

• Measuring and correcting age appropriate Literacy Reading & Comprehension for students in K-12 & adult students in vocational training
• School Quality Assurance & Improvement for State Education Ministries & Schools
• Professional Development on digital pedagogy around digital teaching & learning

Announcing the initiative, Ketan Patel, MD, HP India Market, said “For the last 15 months, globally and in India, the education system has relied completely on technology. The growth of online learning has given rise to a hybrid learning model that is here to stay. To deliver an efficient, engaging and creative hybrid learning experience for students, access to the right devices and solutions is imperative. It is a privilege for all of us at HP to innovate and create technology solutions that help students and educators achieve their learning goals and transform the future of learning in India.”

HP School Coach has been built on the following three key pillars:

Literacy Attainment Coach: According to recent research by McKinsey students in the U.S. experience a learning loss of 30% on a return to school in September. The study also suggests that there are only 30% proficient readers in the US (4th grade). Latest ASER (Annual State of Education Report) indicates that ~47% of Grade 5 students can read a Grade 2 level text. This trend negatively impacts the performance of the kids in higher grades as well. It is therefore imperative to assess how kids learn and adapt our approach. This literacy gap amongst students has further intensified during the pandemic. To combat the concern, HP’s Literacy Attainment Coach employs artificial intelligence (AI) and research to accurately assess a learner's ability to read and comprehend according to their age.

The AI tool gathers diagnostic data, provides reading analysis and suggests intervention to drive literacy. With an array of literacy solutions, it enables teachers to help their students with on-demand courses for improvement. The effectiveness of interventions can also be tracked and evaluated over time. The tool also enhances teacher competency, especially literacy assessment and intervention as they get greater insights on their students' reading patterns. For example, the HP Literacy Coach can quickly diagnose early literacy challenges in children, such as dyslexia, while also assisting with remediation.

• Digital Pedagogy Coach: Schools can define their digital strategy and needs using a self-assessment approach, which is followed by seminars based on gap analysis. As a result, each school has a unique and tailored digital transformation strategy with defined objectives and evaluation indicators. The tool enables end to end tracking of the strategy, so the administrators receive a dashboard view of the progress at any time. 
  

• School Improvement Coach: Effective governance is critical for evaluating a school's performance. This digitally enabled solution puts an inspection process in motion by monitoring performance based on insights, efficiency, and transparency. The technology allows for efficient year-over-year improvement tracking inside schools and the education system.
  

To enable gamified education that allows schools to create engaging teaching solutions, HP has also launched HP Classeasy in partnership with Classera, a leader in Learning Management System (LMS) and Student Information System (SIS) to provide e-learning solutions. This innovative activity-based learning system is aimed at reinventing schooling via inspiration, personalization, and engagement. Through an innovative use of video conferencing, the platform creates a virtual classroom environment that adds a layer of gamification to the platform to boost engagement while encouraging and inspiring learners.

The platform transforms classroom activities that were previously carried out in a physical setting into a seamless virtual experience.  The tool's increased use will promote academic pursuits and allow parents and educators to track progress toward specific goals.

Rajnish Gupta, Senior Director & Head Enterprise PC Sales, HP India said, “The pandemic has accelerated the need for an integrated digital approach that inspires students to learn with zest and enthusiasm. Educators must use innovate solutions to track student progress while helping them learn efficiently and effectively. HP School Coach and HP Classeasy solutions reiterate the role of technology in enabling growth and learning for students and educators. With customizable dashboards for teachers and schools, these technologies will allow for easy and seamless monitoring of progress. These technology products and innovations will go a long way in redefining classroom learning and instruction delivery in India.”

For both students and educators, HP’s new education offerings will intensify immersive learning experience, collaborative learning, progress mapping and schooling experience. Globally, the education solutions have already been implemented in Finland, United Kingdom, United States of America, Australia, UAE, Egypt amongst other key markets. They are now being brought to India to help bridge the digital divide in learning. In terms of availability, the customers are being invited for free demos to experience the solutions.

