The future of deliveries may be "robovans." A Chinese startup called Neolix kicked off mass production of its self-driving delivery vehicles Friday -- saying it's the first company globally to do so -- and has lined up giants such as JD.com Inc. and Huawei Technologies Co. as customers. Neolix expects to deliver a thousand of the vehicles, which resemble tiny vans, within the first year as it broadens out. The implications are potentially huge: Billionaire Jack Ma predicts there will be 1 billion deliveries a day in China within a decade and the commercialization of the technology could provide lessons for autonomous vehicles carrying passengers. Neolix isn't alone in this space as Silicon Valley's Nuro raised almost $1 billion this year and is starting to deliver groceries in Arizona.

Investment banking is seeing its historical profit centers eroded by technology and regulations. Core processes are being automated or commoditized. From IPOs, to M&A, to research and trading, investment banks are getting smaller, leaner, and scrambling to keep up with innovations. In 2006, investment banks were at the top of the finance world. With torrential growth and return on investment (ROI) driven largely by the trading of complex financial instruments, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs and others achieved record profits and awarded unprecedented bonuses. Over the next two years, everything fell apart. Download the free report to learn how core processes of this financial service are being automated or commoditized. After the collapse of Lehman and Bear Stearns and the global financial crisis that ensued, the business models of the world's biggest investment banks needed to change. In the US, legislation emerged to forbid investment banks from prop trading, or trading with their own capital, and forcing them to keep more capital on hand. This regulation reduced trading profits and created a need to cut costs, spurring investment banks to spin off unprofitable divisions or eliminate them entirely. While the rules against prop trading have more recently been loosened, the restriction has still changed how investment banks operate. Moreover, as more and more companies raise large equity rounds they're also choosing to delay public offerings. And even when major tech companies do decide to go public, some, like Spotify and Slack, are doing so mostly without the help of banks. As a result, banks are facing dropping IPO profits: they generated just $7.3B in revenue in 2017 from equity capital markets, which includes IPOs, down an inflation-adjusted 43% since 2000's peak, according to the Wall Street Journal. At the same time, financial upstarts have built technologies that could eventually cut into the relationship-driven work that investment banks are used to doing. Instead of working with a bank to make an acquisition, you can use Axial -- the so-called "Tinder of M&A," for its algorithm-based approach to matching companies with potential buyers. In 2015, 26% of $1B mergers and acquisitions took place without the help of external financial advisors, up 13% from the year before, according to Dealogic.

HYDERABAD: A mere 1137 candidates out of 3,82,116 failed candidates been declared passed in the intermediate re-verification results, which are released on Monday. The Telangana State Board of Intermediate Education (TSBIE) officials announced that results of 552 candidates from the second year and 585 candidates from the first year have been changed from failed to pass after the board carried out thorough re-verification of their answer scripts. Although the results have been released, candidates will be able to download the revised marks as well as the scanned copy of the answer script from Tuesday evening along with the subject wise result. As per the directions of the High court, the board had taken up the re-verification of the failed candidates answer scripts on April 26, 2019. They had set up 12 spot valuation camps to verify a total of 9, 02, 429 answer scripts. The board said that they have used services of 5,831 qualified lecturers as Chief Examiners and Assistant examiners and completed the re-verification of 9.02 lakh answer scripts by May 5, 2019.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to more than double the rate of innovation and employee productivity in India by 2021, said a new Microsoft-IDC study on Monday. While only one-third of organisations in India have embarked on their AI journeys, those companies that have adopted this technology expect it to increase their competitiveness by 2.3 times in 2021, said the study that surveyed 200 business leaders and 202 workers in the country. "Economies and businesses that have yet to embark on their AI journey run a real risk of missing out on the competitive benefits that are enjoyed by leaders," said Rohini Srivathsa, National Technology Officer, Microsoft India. According to the findings, India needs to build upon its investment, data and strategy in order to accelerate its AI journey. The study also underlined the need for cultural changes and skilling and re-skilling workforces to make AI work for the country.

From powering personalized career sites that recommend open positions that are ideal for a given candidate based on their capabilities as eightfold.ai AI and machine learning have the potential to create an additional $2.6T in value by 2020 in Marketing and Sales, and up to $2T in manufacturing and supply chain planning according to the McKinsey Global Institute. Please see the latest roundup of machine learning forecasts and market estimates, 2019 for more market data on machine learnings' exponential growth. Alation - Alation offers a machine learning data catalog to help people find, understand, and trust data across their organizations. They've defined their solution to align with the needs of four dominant personas, including Chief Data Officers, Analysts, Stewards, and IT and Engineering. Their Data Catalog is known for its usability and intuitive design. More than 100 organizations, including the City of San Diego, eBay, Munich Re, and Pfizer, have adopted the Alation Data Catalog.

The traditional HR functions are undergoing a sea of change because of recent advances in technology. Several repetitive tasks are fastly disappearing, making the life of HR managers easy. But at the same, they are facing a peculiar challenge from technology - Should they give priority to tech or touch? Or, in other words, should they function in a mechanised way, as the technology ordains, or keep the human element alive in whatever they do to help the company succeed? Top HR bosses and industry experts tell Zee Business Online about their priorities and how technology is impacting the HR department.

New Delhi: In order to make the business operations more efficient and automated, the deployment of software is required in place of manpower. It has been seen in all the businesses where computer machines have taken the place of a number of employees. With the incorporation of software which is set to work on designated protocols, an enterprise can become more cost-efficient and dynamic. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are some of the most widely used applications of Information Technology (IT) services which are thoroughly used in large enterprises. The usage of AI and machine learning software in small and medium enterprises (SMEs), small-scale businesses, seasonal businesses and conditional businesses to make the business process more robust is a big question today.

In 2016 and 2017 I spoke with dozens of venture capitalists, many of whom have a specific and overt focus on artificial intelligence technologies. I wanted to know what made an AI company worth investing in, and what business models were generally the most appealing for investment. It took me almost a year of interviews to come to that conclusion. VCs all want to invest in business models with a defendable "moat". Companies that can acquire more data and more users in a positive feedback loop have the chance to blast beyond the competition and become nearly unassailable.

From screening patients for clinical trials to assessing the emotional state of drivers, we dive in to how facial recognition technology is shaping the future. Download the free report to get a break down of which industries facial recognition is disrupting and how. The biometric software behind facial recognition applications can identify facial structures, contours, and expressions, making it a no-brainer for security and identification purposes. But it can also lead to creative applications that serve a different purpose. Listerine, for example, created an app that uses facial recognition to notify people who are blind that they were being smiled at. While the technology is still developing, many companies (including Amazon) are banking on it as a disruptive force in a myriad of markets.

Dr. Frey currently serves as executive director and senior futurist at the DaVinci Institute in Colorado, which he founded. He is also Google's top-rated Futurist Speaker and has built an enormous following around the world based on his ability to develop accurate visions of the future and describe the opportunities ahead. We asked him what his vision of the cultured meat sector is for the next couple of decades. Will industrial livestock and meat production find itself at a significant cost disadvantage? This will also give rise to a new snake oil era where people will claim their special concoction of cultured meats are a cure for everything from melanoma, to depression, to dyslexia.