Velocity MR a leading market research and analysis company announced the results of their pan India study to understand health and fitness trends among Indians. The study covering a sample size of 3000 and was conducted across Delhi, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai.

The study found that over 80% of people have started to track their fitness regime through various modes. People are using Fitbit, Myyogaonline, Smart Watches, Mobile Applications and other Fitness Bands to track their fitness regime. Apart from hygiene factors like accuracy and user-friendliness, people are also enjoying the apps/tools features in allowing users to compare, sync and share their data with others. People like the recommendations that the apps make concerning work out schedules and even diet to be followed. Networking with other like-minded fitness enthusiasts through these apps is another hot favourite.

Adds Jasal Shah Managing Director & CEO of Velocity MR, “The fitness industry in India is largely an unorganized and fragmented. However, the fitness space is evolving at a rapid pace mirrored by the fact that while ten years ago if at a popular running event you found a 1000 people, today you will find 14,000-15,000 people enthusiastically participating in such events now. Extrapolate this with the GDP growth and rising affluence, and you can conclude why the fitness sector is growing at a fast pace.”

Adds Consultant Vivek Mahadevan who is also a fitness enthusiast, “Awareness around the overarching importance of fitness in people’s lives has gathered steam in the last decade. This can be attributed to factors such as advances in consumer technology like apps, access to information at one’s fingertips through the internet and increase in average household incomes. We can today observe that, like there is heightened awareness levels among patients about various illnesses so is it about the importance of fitness and maintaining a healthy lifestyle today in India.”

Other Highlights:

Need for Fitness

Over 97% people believe that it is necessary to maintain fitness and the common objectives for fitness are to have a healthy heart, sleep better and be happy.

Frequency of Doing Exercise

It is observed that increase in age is directly proportional to the frequency of exercising. Among the people with monthly household income >=INR 45K, ~85% do exercise at least three times in a week which is only ~70% for those with monthly household income <INR 45K. Interestingly 90% people in Delhi do exercise at least thrice in a week, out of which 80% people exercise Daily. Delhi has the least people (0%) who don’t have a fixed routine, which is significantly lesser than Kolkata (14%), Hyderabad (9%) and Mumbai (6%).

Exercises Done for Maintaining Fitness

It was observed that males follow different methods as opposed to females for maintaining their fitness. It was fund largely that males tend to do Cycling, Training in Gym and Martial Arts while Females engage in Skipping Rope, Dancing and Aerobics.

The younger age groups perform Yoga the least, as compared to the elder age groups but they instead engage in running, cycling and sports activities more than the elder age groups. People with higher monthly household income and SEC follow more diverse methods for maintaining fitness.

Whom Do People Consult for Fitness Guidance?

People with a higher Monthly Household Income (MHI) (>=INR 45K) consult online virtual market Places like Fitness Apps significantly more than the people with less MHI. People with MHI >= INR 75K consult a Personal Trainer significantly more than people with lesser MHI.

Pain Points of Users

On monitoring the pain points faced by people or what was stopping them from regular exercise, it was found that they were majorly related to the availability of time. 3 out of 10 people don’t have a membership in a fitness centre because it was expensive.

It was found that DailyBurn and MapMyRun have significantly higher awareness among Females. People with higher MHI have a higher awareness of different fitness tools, and they use Fitbit, DailyBurn, Apple/Samsung Proprietary Apps and Nike Training Club. While people with lower MHI use Mobile Applications.

It is interesting to note that even though internet apps are borderless, there are city wise preferences for such apps like physical brands/products. People in Delhi use MyYogaOnline the most while people in Mumbai use DailyBurn the most.

Benefits Received from Fitness Gadgets

Females have been able to achieve their exercise goals more as compared to Males.

While people of elder age group have been able to decrease their weight.

Summary

• 80% use mobile apps and gadgets to monitor their health and fitness
• Most people believe that it is necessary to maintain fitness.
• The motivation for maintaining fitness is not about the style/trend, but people want to be healthy, energetic and want to take care of their body.
• It is seen that 7 out of 10 people who exercise are doing it daily, it is also observed that frequency of doing exercise is higher in elder people as compared to the younger ones.
• Traditional exercises like Walking, Jogging and Yoga are done more than the Fitness activities like Zumba, Power walking etc.; the reason could be a shortage of time as well as money because of which ~50% people do not have a membership at a fitness centre.
• Maximum people exercise either at home or near-by gardens.
• For taking any fitness related decisions, people consult fitness trainers and friends/family members the most; while there are also >30% people who have faith in the virtual mode of consulting, and hence they consult either Google or Fitness Apps the most.