Bharat Petroleum selects Accenture to Digitally Transform Its

Bharat Petroleum selects Accenture to Digitally Transform Its
Sales and Distribution Network

AI-powered digital nerve centre, called IRIS, to increase operational efficiency and service quality for its customers across India

 

Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), the second largest Indian Oil Marketing Company, a ‘Maharatna’ and a Fortune Global 500 Company and Accenture (NYSE: ACN) are collaborating to transform India’s second largest oil and gas company digitally through reimagining its extensive sales and distribution network. Accenture will use its capabilities in data, artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud technologies to build, design and implement a digital platform, called IRIS.

IRIS will integrate real-time data from across BPCL’s countrywide network, including more than 18,000 fuel retail outlets, 25,000 tank trucks, 75 oil installations and depots, 52 liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) bottling plants and 250 additional industrial and commercial locations, to provide a consolidated view of BPCL’s sales and distribution network.

Driven by analytics based on AI and machine learning (ML) technologies, digital nerve center, which is called IRIS, can subsequently trigger automated alerts and actions, including rapid response to equipment failures or hazardous situations. It will also empower the BPCL workforce of more than 100,000 across the country to make faster and more accurate decisions, including preventative maintenance. This will increase sales at fuel retail outlets by minimizing infrastructure downtime, ensuring consistent fuel quality and quantity for retail customers.

By embedding intelligence in BPCL’s sales & distribution operations, Accenture is helping BPCL optimize its operational performance and efficiency, enhance security and safety and deliver a superior experience for more than 10 million retail and commercial customers.

Arun Kumar Singh, Director (Marketing) and Director (Refineries), BPCL, said, “Digital transformation opens up new opportunities for the oil and gas industry. As an organisation passionate about embracing change and leading the charge, we look forward to leveraging technology to unlock tremendous value, sustainable growth, and improved efficiency.”

“With the deployment of this highly automated command & control platform, we are not only bolstering our digital capabilities significantly, but also improving customer experience and transforming operations at scale. It further ensures consistent and uniform delivery of BPCL’s brand promises of innovation, care and reliability to our customers,” said Rahul Tandon, Head, Digital Transformation, BPCL.

“The future will belong to companies that purposefully combine advanced digital technologies with human skills and creativity,” said Piyush N. Singh, Senior Managing Director, India Market Unit Lead, Accenture. “We believe our industry expertise and extensive digital capabilities will help BPCL unlock the next wave of growth and gain a distinct advantage in the market. The powerful combination of human and applied intelligence will facilitate transformative change to ensure BPCL’s operations are safer, more secure and more efficient.”

The new platform is capable of accepting more than three million inputs per second from automated sensors, cameras and Internet of Things (IoT) devices deployed at all key locations, tracking performance based on key parameters such as fuel stock, safety, compliance, equipment health and boosting asset uptime. BPCL’s field workforce and partner network will have a seamless experience thanks to support from a portal, mobile app and call centers in Noida and Chennai. The digital sales and distribution platform will use BPCL’s cloud infrastructure, making it more agile and scalable.

 

How Artificial Intelligence Is Helping Fend Off

 How Artificial Intelligence Is Helping Fend Off Cyberattacks 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the ability of technology to think and act like a human and is being utilized to help fight off potential cyberattacks. Employing AI and machine learning to detect vulnerabilities significantly enhances human capabilities, as AI can analyze and report millions of cyberthreats in the time it might take a person to do the same. 

AI can get “smarter” and “learn;” as an AI algorithm continues to search and monitor data, it can improve its understanding of diverse types of potential attacks. 

According to a study by PwC and Data Security Council titled "Cyber Security India Market: What lies beneath", Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will be powering the 'cyber war rooms' in organisations to help them protect from increasing cyberattacks, as well as detect, predict and respond to the same. 

WHAT IS A CYBERATTACK? 

You have heard a lot about cyberattacks and data breaches on the news lately, but what exactly is a cyberattack and why is it important to protect our data? 

“In short, a cyberattack is a deliberate and often targeted attempt to mount an action via or against digital technology,” says IEEE Senior Member Steven Furnell. “In practice, cyberattacks can take many forms, but we tend to most commonly associate things like hacking and malware, and perhaps phishing. However, there is a far broader range of labels that can be used to reflect the specific approaches and motivations that may be involved.”

