The Weekly Dispatch

Persistent Systems has appointed new executives to its top leadership

As it aims to scale up its digital business operations after doubling its revenue to cross $1 billion revenue in March 2023. The firm has hired former Wells Fargo executive Sumit Arora as SVP to help the firm set up & drive the Consulting practice. Ayon Banerjee from BCG has joined as Chief Strategy & Growth Officer and Former Tech Mahindra executive Dhanashree Bhat was inducted as COO to lead IT, Administration & Facilities, L&D, Enterprise risk management, ESG and Delivery divisions.

Infosys has decided to tweak its IOE (internet of everything) organizational structure for its delivery and consulting functions

As it focuses to adopt generative AI in its offerings, according to media sources. The new IoE organisation structure will be headed by AVP & global delivery head – IOT (Internet of Things) Vikas Gupta, along with AVP and Senior Principal Technology Architect, Krishnananda Shenoy.

Capgemini named Nivedita (Nive) Bhagat as group CFO

And member of the group executive board, effective January 1, 2024. Bhagat who is of Indian origin succeeds Carole Ferrand -- who was CFO since 2018 and plans to pursue other career opportunities. Ferrand will support the transition to Bhagat until the end of the year.? Since 2019, Nive has been CEO of Capgemini’s Cloud and Infrastructure Services, a global business unit comprising over 30,000 team members.?

C1, formerly known as ConvergeOne, has opened a Global Innovation Capability Centre (GICC)

In Hyderabad. C1, a multi-billion-dollar MNC headquartered in the US, provides solutions across customer experience and collaboration, enterprise networking and data centre, and security capabilities. C1 India employees represent about 20% of the company’s global workforce, representing its largest operation in terms of number of employees.?

Booking Holdings, an online travel services provider, plans to invest $250 million and hire 1,000 employees over the next 5 years

For its India operations, said Randhir Bindra, Lead-Centre of Excellence and General Manager for Booking Holdings India. The company will be launching a centre of excellence in Bengaluru, the first in the country and second globally. Currently, its tech centre in Bengaluru has 320 employees.?

Companies that champion hybrid and flexible work options are increasingly focusing on employee engagement initiatives,

Amid growing encouragement for workers to return to office, to reduce the disconnect and boost productivity. Company executives ET spoke with said the "disconnect" is not only impacting collaboration and productivity, but also leading to lack of bonding. The employee engagement initiatives are seen benefiting all, especially the younger workers who had taken up their first job around the time people were asked to work remotely due to the pandemic, they said.

The 26th edition of the Bengaluru Tech Summit (BTS) kicked off

Drawing leaders, startups, investors, and research labs from over 30 countries to participate in this global event. Various start-ups launched 35 ground-breaking products & solutions at Karnataka's annual tech exposition. These new products and solutions were targeted at sectors such as IT/ITeS, Agri-Tech, Med-Tech, Healthcare, Clean-Tech, AI, Deep Tech, Blockchain, IoT, Cybersecurity, Environment Tech, AVGC and ESDM, according to the IT ministry.

Broadcom will lay off about 1,300 VMware employees

In California following its acquisition of the cloud-computing firm, according to Bloomberg. It closed its $69 billion acquisition of VMware on November 22 after receiving regulatory approval from China. However, the transaction faced tough regulatory scrutiny across the world and the companies had delayed the closing date three times.

Microsoft's plan to pump 2.5 billion pounds ($3.2 billion) into Britain over the next three years,

Its single largest investment in the country to date, will underpin future growth in artificial intelligence (AI), the UK government said. The funding, first announced at a summit hosted by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday, will more than double Microsoft's data centre footprint in Britain, providing the infrastructure crucial for new AI models to work.

YouTube is making a foray into gaming, catering specifically to its premium subscribers.

This new feature, named “Playables,” grants YouTube Premium users access to a collection of 37 online mini-games playable directly on the mobile and desktop apps. Originally introduced as an experimental feature in September, YouTube recently notified its Premium subscribers about Playables, encouraging them to explore the 37 diverse games that are currently available.

The IT industry is expected to grow to $350 billion by 2030, from $200 billion at present,

Infosys Co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan said. Technology changes continuously and it was only in November last year that ChatGPT, GPT4 and Generative AI were introduced and became the fastest growing technologies in the world. He said he is very confident about the industry despite the global economy experiencing a slowdown. These are cycles and in the medium to long term he is confident of the industry reaching the $350 billion mark.

Surpassing the analysts' expectations, India's GDP witnessed a growth of 7.6% on an annual basis in the 2nd quarter (July-September)

As against a 4-year high of 7.8% in the previous quarter, as per the data released by the National Statistical Office (NSO) and India remaining the fastest-growing major economy in the world. The RBI rate-setting panel at its October meeting had pegged the growth estimate at 6.5%.?

India is seeing substantial 5G network deployments following the launch of services in October 2022 and subscriptions are expected to reach 130 million in 2023, going up to 860 million by 2029.

According to Ericsson in its latest Mobility Report, 5G subscriptions are estimated to account for 68% of mobile subscriptions in the region by the end of 2029. Smartphone subscriptions in India as a % of total mobile subscriptions are expected to grow from 82% in 2023 to 93% in 2029, the report added.

The Web3 sector, the new generation of internet based on decentralised blockchain technology, has the potential to create an employment base of about 2 million high-paying direct jobs

In India within the next decade. India is home to more than 900 enterprises in the Web3 sector, making significant strides by accounting for 11% of the global Web3 developer community in 2022, securing its position as the 3rd-largest talent pool of developers on a global scale, as per a report by Primus Partners.

Meta (formerly Facebook) has said that it recently took down a network of thousands of fake and misleading accounts based in China.

The users pretended to be Americans and attempted to promote divisive content about the US politics and the US-China ties. Abortion, culture war issues, and help to Ukraine were among the topics covered by the network, reports BBC. According to the company, China is now the 3rd-largest geographical source of such networks, trailing only Russia and Iran.