As diesel prices touched a record high across metro cities on Monday, the Congress said that this is the distorted and horrendous definition of “aache din” and asked the government to stop giving excuse of legacy issue.

“If this is the distorted, horrendous definition of ‘aache din’, then I would like to find out which dictionary defines ‘aache din’ like this,” said Congress Spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi.

“We are talking of diesel for tractors and trucks and also because your distribution of everything is too crucial. But there is silence,” he added.

Singhvi said: “We are getting sermons from the Finance Ministry every day and the only best answer they find is ‘legacy’ issue. After four-and-a-half years, the petrol and diesel prices are touching Rs 77 and Rs 70 respectively.

“You still have to talk of legacy issue. Actually, the legacy was very beneficial to you when you came to power. You were getting oil per barrel at half the price at which we were getting,” he added.

Diesel prices touched a record high across metro cities on Monday, barring Mumbai. Prices of petrol too inched nearer to all-time peak across major cities.

In the national capital, diesel was priced at Rs 69.46 per litre, against the previous high of Rs 69.32 recorded on Sunday, according to data from the Indian Oil Corporation.

(Ians)

When it comes to IT transformation, 17 per cent of organisations in India have achieved the fully Transformed status — a much higher percentage than was observed in other Asian countries researched (4 per cent), a Dell EMC study said on Tuesday.

Respondents at the transformed companies in India were 8.5 times more likely than legacy or emerging firms to say their company almost always makes better and faster data-driven decisions, the findings showed.

A whopping 90 per cent of Indian respondents agreed that failing to embrace IT Transformation will hurt their company’s competitiveness.

“Today, Indian organisations not only realise the importance of transforming their IT infrastructure to ensure they have a competitive edge to reduce costs, but they also now know that it is crucial to turn data into business intelligence,” said Rajesh Janey, MD and President, Enterprise India, Dell EMC.

Transformed firms in India are more likely to execute the majority of application roll-outs ahead of schedule compared to lower-scoring organisations, said the study.

Over 70 per cent of Indian respondents whose organisations have achieved transformed status also report having mature digital transformation projects underway versus only 3 per cent of the Indian legacy/emerging companies surveyed.

“Indian organisations are more virtualised than other Asian organisations – 49 per cent of Indian production servers are virtual machines versus 45 per cent in the rest of Asia.

In addition to modern data centre technologies, Indian organisations are, in general, exceeding the rest of Asia in terms of automation and process evolution.

The “IT Transformation” maturity study surveyed 4,000 IT decision makers worldwide, out of which 400 were from India.

“With our expansive set of infrastructure and software technologies, Dell EMC has become a powerful ally to help any business in its IT Transformation journey to fuel digital innovation,” Janey added.

(Ians)

As the festive season inches closer in India, Vivo is focused on building brand loyalty and offering consumers innovative new “made in India” products across all price segments, a top company official said here on Tuesday.

The Chinese smartphone maker is set to launch another flagship smartphone Vivo V11 Pro on September 6.

“When it comes to the V series, Vivo has done very well. And with V11 Pro, we will take innovation to the next level in Rs 20,000-Rs 30,000 segment,” Nipun Marya, Director, Brand Strategy, Vivo India, told IANS.

“To be successful in the long term, we must have great products. That is the reason why you see so many innovations from Vivo, whether it is the elevating camera in Vivo Nex or the in-display fingerprint scanner in X21,” he added.

According to Counterpoint Research, Vivo’s India market share in terms of shipment went down to 12 per cent in the second quarter of 2018 — from 13 per cent in the same quarter last year — while that of Xiaomi’s went up to 28 per cent from 16 per cent during the same period.

Marya, however, claimed that in terms of value, Vivo is the leader in the 20K to 30K segment and overall No. 2 in the Indian smartphone market for the past 18 months.

“We have more than 50 per cent market share in the 20K to 30K segment,” Marya said, adding that what has worked in its favour is that old Vivo customers have been upgrading to new Vivo phones.

“The Indian smartphone market is increasingly becoming a ‘replacement’ market, meaning an increasing number of customers are now second time or third time smartphone buyers,” Marya said, explaining the reasons behind Vivo India’s focus on building brand loyalty.

“Moreover, the average selling price (ASP) is increasing and consumers are becoming more aware – they know what brand they want to buy and what features are their priority, and accordingly they make their choice,” he added.

According to him, the brand awareness of Vivo, which bagged the title sponsorship for five consecutive sessions of Indian Premier League (IPL) starting this year with a whopping Rs 2,199 crore bid, is 100 per cent.

“When we entered India four years ago, our initial strategy was to build awareness for the brand and that is what we did. Now we are focusing on building consideration and preference for the brand,” Marya said.

“Today everybody knows about us. But the brand awareness has to be backed by great products, great after-sales services and a good retailer network as brand awareness alone can help a company survive for a maximum period of about two years,” the company executive noted.

Vivo has long term plans in India and all its investments in the country – be it in marketing or manufacturing – offer testimony to that.

“India is a very important market for us and all the investments we have made here are from a long term point of view. We have so far invested Rs 300 crore in the Greater Noida factory which has a capacity to assemble 2 million units per month and an SMT (surface-mount technology) capacity of 1.8 million per month,” Marya said, adding that all Vivo phones sold in India are now “made in India”.

“We are now looking at expanding our manufacturing capacity in the country to meet the increasing demand of our products,” he said without divulging further details.

There are currently more than 70,000 retailers in India where Vivo phones are available and the company has more than 200 exclusive stores and two experience centres.

The company has service centres in almost all parts of the country except in Manipur, Lakshadweep and Daman and Diu, Marya pointed out.

“When we entered into India, we were very clear that we wanted to build a very strong foundation here. And four years after entering the Indian market, we stay totally committed to the country,” he said.

(Ians)