About Velocity

Velocity is a tech-savvy insights provider with a Global Presence, providing Proprietary Panels, Real web-based CATI, a Strong Field Force, Responsive Client Servicing capabilities and is armed with Unparalleled Research Capabilities. Velocity is today one of the youngest and highly tech-oriented Research Company globally. In a world where unstructured data is flowing in all directions, understanding distinctive consumer behaviour towards brands is getting tougher and tougher. The company supported by Cross Marketing Inc. Tokyo has some of the finest brains in the industry along with the best available technology platforms to deliver world-class research solutions to clients. The integration of technology coupled with high-quality data imparts speed, hence providing a ‘Quick turnaround time’ in collating, analyzing and interpreting research data.

www.velocitymr.com

The post 80% people use fitness apps to track exercise – Velocity MR study appeared first on Core Sector Communique.

Modern scale connects with free smartphone app to provide customized, in-depth personal fitness information

NEW YORK – Feb. 10, 2017 – Pyle USA®, introduces the Bluetooth Fitness Scale (PHLSCBT4), an innovative scale and integrated app designed to provide the most critical data points for any workout regimen including body fat, hydration levels, muscle level and bone level percentages. The scale allows users to set fitness goals and monitor your progress in a safe and effective way.

The stylish, modernly designed scale features a tempered glass surface to effectively distribute weight evenly across the scale. The Bluetooth Fitness Scale provides high-quality, accurate results in customizable measurements (pounds, kilograms, or stones). The scale can store data for 10 different individuals, while the large LCD display shows critical data information and the current user profile selected.

Utilizing Bluetooth Smart technology, the scale wirelessly sends data to your mobile device and combines with the free Pyle Health Fitness Tracker app to create user profiles and chart progress. Workout data can be shared online via Facebook and Twitter or kept password-protected for private tracking.

The Bluetooth Fitness Scale from Pyle Audio is available in black, grey, green, pink or orange for $58.99 at www.PyleUSA.com.

About Pyle USA
With more than 40 years experience in the manufacturing of high-quality audio products, Pyle has established itself as a premier source for car audio, home audio and professional audio and musical instruments. Product lines include Pyle Pro, Pyle Car and Pyle Home. The company has recently expanded into outdoor recreational gear with its Pyle Sports line. For more information, please visit www.PyleUSA.com.

The post Pyle’s Bluetooth Fitness Scale & App Makes it Easy to Track Workout Progress and Accomplish Personal Fitness Goals appeared first on Core Sector Communique.

~Skybox Security’s attack surface history and trend data show progress toward security initiatives and compliance requirement~

New Delhi, India, November 24, 2016 – Skybox® Security, a global leader in cybersecurity analytics, has announced new product features available in the Skybox® Security Suite that give security teams the ability to easily track, measure and report on progress made in reducing and managing the attack surface (all the ways in which an organization’s IT systems are vulnerable to threats). The company also announced new capabilities for the Suite that enable security operations to automatically manage and track firewall change requests end to end, including: intelligent, proactive risk assessment of proposed changes; automated provisioning of changes; and validation that changes are implemented as intended.

Skybox® Horizon, the company’s award-winning attack surface visualization solution for the Skybox Security Suite, features new capabilities that give security leaders insight to how their organization’s security posture is improving or diminishing over time. Users can focus on specific sites within their attack surface (geographic locations, business units, etc.) and compare current risk levels with levels in the past. Full trend graphs are also available to show progress on mitigating indicators of exposure (IOEs) over time, including new, exposed or concentrations of vulnerabilities, unsecure device configurations and risky access rules.

“With its visual representations, Horizon has the unprecedented capability of showing at a glance what impact security efforts are having on an organization’s security state,” said VP of Products Ravid Circus. “Whether you’re tracking against strategic security goals or needing to meet strict compliance regulations, IOE history and trend data is a way to bring diverse, complicated metrics into a quickly digestible format.”

Circus predicts this feature will be particularly helpful to organizations preparing for new and upcoming regulations, such as the E.U. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which goes into effect May 2018.

In addition to enhancements for Horizon, Skybox has bolstered the workflow of Skybox® Change Manager with automatic change implementation. After Change Manager runs a context-aware risk assessment of a proposed change, security operations can approve the request and automatically push the change to the staged policy. Change Manager also verifies that all changes are implemented in line with the initial request and provides a full audit trail.

“Most change management processes are complex, manual and error prone,” said Circus, “but with the Skybox workflow, those processes are streamlined. Changes are quickly assessed to see if they create network security gaps, expose vulnerabilities or violate security policies. Users, therefore, can be sure the automated provisioning won’t compound or create new security problems. This gives our customers more than an 80-percent reduction in time savings, freeing up their teams to focus on strategic tasks.”

Currently, Skybox offers automated change implementation for Check Point firewalls. The feature will be available for further firewall and security device vendors in the coming months.

