DRONA -Winner at Handheld Learning 2009, UK

Winner for Innovation in Business & Training at hhl09

DRONA,  Innovation Award winner at HHL09, UK.

Deltecs InfoTech receives an award on 5th Oct 2009, in London for Innovation in Business and Training Category.

DRONA – is a complete mobile learning tool. It provides an end-to-end platform for enabling mobile learning environment in any organisation.

Key essentials are 1.  mobile authoring tool which enables anyone to create their own mobile apps but simply inputting their content (Text, audio, images). No technical know-how is required. Manages all your previous mobile apps.

2. Distribute these mobile apps over click of button to your selected audience. May be a closed environment or distributed work force. These applications reside on users phones and get installed quickly just as users opens it. The users can take their lessons/tests on the phones without any GPRS connectivity or other dependencies. Also their are some features for users, they can take a replay, analyse, check explanations, send their score details back.

3. Analyse the performance of training at backend. A beautiful yet simple tool DRONA – Analysis gives detailed analysis about performance. It gives heirarchial views for all stakeholders in organisations. Many features like Graphical views, Date wise, Topic wise reports/views are available to track the performance, calculate ROI/metrics.

Special tools built for Blackberry based training using BES.

Also customized tools available for sales management & tracking.

Get more info and demo version of the tool at www.deltecs.com or write at info@deltecs.com

-Kinjal

DRONA, the Innovation Award Winner at Handheld Learning 2009, UK

Small excerpt from Reshma Pinto’s description, who recieved the award on behalf of Deltecs InfoTech.

“I had a totally amazing time. It was my first experience at an awards ceremony. The program which was supposed to begin at 7pm started around at 8:30pm. So I was really dying out of curiosity.When the awards started finally I had kept my fingers crossed. The awards were announced in the order starting from Primary education to Special Achievment, just like the listing of the finalist results on HHL website. For each category, the person who was called to give away the award spoke a little about the significance of the award.

After around 8 categories, finally it was time for Innovation in Business and Training. The presenter gave a small speech about the growth of mobile learning in the Business & Training category. The finalists were announced with Drona being the last in the list. The presenter finally opened his envelope to announce the winner. I was so anxious to know the result that I was not so interested in his speech . After opening the envelope, he said something about cultural diversity and that’s when I was sure its DRONA….and then I couldnt here further, was too excited to register anything . We were seated at the back, so I had to rush ahead to the stage, literally run few steps down to the podium . I was preparing a speech all the while before the awards, but then I realised, at such a moment, spontaneity takes over. I cant remember what I said exactly, but it was a great moment and was really happy to represent Deltecs InfoTech. Thanks a lot for giving me this opportunity. Missed you all at the function.

Let’s keep up the good work. Great going guys. Have fun at work on Tuesday.

warm regards,
Reshma Pinto “

To know how DRONA can fit into your organisation and help you achieve an effective and efficient training and assessment tool, write to info@deltecs.com or visit www.deltecs.com

Making India Proud, Deltecs InfoTech at Handheld Learning 2009, UK

Drona, a mobile learning solution offered by Deltecs InfoTech, a proud winner of Business and Training Innovation award at the prestigious HandHeld Learning awards 2009 held at London. Deltecs InfoTech is the first Indian organisation to have achieved this award.  

“Our mission to provide innovative and practical solutions to meet learning and training challenges” – Deltecs InfoTech’s team 

How does Drona help in solving the challenges of learning and training industry? 

Assessing the learners progress forms a critical component of a learning system. However evaluating on a continual basis has been a hindrance due to various reasons like

• Time consumed to conduct & evaluate tests
• For computer-based tests, computer per trainee is not always feasible
• Incase of paper based test, analysis is limited to human analysis

Drona aims at solving these problems. It is a complete 360 degree assessment solution which provides a platform for creation, distribution and analysis of tests. The tests created can be distributed to participants on their mobile handsets. On completion of test, results are posted back to Drona to provide analysis of score, time-taken, relative performance, etc.