“After the attack, the computer or the network will be destroyed, exposed, modified or lose some functions,” adds IEEE Senior Member Guangjie Han. “And your personal information or important data will be acquired by someone else without authorization. Consider the potential benefit behind the data — that’s why these attacks exist.” 

Junior hackers might only have an interest in stealing money, acquiring personal data or merely for the joy of hurting others. More senior hackers have the potential to breach entire companies or governments. 

HOW AI PRIORITIZES SECURITY NEEDS 

Once AI has effectively identified the potential risks and threats, the next step is to prioritize what gets addressed and in what order. 

“Since AI-based detection systems usually work with uncertainty, they are useful not only to raise alerts when something seems to be wrong but also to give a score on how close a given event is from a cyberattack,” says IEEE Member Marcos Simplicio. “Events with higher scores can then be prioritized accordingly. For example, above a certain score, automated measures may be taken to stop the highly probable attack without any human intervention. Events with a lower score can then be forwarded to administrators for further analysis, and some events with low scores may be simply logged without any additional action, since handling them may not be worth the effort.” 

OTHER METHODS OF STOPPING CYBERATTACKS 

AI and machine learning are not the only mechanisms used to prevent and fight off cyberattacks. A wide range of robust technologies protect our systems and help fend off severe breaches. 

IEEE Senior Member Aiyappan Pillai explains that in addition to AI, cryptography, emerging quantum cryptography, analytics, IoT security, blockchain security and hardware authentication technologies are also helping technologists keep our digital infrastructure secure. 

Lastly, another way to prevent cyberattacks is continuing to educate users to stay away from suspicious activity. “It is important to remember that security is largely a matter related to processes and behaviors and therefore administrative, education and awareness processes play a key role in any well-designed security strategy,” stresses IEEE Senior Member Raul Coucher. 

Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence (CoE-AI) was inaugurated by

Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence (CoE-AI) was inaugurated by Dr. Mini Shaji Thomas, Director, NIT-Tiruchirappalli in the presence of Deans and Faculty members of the Institute. This AI has been established with 1.18 Crores sanctioned from Higher Education Funding Agency (HEFA). The CoE has been setup with a focus on interdisciplinary research in AI which is one of the thrust areas of research in recent times.

In line with this, NIT Tiruchirappalli has recently signed a MoU with NVIDIA Corporation in June 2020. The centre has already been sanctioned sponsored projects from DRDO, ISRO and Naval Research Board amounting to a total of 1.5 Crores. The Institute has also taken initiatives to extend the facilities available at the CoE to other organizations through Consultancy mode. In addition to these, the CoE-AI is plan to submit proposals to different Government and Private organizations to expand the R&D activities.On this occasion, the Director of NIT Tiruchirappalli said that, “This initiative will result in generation of highly skilled manpower in terms of Internships, Project Staffs in due course of time with expertise in AI. In addition, there will also be focus in attempting to solve the Societally relevant problems such as Crisis Management, Healthcare and Decision support System in light of the ongoing Pandemic”.

The core team of CoE-AI added that, in long term, this centre can establish itself as an Independent Centre for Research in Artificial Intelligence attracting and creating lot of potential opportunities with its available expert facility and expertise manpower.

Flipkart forges academic collaboration with

Flipkart forges academic collaboration with IIT Patna

● Signs MoU for Joint Research in the field of Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning

Flipkart, India’s homegrown ecommerce marketplace has announced an MoU with IIT Patna, India’s leading science, engineering and technology institute. The MoU is a step to strengthen Flipkart’s academic collaboration which it has been inculcating for past 5 years now. The MoU with IIT Patna will help create industry focused applied research in the areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML).

  

As a part of this MoU, IIT Patna will undertake a number of programs such as joint research activities, writing research papers, organizing seminars, internship / mentorship opportunities to name a few. The academic collaboration is expected to bring real world industry exposure to students and scholars of IIT Patna, and to provide an opportunity to the faculty member(s) to work closely with Flipkart on research projects. Flipkart expects to foster an environment of collaboration in the areas of automation, AI, NLP and ML and help build critical national capabilities. 

