IBM Watson Ecosystem opens for Business in India

IBM has recently announced InspireOne Technologies and TEXTIENT as the first two India-based partners to join the IBM Watson Ecosystem. The companies will begin developing cognitive computing solutions in the region.

InspireOne Technologies is using IBM Watson cognitive APIs in its professional development app to empower employees to develop their leadership skills, and TEXTIENT is a marketing insights platform tapping Watson to develop real-time brand perception reports.

The announcement was made as part of the IBM Watson India Summit in Bangalore focused on how cognitive systems are transforming businesses and customer outcomes, and ways in which India is well poised to usher in this next wave of technology innovation. According to a Gartner announcement from November, India has the fastest growing IT market in the world -- IT spending in India is forecast to reach $71 billion in 2016, and grow to $85.28 billion by the end of 2019.

"The creativity and passion of Indian businesses to introduce cognitive-infused apps to the market is overwhelming, and the region is poised for incredible growth," said Stephen Gold, vice president for IBM Watson. "As the first Indian partners to join the Watson Ecosystem, InspireOne Technologies and TEXTIENT are excellent examples of how cognitive technology will help transform the region and the world."

InspireOne Technologies and TEXTIENT are already making strides in bringing their powered by Watson solutions to market in India.

InspireOne Technologies (Haryana, India): InspireOne Technologies is a professional development organization that is embedding Watson in its Supernova application to empower employees to develop their leadership capabilities. Supernova uses Watson's Sentiment Analysis and Natural Language Classifier APIs to analyze corporate emails, enabling Supernova to deliver evidence-based insights so managers can refine their own leadership capabilities and areas for development. Supernova can capture and quantify to what extent an employee applies leadership competencies such as collaboration or strategic thinking and also explain how to further develop such skills. For example, an employee who does not demonstrate collaboration frequently might get specific pointers, such as asking more questions from team members during interactions. HDFC Life, a large insurance company in India, has been using InspireOne's Supernova solution powered by Watson.

According to Rajendra Ghag, senior executive vice president and chief human resource officer at HDFC Life, "We used InspireOne's Supernova solution as a post program follow up and online coaching application across our executive talent pool. The new development in Supernova, powered by IBM Watson, will generate enormous value for organizations looking to sustain their growth and invest in developing leaders. Not only do leaders get insights on how they applied behaviors that are essential for high performance, but they also get insights on their sentiments expressed, which is a huge plus point for any leader to fully assess the impact he or she can make in the workplace."

TEXTIENT (Tiruvanmiyur, Chennai, India): TEXTIENT is a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform for brand, marketing and customer insights. It allows marketers to quickly gain strategic and actionable insights from social media posts about the impact of a marketing action or the competitive differentiation of their brand. TEXTIENT uses Watson's Personality Insights API along with sentiment analysis, entity extraction, and concept extraction to automatically generate a comprehensive Brand-Essence Report in a matter of minutes. The report reflects dimensions influencing a brand's strength and equity such as dominant brand personalities, emotional and sensory brand experiences, customer engagement and brand credibility. The intent is to supplement traditional market research, such as focus groups or surveys, with a cognitive solution that allows marketers to gain strategic and actionable insights in real-time that can help them act faster and maintain a competitive edge.

IBM Watson Accelerates Global Expansion

To continue the momentum sparked by InspireOne Technologies and TEXTIENT, IBM is working with dozens of startups and businesses across India to begin embedding Watson in their businesses across many industries. IBM also expanded within the Indian health sector late last year by announcing Manipal Hospital in Bangalore as the first client in India to deploy Watson. Furthering IBM's strategy to accelerate the global growth of cognitive computing, in late 2015 Watson launched an Internet of Things Global Headquarters in Germany and also announced ecosystem partner programs in Japan, London, the Middle East and North Africa, and The Netherlands.

Watson is open to the world, allowing a growing ecosystem of developers, students, entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts to easily tap into the most advanced and diverse cognitive computing platform available today.  The Watson ecosystem now represents more than 500 ecosystem partners across 17 industries and disciplines, more than 100 of which have already introduced commercial cognitive enabled apps, products and services to the market. These partners join the more than 80,000 developers globally who are tapping into APIs via the IBM Watson Developer Cloud on Bluemix to pilot, test and deploy new business ideas.

IBM Watson: Pioneering a New Era of Computing

IBM Watson represents a new era in computing called cognitive computing. Watson continuously learns, gaining in value and knowledge over time, from previous interactions. With the help of Watson, organizations are leveraging cognitive computing to transform industries, help professionals do their jobs better, and solve important challenges. To advance Watson, IBM has two dedicated business units: IBM Watson, established for the development of cloud-based cognitive computing technologies that commercialize "artificial intelligence," and IBM Watson Health, dedicated to providing crisp data to doctors, researchers, insurers and others to surface new data insights and deliver personalized healthcare.