New tech on the block: IT, SaaS, travel, logistics

The Tech Panda takes a look at recent business launches.

SaaS: A dedicated solution for D2C brands

SuperBot an intelligent, AI-powered voice agent and a SaaS-based product by PinnacleWorks has announced a variant specifically to cater to the requirements of D2C brands.

“D2C sector in India is enjoying the healthy base of 700 million internet users and online shopper base of 140 million, which is growing exponentially. With a userbase this huge, it certainly becomes challenging for the brands to serve the customer directly online and maintain the user experience all the time. Understanding the prevailing gap, we decided to offer a unique solution which would be in sync with the sector requirements,” said Sarvagya Mishra, Co-founder and Director of SuperBot (PinnacleWorks).

The Why

With the D2C startup space growing exponentially, there is a dire need for finer customer support. In light of the same, the brand has announced the launch of SuperBot’s dedicated version which is capable of taking the overall support experience provided by the businesses a notch up.

Features

• Capable of placing 1M+ calls a day, and 10,000+ concurrent calls at a time
• Helps D2C brands increase cart abandonment recovery rate by a whopping 23%
• Easy DIY platform
• User can access the platform and simply select the use case, language, and industry and have the product ready for integration with their existing systems
• Added support by setting up a 24×7 Helpline at zero training and infrastructure agent, conducting mass-level feedback and survey campaigns, executing feedback and survey campaigns

Travel: Contactless passenger verification at airports based on face biometrics

DigiYatra App’s beta version successfully launched at BLR Airport

As India celebrated its 75th Independence Day, the beta version of DigiYatra App was successfully rolled out at the Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru (BLR Airport).

Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL) has been pioneering the DigiYatra effort from its early concept days and pilot trials have been held since January 2017 at BLR Airport. DigiYatra – the contactless, seamless processing of passengers at airports, based on the use of single token face biometrics for verification of passengers is a significant project led by the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Government of India.

At BLR Airport, the DigiYatra Biometric boarding system at e-gates is operational and being rolled out at full scale for all domestic airlines in a phased manner, covering checkpoints for domestic travel.

“It is our constant endeavour at BIAL to offer innovative ways to simplify the passenger journey and make it as seamless as possible. The Digi Yatra Central Ecosystem implementation is one more step towards achieving this. We are glad to be part of the first phase rollout and value the trust reposed in us by the Ministry of Civil Aviation, DGCA, and the Government of India. As the new gateway to India, BLR Airport is keen to be at the forefront of change and innovation,” said Hari Marar, MD & CEO at Bangalore International Airport Ltd. (BIAL).

The Why

The DYCE is being built on the standards defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which include Self Sovereign Identity (SSI) with Verifiable Credentials (VCs), Decentralised Identifiers (DIDs) with a trust layer of a Distributed Ledger and ensuring adoption of Privacy by Design and Privacy by Default as the fundamental tenets. This ensures privacy issues are taken care of and passengers will not have to worry about sharing their data as it is secure and will be deleted after 24 hours following their travel.

Features

• Seamless check-in, security, and boarding
• Vistara Airlines and AirAsia are currently integrated with DigiYatra.
• Passengers can enroll on the DigiYatra app from comfort of their homes.
• The app is currently available on Google Playstore for Android users, and an iOS version will be made available in one month.

Logistics: App to improve efficiency across stakeholder network

Keeping the entire supply chain and stakeholders’ benefit in mind, Indian logistics company Quickshift has launched its in-house application QS Leap. The app covers critical points such as inventory management, order processing, courier allocation, order tracking, payments reconciliation and more.

QS Leap has been built with the intention of increasing customer stickiness through constant value creation, helping the brands reduce their Cost of Customer Acquisition, assisting their business metrics with relevant data, and forecasting business growth through each product line performance.

“QS-Leap is a one-point solution that makes the entire logistics operation seamless and hassle-free. From receiving orders placed by customers, getting prompted at warehouse, arrangement of packaging and dispatching operations to assigning nearest rider for order delivery, receiving payment and feedback, the application manages it all in real-time. For us as a brand, technology and innovation form the core of our entire operations and growth plans for sustained customer satisfaction. We believe innovative solutions like QS Leap will not just help us stay ahead but will also enable us address key areas such as stakeholder benefit, rider empowerment and preparations for market disruptions,” said Anshul Goenka, Founder, Quickshift.

The Why

With the ecommerce ecosystem growing at a rapid pace in the country, technological advancements and innovative digital solutions such as QS Leap are helping the company in on-boarding ecommerce brands as well as traditional brands who are launching their products online.

Features

• Captures timely and healthy feedback from rider experience
• Generated data helps in timely payment of remuneration and incentives based on attendance, good work, or even following traffic guidelines.
• Generates valuable insights to garner consumer feedback on products returned or replaced
• Navigates through the entire order management journey with key USPs being order visibility, order processing, real-time tracking

IT: Major changes in Business Intelligence (BI) product

Helical IT Solutions is making major changes in its game-changing Business Intelligence (BI) product Helical Insight’s version 5.0. So far, the new version has already been downloaded by more than 2,00,000 individuals who are looking for the more efficient value for money BI product for their data analysis requirement.

With version 5.0, Helical IT Solutions expects to bring a paradigm shift in how people see open source BI products compared to proprietary BI products.

“We have been working on this specific version for nearly 1.5 years. We are now releasing the snapshot version without the canned reporting and community reporting module. These modules will be added later in the first General Availability (GA) release alongside other additional capabilities,” said Nitin Sahu, cofounder of Helical IT.

The Why

For the unversed, BI refers to the application of technology, strategies, and practices that make way for collecting, analysing, incorporating, and displaying business information that allows a company to have better decision-making in the business.

As per a report by Fortune Business Insights, the global BI market is projected to grow from $24.05 billion in 2021 to $43.03 billion in 2028 at a CAGR of 8.7% in 2021-2028 period.

According to a report by 360Suite, the global BI adoption rate stands at 26%. A 2019 report by Grand View Research claims that 46% of small businesses use business intelligence features as an integral part of their business strategy.

All the modules have undergone user experience improvements based on the user feedback they have been receiving.

Features

• Rebuilt as SPA (Single Page Application) with the latest upgraded React Framework and Ant design UI libraries
• Everything will be saved in a database unlike earlier.
• The new version can increase the productivity of the company and time required for BI resources in building required analysis by more than 80%.
• Features addition in machine learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) collectively called “Instant BI”, which will allow any non-tech user to ask questions from data and get required analysis.
• A new reporting interface has been introduced, which allows a single click option for implementing drill down and drill through, separate rows and columns section, filters with advanced options for controlling and configuring display and value.
• The new dashboard designer module in version 5.0 allows for the creation of dashboards very quickly. It allows the single-click option of adding filters. All panels can listen to the filter without any additional effort. Additional options like pin, exporting, maximizing, editing, etc. are all user-friendly.
• The File Browser of Helical Insight has undergone a major change in UI design and has been made more user-friendly. A few new databases support have been added, like Databricks, Athena, etc., and more and more data sources are in the pipeline according to the company.
• UI of metadata has been upgraded to match the current design, i.e., using the latest version of React as well as AntDesign.
• UX has been improved as well as known bugs have been fixed.