About Skybox Security
www.skyboxsecurity.com

Skybox arms security leaders with a powerful set of integrated security solutions that give unprecedented visibility of the attack surface and key indicators of exposure (IOEs). By extracting actionable intelligence from data using modeling, simulation and analytics, Skybox provides the insight needed for security leaders to quickly address threat exposures and compliance issues across their hybrid environment. Our award-winning solutions for vulnerability and threat management and security policy management increase operational efficiency by as much as 90 percent, and are used by the world’s most security-conscious enterprises and government agencies, including Forbes Global 2000 companies.

The post CISOs Can Easily Track, Measure and Report on Improvements in Cybersecurity Risk-Reduction With Interactive, Visual Dashboards appeared first on Core Sector Communique.

• Industry meets export revenue  target –growing by 12.3% in constant currency to reach $108 bn, while domestic grew by 10% to reach ₹1410 bn in FY2016
• Industry expected to sustain growth projection of 10-12% in FY 2017

04^th February 2016, New Delhi: The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) today revealed various trends that enabled the Indian IT-BPM industry to clock double-digit growth of 12.3 percent (constant currency terms) in exports and 10 percent in domestic revenues for FY2016. In a press meet addressed by Mr. BVR Mohan Reddy, Chairman, NASSCOM, Mr. C P Gurnani, Vice-Chairman, NASSCOM and Mr. R Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM, confluence of digital technologies (cloud, mobility, IOT, social, big data), changing business models, rapidly growing innovative start-up ecosystem, government’s vision of driving digitization, India’s consumer economy were identified as major trends that are spearheading this growth.

Amidst a growth of 0.4 per cent in the global IT-BPM in 2015, the industry is expected to reach an estimated USD 143 billion in FY2016, doubling its revenue over the last six years and crossing the USD 100 billion milestone in export revenues. In addition, E-commerce contributed USD 17 billion revenue boosting digital consumption. India continues to gain market share in the global sourcing sector and emerges as the largest, most diversified and scalable destination.

 Mr. BVR Mohan Reddy, Chairman, NASSCOM, said, “Amidst a volatile global economic environment, the industry has been able to set new benchmarks by growing from strength-to-strength and sustaining its double-digit growth. Our industry is going bimodal in today’s diverse landscape, gaining share in both traditional and digital markets and fuelling growth of the industry. Start-ups, ecommerce are the new champions of the industry and I expect these segments to increase their contribution to industry growth in the years to come.”

WAY FORWARD FY2017

With increase in technology spending estimated by global technology analysts, Industry expects the double digit growth story to continue in FY2017. The IT-BPM industry export revenue is expected to grow by 10-12 per cent in FY2017 reaching revenues of USD 119-121 billion. The domestic revenue is expected to grow by 11-13 per cent and achieve revenue of INR 1560-1590 billion in FY2017. The industry is expected to add a net employment around 2 lakh.

With this, the industry is marching steadily on the path to reach USD 350 billion by 2025, with digital revenues spearheading growth.

REVIEW FY2016

• IT-BPM export revenues grew by 12.3 per cent (in constant currency) and 10.3% (in reported currency) reaching a total estimated revenue of USD 108 bn with digital solutions business demonstrating 1.5X growth.
• IT-BPM domestic revenues grew at 10% reaching a total of INR 1410 billion driven by increased adoption of digital technology by consumers, ecommerce and start-ups coupled with a technology focused Government growth agenda. The E-Commerce segment also added estimated revenues of INR 1084 billion in FY2016E.
• Industry is hiring at a steady level with greater demand for specialized skill sets. The Indian IT-BPM industry employee base has reached a total of 3.7 million with an addition of 2 lakh employees in FY2016. The Indian IT industry strengthened itself as a global talent powerhouse showcasing diversity, and leadership in digital skills. The industry is now looking for talent from ‘Qualification’ to ‘skill based’ with greater focus on hiring ‘knowledge and expertise’ based talent.

INDIA – STARTUP HUB AND DIGITAL SOLUTIONS PARTNER TO THE WORLD

The industry is continuously building and strengthening its digital solutions capabilities. Digital contributed approximately 13 per cent for the leading technology companies. Further, the industry employed over 250,000 digitally skilled employees. Digital M&A deals also witnessed a spike in volume and value crossing USD 2 billion in FY2016 growing 3 times over last year. Increased emphasis on design, creativity, agility and customer experience will lead India to strengthening its position further and presenting itself as the ideal digital solutions partner to the world.

India’s start-up landscape is now a global success story with young start-ups and unicorns making a difference in high impact areas. With over 4200+ start-ups, India is now the third largest start-up base with over 1200+ start-ups being created every year aided by 4.9 mn worth of funding, over 150 active VC/PEs and over 110 incubators and accelerators.

Mr. C P Gurnani, Vice-Chairman, NASSCOM, added, “Digital is reshaping the technology sector and the industry focus is to understand the full potential of digital technologies and help customers make the best of it. Rise of India’s digital quotient is our key priority for the next few years”.