Benefits of using Drona :

• Enables trainers to conduct conceptual test at end of every session.
• Provides trainers with more information on performance to make better decisions.
• Same test can work on variety of handsets like Blackberry, Windows and Java enabled phones.
• Provides a capability to create tests and collate results in time effective manner with minimum infrastructure.
• Requires no technical know-how
• Provides analysis for trainees, trainers and management
• Create tests with support for multimedia like audio, video and images

With assessment made easy, the trainer has to focus mainly on delivering his training. To know more about Drona, please check http://www.deltecs.com/mobileAuthoring.html

- Reshma Pinto

A freewheeling interview with Nikhil Peter (startups.in)

Deltecs helps students and employees better utilize their time by providing mobile learning applications. The founders of this award winning start-up share their views in an interview with Nikhil Peter of Startups.in

1. What exactly is Deltecs.com? Why the name Deltecs?

Deltecs InfoTech is pioneer in providing innovative learning and training solutions on mobile phones and desktops. Idea incubation and early work started in October 2005 and finally incorporated in Feb, 2007 with key members from Wipro Technologies. In short span on existence, we have been involved in business with blue chip companies, either partnering with them or providing solutions to them.

It was formerly, Delta Technologies and hence Deltecs InfoTech Pvt. Ltd. seemed like the closest possible name not to lose our already created identity.

2. How did the idea of this start-up originate?

We used to work with Wipro Technologies for a couple of years before we started on our own. So while commuting to work, we used to see a lot of MBA aspirants preparing for their CAT by utilizing their travel time. That’s when it struck us as to why not come out with mobile learning applications which will help students utilize their time in a better way. That’s where it all originated from.

3. Are there any other players offering similar services?

When we started off, I don’t think there was any competition. But recently there have been a few companies sprung up in the same domain if not offering the same services. Unfortunately, we see Deltecs as the only Indian entry in the hand-held learning annual awards this year.

4. How does Drona prove to be helpful to students and employees.

Drona basically helps an institute/corporate/university to author, distribute and analyze tests and their results within no time and for far lesser costs. Also, for the employees and students it’s just in time learning and testing which they can refer to anytime. Drona-BES is a blackberry based plug-in for corporates where the senior management in any corporates can access their training modules and finish their allocated training time even with their hectic schedules without spending dedicated time on their desktops.

5. How is Deltecs.com doing do so far? How well was it received by the community?

Deltecs has been well received by the student community as well as the teaching fraternity since it has products catering to both the markets, viz. B2B as well as B2C. In fact, Deltecs has 10,000+ individual users as well as fortune 500 companies as their esteemed clients and partners.

6. Could you tell us more about yourself, your position & other key players, if any?

I am one of the 3 Co-Founders in the company and have been playing varied roles since the inception of Deltecs. I am presently handling the Product and Innovation portfolio in Deltecs.

7. How large is the team behind your start-up? Are you all based in India?

We are 3 Co-Founders in Deltecs. I, Jinen Dedhia and Akash Shah and we are a team of 14 people now. We are based in India, more specifically Mumbai.

8. How is your startup being funded so far? Do you plan to receive any external funding?

Deltecs presently is self funded and yes, we do plan to seek funds in the near future.

9. Throw some light upon the initial hurdles you came across while setting up your start-up?

For a startup at different stages the hurdles keep on changing at every step but Entrepreneurship is all about tackling and overcoming them. Be it funding, setting up an office, choosing the initial set of people to build a core team to setting up the processes, motivating and keeping the whole team focused and man management have all been challenges at their times, but overcoming them becomes fairly easy if you have your goals and objectives set and everyone involved aligned with your vision and the hunger to go that extra bit to achieve it.

10. What are key technologies your service is built upon and why did you opt for them?

Well, we basically work with Java as well as Microsoft technologies depending on the kind of market feasibility. For e.g. in the Indian markets j2me works best since the market has majority of java based phones and it makes business sense to opt for java rather than Microsoft technologies since Windows OS phones have very little market share. But we do opt for Microsoft Technologies when it comes to web based development since we are a member of Microsoft bizspark program where we get access to a lot of Microsoft tools and services. On the other hand, for internal purposes we do work on more technologies. But it is only for internal Deltecs purpose and not offered as a service or a product.