Said Mayur Datar, Chief Data Scientist Flipkart, “Academic collaborations are a great way to forge long term relationships between industry and academia, to help accelerate the translation of research into new projects and help drive ecosystem benefits which could lead to economic growth. The aim behind this collaboration is to create industry-focused applied research which could help reach ecommerce to more consumers and sellers alike. With this MoU, we aim to establish deeper academia collaborations which could help students and the academia to leverage our data and platform knowledge to work on India specific e-commerce challenges, in addition to publishing research papers.”   

Asif Ekbal, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, said, “We are very pleased to have this MoU with Flipkart, which has churned out many India specific and India first innovations to solve for adoption of ecommerce in India. The​ research is particularly aimed at developing robust machine translation techniques for translating the large amount of user reviews written in English to the Indian vernacular languages, and at the same time will ensure that the translation process should preserve the domain knowledge (e.g. sentiment, emotion, gender traits etc), which is extremely crucial for the translation service providers (TSPs) that make use of machine translation (MT) in production. Through this initial collaboration, we expect to come up with at least two high-quality publications in the relevant foras, and create a baseline translation workflow in the product review domains. This academic collaboration is expected to bring real world industry exposure to the students and scholars of IIT Patna, and at the same time will provide an opportunity to the faculty member(s) to work closely with Flipkart on research projects.”  

Flipkart is vested in long-term advancement of universities in India through impactful academic research aligned to industry needs. Flipkart works closely with academia through some of the leading institutes including Indian Institute of Science (IISC), IIT (Kharagpur, Bombay and Kanpur), IIM (Ahmedabad and Kolkata)  and a few foreign universities like Carnegie Mellon University and University of California, San Diego to develop technologies such as fashion recommendation, query understanding, attribute extraction, demand planning, product categorization, review helpfulness, supply chain management (e.g., warehouse storage allocation), fraud detection and next basket prediction. It has resulted in several research papers in world-class conferences in areas like information retrieval and knowledge discovery.  

Simplilearn Survey Shows That 82% of

Simplilearn Survey Shows That 82% of Respondents Find Live Online Learning Programs More Effective Than Physical Classroom Sessions; 40% of Enterprises Plan to Permanently Shift to Online Employee Skilling Programs

• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning skilling programs see highest demand
• L&D budgets remain unchanged for 58% of organisations

Simplilearn, a global provider of digital skills training, today announced its findings from a survey conducted on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on employee training programs and productivity post the implementation of “Work from Home.” Simplilearn surveyed executives and managers in the Learning & Development and Human Resources functions of companies around the globe on issues related to current and future employee training plans. While responses were gathered from various global regions, the majority were gathered from representatives of companies located in India (39%) and the United States (41%).

The COVID-19 global health crisis has disrupted work patterns worldwide, and one of the work areas most affected has been employee learning and development. With businesses implementing online models, there is a rising demand for digital skills training, but at the same time, the work from home scenario has made it impossible to provide in-person skills training. Survey results show that 86% of respondents whose organizations offered physical classroom training have moved to live online learning platforms since the start of the pandemic. In fact, 82% of survey respondents stated that live online learning programs were equally or more effective than physical classroom sessions, with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning skilling programs seeing the highest demand.

Sharing his views on the survey findings, Krishna Kumar, CEO & Founder of Simplilearn, said, “The current global pandemic has posed several new challenges to organisations and businesses across verticals, pushing for the need to embrace digital solutions. Based on our survey results, remote working seems to be the norm for the future, with 52% respondents saying that WFH saw employees being more productive and 77% of respondents predicting that their organizations are considering a permanent shift to work from home. This is a clear indicator that live or blended online learning programs will be the answer to skilling and learning continuity for working professionals. The pandemic and economic slowdown have also brought in the need for organizations and professionals to focus more on building capabilities in niche skills that would become inevitable for business continuity and sustenance.”

