TCS iON, a unit of IT major Tata Consultancy Services, on July 10 said it has partnered with All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) to provide students with a digital learning course to equip them with career skills.

TCS iON has curated a free, 20 hour-career skills course that will cover topics like corporate etiquette, effective e-mail writing, impactful presentations and IT awareness that will be available to students throughout the duration of their degree course.

The course, which will be available for students of more than 10,000 AICTE approved institutions, can be accessed on TCS iON Digital Learning Hub through any device.

"We are one of the largest recruiters of engineering graduates in the country. We have noticed that there is a gap in students' competencies in terms of career skills. While students may have strong academic performance, the lack of basic soft skills such as effective communication and interpersonal skills may result in these students missing out on job opportunities," TCS iON global head Venguswamy Ramaswamy told an Indian news agency.

Through the partnership, TCS, together with educational institutions, intends to help students develop better career skills, he added.

Ramaswamy said the company had last year selected 63,000 students from over 280,000 applicants through its National Qualifier Test, but could extend offer letters to only about 30,000. Many of those not selected lacked these career skills.

"With this programme, we want to enhance the quality of talent pool. It is not only for us but will help the industry at large," he added.

Infosys, India's second largest IT services firm on July 12 said it will recruit 18,000 people from campuses this fiscal.

Infosys, which has over 229,000 employees, is also battling high attrition, although the company asserted that this has not impacted its deliverable.

"Overall for this quarter, we have recruited close to 8,000 people, of which fresher’s are about 2,500... For the year, we are looking at about 18,000 people or so from the universities," said Infosys chief operating officer (COO) U.B. Pravin Rao.

Infosys added 906 people (net) during the June 2019 quarter. The attrition (annualised consolidated) was at 23.4 pc up, compared to 20.4 pc for the quarter ended March 2019.

The company said there was no impact of attrition on its deliverables and that historically, the first quarter of the fiscal has a higher level of attrition. Infosys has initiated a number of measures for employee engagement, investment in career opportunities and enrichment of experience for employees. “We have launched a new employee value proposition. We believe that attrition will come back to manageable levels,” said Rao.

Rackspace, an American managed cloud computing company has announced a strategic partnership with Tech Mahindra Ltd., a leading provider of digital transformation, consulting and business reengineering services and solutions, which will enable cross-selling to the Tech Mahindra customer base, joint product and services offerings, and improvements to Rackspace’s internal business applications and processes.

With this partnership, Rackspace will execute a new go-to-market commercial model and benefit from improvements and efficiencies to the management of business applications and processes.

“Our partnership with Tech Mahindra is a powerful combination. Their understanding of innovative and customer-centric IT experiences is uniquely complimentary to how Rackspace provides a Fanatical Experience,” said Subroto Mukerji, chief operating officer at Rackspace. “We believe that this will help generate industry leading technology services and platforms. With 121,000+ associates, working across 90 countries and helping 938 global customers, including Fortune 500 companies, this partnership will allow us to drive far more business impact for our customers,” he added.

Rackspace’s partnership with Tech Mahindra will provide improvements and efficiencies for running multiple Rackspace business applications and processes. Rackspace will continue to own their application strategy and roadmap, while Tech Mahindra will bring world-class expertise and best practices to deliver against this.

Wipro has appointed company veteran Rohit Adlakha as its new chief information officer (CIO), replacing Raja Ukil, who was CIO for nearly five years at the company.

Adlakha will continue to head Wipro’s artificial intelligence platform HOLMES. Ukil has been appointed the global head of cyber security and risk services. Both executives will report to Wipro COO Bhanumurthy BM. “Adlakha has the mandate to run digital transformation internally and use the AI platform ac across different operations and service delivery for Wipro," a person familiar with the leadership change at the company told an Indian media. A Wipro spokesperson confirmed the changes in leadership made last month.

"With this change (Adlakha as CIO), we will leverage the synergies of the IT function and Wipro HOLMES to further strengthen our capabilities," the spokesperson said.

IT services companies have been increasingly using digital technologies and seeing deals that require technologies such as cloud computing, AI and machine learning. In that context, the CIO's role becomes crucial for sales growth.

India's second largest IT services company Infosys said it will make an additional investment of USD 6 million in data preparation software company Trifacta Inc.

"The board at the meeting held over July 11-12 approved a follow-on investment of USD 6 million in Trifacta Inc," Infosys said in a regulatory filing.

The additional investment, subject to necessary closing conditions, will take the Bengaluru-based company's total investment in Trifacta to USD 10 million till date, it added.

Infosys, which had invested USD 4 million in Trifacta in 2016, has a minority holding not exceeding 20 pc of the outstanding share capital of the San Francisco-based company.

The cash transaction is expected to be completed in the second quarter of financial year 2019-20. Founded in 2012, Trifacta provides data wrangling software that enables non-technical users to easily transform data for analysis.

Google Maps has launched three new, more personalised features for Indian users that will enable them to get better recommendations for dining experiences, and other attractions in and near the location they are in.

The Google Maps app will have an “Explore” tab, “For You” feature, and “Offers”. While the Explore tab has existed for some time, the idea is to provide more personalised suggestions based on search history.

“We’ve heard that Indian Maps users prefer a more assertive and visual browsing experience that is easy to access. To reflect this, we have a redesigned, India-focused Explore tab, the For You feature, and dining offers. This will help Google Maps users discover a new side to their city, whether looking for things to do around town, getting offers on dining out, or getting recommendations that are personalised to their unique tastes,” said Krish Vitaldevara, director, Google Maps.

As part of this update, seven new tabs have been added to the “Explore” tab — restaurants, petrol pumps, ATMs, offers, shopping, hotels and chemists. Google said that 20 million users were engaging with the Explore feature in Maps on a monthly basis. The “Offers” feature will allow users to find deals and discounts at restaurants in 11 Indian cities — Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata, Goa, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Chandigarh, and Hyderabad.

This is an India first feature which will be rolled out to other markets globally, but is currently available only for Android devices. The Offer feature is being launched in partnership with online table reservation company EazyDiner. Initially available for offers at 4,000 restaurants, more categories and partners will be added soon.