11. In your experience, what has been the most effective way to market a business?

Well, since Deltecs offers Software Products and Services and not physical ones, we find online marketing as one of the most effective ways of marketing and promoting our products and services but it has to be appropriately supported by traditional media like offline PR strategies, BTL activities at strategic places, event participation, sponsorships and good media relations.

12. What is the best advice you’ve ever received.

I think the best advice that I must have received would be… “Believe in yourself and every problem will have a solution, stay down to earth and people will respect you”

13. On a personal front, who is your role model? Also, do you follow any other websites religiously?

Personally I think Narayan murthy, Dhirubhai Ambani and a lot of 1^st Gen Entrepreneurs who made it big have given me some learning or the other. I do follow a lot of start up websites and forums regularly.

14. How did being an entrepreneur affect your lifestyle? Do you get enough time for yourself/family?

Well yes, to be honest I have become more patient and focused and also value money more than I ever did before. Also I think one should balance their personal as well as professional life since it helps you connect with one self as well as rejuvenate and recharge timely which eventually has a huge positive impact on the professional side.

15. Tell us One thing that you love the most?

Well, I love my team the most, coz honestly they have been with Deltecs in its toughest phase as well and believed in the vision unanimously. I would never want to lose them.

16. Have you, or your organization, been recognized in any way for your great work?

• We won the ISB B-Plan competition in the year ’08 and came 5^th in the Asia moot B-Plan Contest ’08.
• We were also nominated for TATA NEN hottest start-ups in ’08.
• This year we have been the only company from India amongst the finalists for award of innovation from hand held learning being held in London. Do not forget to vote!

“Entrepreneurship is all about tackling and overcoming hurdles — Divyesh Kharade, Director of Products, Deltecs“
##########

One more news, Deltecs is the only Indian company to be among the 4 finalists for the Innovation awards to be held in London on Oct 5th 2009. (Handheld Learning)
The Other 3 companies being from Aus, Ireland and Israel
The winners will be decided on sms voting, send sms DRONA to 00447786205637…..

Emerging Indian product company in the finalist for Innovation at Handheld Learning Awards, UK

we saw a

Dream to

Revolutionize the learning methodologies,we got an

Opportunity to

Nurture this dream, we wish for your support to

Achieve the pinnacle of success.

 

We are very pleased and excited to announce that DRONA is selected among 4 finalist for Handheld Learning Awards 2009,the most prestigious awards in the field of learning, teaching and mobile computing.

 

Cast your vote using non-premium rate SMS, Type DRONA and send to 0044 7786 205 637.

to support for India’s first and only entry at awards.

 

 Voting ends on Monday 28th September so please hurry and ask your friends and colleagues to vote for DRONA.

  

About DRONA:

Drona is a 360 degree assessment solution which will enable you (institutes, universities, colleges, training centers) to author, publish and distribute your own content on the mobile phones. The offering doesn’t stop at delivering the content and tests but also extends to collating scores and results, and generate reports to help analyze the performances. 

Log on to www.deltecs.com

Contact us at info@deltecs.com, +91 22 28488746

 

About Handheld Learning Awards:

The Finalists

Category: Business & Training
Innovation
Intuition, Dublin, Ireland
Kantoo English, La Mark, Israel
Drona, Deltecs InfoTech Pvt Ltd, Mumbai, India
Certificate 3 Hospitality qualification delivered on PDA’s, Goal Training & Development, Australia

 

The winners will be announced at the Handheld Learning Awards Party hosted by Jason Bradbury on Monday 5th October, London

log on to http://www.handheldlearning2009.com/awards  to know more.

 

 

Regards,

Team Deltecs.

 

Creative mobile applications to help better serve customers.

It is clear that the mobile phone is playing an increasingly important role as a person’s means of interacting with this digital world.

Creativity in mobility space is beyond horizons. With new and new concepts to reach the target audience hitting the market daily.

Mobile applications are becoming more and more popular and even larger number of brands are coming out with their own mobile applications. Some examples:

IKEA Uses Mobile Augmented Reality To Enagge Shoppers’ Imagination

IKEA felt they had to do something special to help customers imagine how this furniture would fit into their houses, so they turned to a mobile augmented reality solution.

The Portable Interior Planner application gives customers the ability to see exactly how the new designs will look in their home, without the need to actually move any furniture!