Key findings from the survey include:

• 86% of respondents whose organizations offered physical classroom skills training to their employees before the pandemic have moved those training sessions to online platforms
• 82% of respondents whose organizations have moved employee skills training sessions online said the sessions have been equally or more effective than physical classroom sessions
• 40% of respondents said their organizations anticipate making a permanent move to online training, compared to 18% who plan to revert back to physical classrooms (42% said ‘not sure’)
• 76% of respondents said that due to the abrupt switch to digital-first business environments they expect their organizations to grow their employee skills development programs
• Asked about employee skills training budgets before and during the pandemic, 8% of respondents said their budgets had increased, 34% said budgets had decreased, and 58% said they had stayed the same

Other data collected by Simplilearn includes:

• Functional training offered to employees within the organizations who responded includes Digital Operations (66%), Technology/Software (64%), Digital Marketing (53%), and Artificial Intelligence/Data Science (45%)
• Functional training prioritized as a result of the pandemic includes Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (44%), Digital Marketing (42%), Cloud Computing (42%), and Cyber Security (40%)
• 73% of respondents said their employees have been as productive or more productive while working from home compared to before the pandemic
• 77% of respondents said their organizations are now considering permanent expansion of “work from home” flexibility for their employees

The overall survey findings indicate that the pandemic has increased the importance and demand for digital skills training. Furthermore, it has made it imperative for companies to find ways to deliver skills training online with live online classes that exceed the effectiveness of physical classrooms.

Artificial Intelligence in Instrumentation and Control Systems

Artificial Intelligence in Instrumentation and Control Systems: Felicitation of eminent academicians in the field of Instrumentation and Control Engineering (ICE)

The International Conference on Instrumentation and Control Engineering (ICECON-2019) aims at emphasizing the need for channelizing the research efforts from various streams like sensors and actuators, robotics, biomedical instrumentation, process control, artificial intelligence, etc. for bringing technological advancements, addressing and providing solutions to key engineering issues. It provides a wonderful platform which enables various industry personals, researchers, scientists, academicians and professionals to interact and share the knowledge on recent trends in instrumentation and control research.

The conference includes keynote sessions by the professors from world-class universities, research paper presentations and workshops. The workshops are planned for the first day, in the areas of deep learning, cybersecurity and biosignal processing. The eminent academicians Dr PSV Nataraj, Professor, Systems and Control Engineering, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, Dr Deepak Joshi, Assistant Professor, IIT Delhi and industry personals Mr Prashant & Ms. Priya from Global Cybersecurity Lab of Schneider Electric have shared their experience and expertise. After meticulous peer-review process about 60% of the papers in emerging areas in Control and Instrumentation Engineering will be presented in the conference.

The conference was inaugurated on 19th December 2019 in EEE auditorium, NITT by the chief guest Prof. Paluri S.V. Nataraj from IIT Bombay, Dr Umapathy, senior professor and Prof. Uma HOD of Instrumentation and Control Engineering. The function was formally started with the welcome address by Prof. Ramakalyan Ayyagiri followed by lighting of the lamp. The presidential address was given by our esteemed Director Prof.Mini Shaji Thomas. She congratulated the department faculties for initiating the postgraduate course on Industrial Automation from July 2020 academic session. Also, she insisted on the faculties, participants from other institutions and industries to actively interact to bring more national and international research collaborations.

The chief guest has delivered the inaugural address and in his inspiring talk, he has suggested using artificial intelligence in ICE to make autonomous learning, modelling of a physical system and better solutions for the complex non-linear control system. In addition, he has also highlighted the importance of ICE in predictive and prescriptive maintenance of the industrial system. Followed by inaugural address, the chief guest has felicitated eminent academicians in the field of ICE, Dr S. Renganathan ((Former Dean, MIT Chrompet, Chennai, Founder Chairman & director, RRASE College of Engineering, Chennai), Dr P. Kanagasabapathy (Professor Emeritus &
Former Dean, MIT Chrompet, Chennai) and Dr S. Dharmalingam (Former General Manager, Bharath Heavy Electricals, Ltd., Trichy.  The eminent academicians have shared their experience, mentioned the basic need of instrumentation for effective and efficient operation in the industry.   Also, they emphasize the future trending fields in ICE such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Industrial IoT (IIOT), pollution-free transportation, etc., Finally, the conference inauguration ceremony has concluded with the vote of thanks by Prof. N. Sivakumaran.