Mr. R Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM, added, that “The need of the hour is for industry to fundamentally transform its business models, solution offerings, organization structure and capabilities to strengthen its market leadership position. Further, going forward, revenue growth alone may not be an adequate indicator of the growing capability and capacity of India’s technology industry and factors such as investment, valuations, digital solutions portfolio, impact etc. would also need to be considered in assessing the industry performance and contribution to the economy.”

About NASSCOM

NASSCOM® is the premier trade body and the chamber of commerce of the IT-BPM industries in India. NASSCOM is a global trade body with more than 1800 members, which include both Indian and multinational companies that have a presence in India. NASSCOM’s member and associate member companies are broadly in the business of software development, software services, software products, consulting services, BPO services, e-commerce & web services, engineering services off-shoring and animation and gaming. NASSCOM’s membership base constitutes over 95% of the industry revenues in India and employs over 3.1 million professionals.

The post INDIAN IT-BPM INDUSTRY MAINTAINS DOUBLE-DIGIT GROWTH; ON TRACK TO REACH USD 350 BILLION BY 2025 appeared first on Core Sector Communique.

A meeting was chaired by Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, earlier this month, to discuss an institutional mechanism to track stalled investment projects, both in the public and private sectors and to remove the implementation bottlenecks in these projects on a fast-track basis.

The Prime Minister directed that a special cell be created immediately in the Cabinet Secretariat. This Cell would be in the nature of a Project Monitoring Group for all large projects, both public and private and would pro-actively pursue them so that these investment projects are commissioned on time. Suitable officers may be identified at the earliest and priority projects may be quickly identified to be taken for tracking. The Administrative Ministries, in consultation with the Finance Ministry, and the Finance Ministry on its own also were tasked with the identification of such priority projects. The Cabinet Secretariat was directed to hold a meeting with Chief Secretaries of States to have State Governments on board with this new mechanism.

Initiating the discussion, Shri P.Chidambaram, Finance Minister, stated that his Ministry has compiled a list of about 215 such projects, where the banks have already funded more than Rs. 7 lakh crore. The time and cost overruns being faced by these projects has also been documented, as well as the action required to remove the implementation bottlenecks. While some of bottlenecks being faced are in the domain of regulatory authorities at the Central level, a large number of impediments are those that lie in the domain of State Governments, and local bodies. He therefore flagged the need for having an institutional mechanism which has sufficient authority, to coordinate with the concerned authorities and get these projects moving on the ground.

Shri Anand Sharma, Commerce Minister, stated that his Ministry has done a compilation of projects in the manufacturing sector, which are stalled due to various inter-agency bottlenecks. He also emphasized the need to sensitize the State Governments in order to elicit their cooperation.

Shri Sriprakash Jaiswal, Minister for Coal, and Shri C.P Joshi, Minister of Road Transport and Highways welcomed the proposal to have such a coordination mechanism for investment projects.

Shri Jyotiraditya Scindia, Minister of Power agreed with the need to have a project management group at the apex level which would champion investment projects, both in the public and private sectors.

Smt. Jayanthi Natarajan, Minister of Environment & Forests, stated that her Ministry has an on-line portal where the status of all projects which have been submitted for clearances with the Ministry, could be tracked. She further stated that pendency of projects for various Environment and Forest clearances has now been significantly reduced, and the process to accord such clearances has been further streamlined.

Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, was of the opinion that this proposed institutional mechanism should be put in place at the earliest, and 20 -30 major projects chosen across the sectors on priority, for speedy resolution. This will work as a confidence booster to investment sentiment and signal the government`s seriousness on the issue, he said.

Principal Secretary to Prime Minister apprised that a list of projects of the public sector from various Ministries such as Coal, Power, and Shipping has already been compiled. FICCI has also submitted a list of 52 projects in the private sector, with an investment greater than Rs.1000 crore, which are delayed due to various bottlenecks. He was of the opinion that the monitoring mechanism may be anchored in the Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure, with a supportive cell, suitably empowered, which brings these projects to the CCI, and also follow up on the decisions of the CCI.

The Cabinet Secretary stated that the Ministries dealing with such stalled projects will need to monitor the projects closely and instructions have already been issued in this regard on 16.1.2013. He apprised that the Cabinet Secretariat has prepared an `Online CCI Projects Tracking System` portal for tracking projects of over Rs.1000 crore. The Cabinet Secretary presented snap shots of the tracking system available on the Cabinet Secretariat Website. Secretary, DEA invited attention to the fact that very often, stalled projects are in the private sector or in sectors not in the infrastructure domain, e.g., in the cement industry.

The post Prime Minister sets up a Project Monitoring Group to Track Large Investment Projects appeared first on Core Sector Communique.