Thus a portable interior planning tool was developed. Using this tool one can select the products they are interested in, take pictures of the room or place they want to put into and tool fits the products into images and shows how the room will look later. Thus mobile augmented reality apps helped customers in visualisation and take better and faster decisions.

Another example is a campaign that was run by Vodafone in the leadup to European Champions league 2008. In order to win a ticket to the championship, a consumer would take a virtual “penalty shot” by taking a picture of which part of the goal they wanted to kick the ball to. The system returned an image of the ball going to that spot, and the goal keeper either making a save or the ball going in the net.

 This campaign had great response from consumers – 40% participation at an event location and over 3% participation from a magazine ad. It was a unique way to create engagement and won the “Best Creativity” and “Most Innovative Use of Technology” at the 2008 UK Mobile Marketing Awards

Such many more options are adopted by industry all over to better serve their customers and beat competition.

Source: MobiAdNews

A Mobile Authoring tool on improved learning and teaching

Our innovation, Drona, is a “concept testing” platform which includes mobile authoring tool for creating M-Learning or M-Assessments, a distribution tool and analysis. Its  an integrated feedback system to make learning continually adaptive for students or trainees as well as teachers or trainers.

 The most important aspect of concept testing strategy is in Steven Covey’s words, “Begin with the end in mind.” Establishing a clear set of learning objectives to govern both course development and testing development is vital.

 Drona is a software framework that can be used by a teacher, an instructor or a Guru to author mobile learning test/assessment applications which can be posted to his students on their mobiles. Once the students submit their tests, Drona has all the analyses about the test performance ready to handover. Our innovation offers to do BI on various dimensions like Subject, topic, trainer to measure performance.  This data will further enable them to fine tune teaching methods, concentrate on weaker sections, for teaching new topic which may have a dependency on a previous topic than an insight into understanding of previous topic will help define teaching strategy for new topic.

 Drona offers a simple user interface for the trainers to quickly author mobile learning or convert existing tests into mobile based tests. The mobile learning application created contains the content and does not rely on web/sms connectivity. These applications are ubiquitous to make it work across multiple handsets & technologies. This makes it cost effective for last mile users. Simplicity of the mobile authoring tool and the mobile learning (M-Learning) applications makes them easy to use.

 Drona in corporate training environment, helps the HR team to make better resource allocation decisions not only as per business needs, but also map it with interests of the resource.

 At Deltecs, we aspire to make the world a better place with our innovations. Drona is an effort towards that belief.

Mobile Training for Corporate Executives

Training on Blackberry

Deltecs’ Mobile learning on Blackberry solution is designed to cater to the increasing “On-the-move” & “On-the-hand” training needs of the corporates and learning institutes.
As Organizations are becoming more geographically distributed while their employess or teams are becoming increasingly tech savvy, Deltecs’ Blackberry learning & training suits best to their needs.

All kinds of training like,
-Corporate Tests/assessments with scores and feedback
-Presentations(PPTs)
-Audio/Video Training
-Sales & Product Training,
-On-the-move information
can be given to the corporate blackberry users in their hands in the form of M-learning applications.

Mobile learning on Blackberry is an attempt to transform Blackberry phones into classrooms on the move, offering information on demand via text, info-graphics, video, audio, tests etc. In simple terms, Mobile learning on Blackberry is the art of using mobile technologies to enhance the learning experience. This concept of training marks a turning point in the online training industry, which was so far limited to either Web-based or virtual classrooms.

The most important feature which defines mobile learning on Blackberry is mobility that enables information on demand, which is the ability to access information wherever you are and whenever you want. Blackberry learning provides personal learning on the move. With increasing competition, businesses are seeking for ways to win the rat race by disseminating information accurately at a faster pace and hence saving time and cost have become top concerns.

Challenges faced during development of portable mobile applications.

The handheld markets have grown widely in numbers. However, there hasn’t been significant progress towards conformance of standards of handsets hardware or software specifications. This made development of portable mobile applications a challenge and thus raised questions on ubiquity of applications. By the day, there are new emerging technologies announced in the eventful mobile phone sector.

The major challenges of portable mobile applications are highlighted here.

• Variety of Operating systems on handheld devices
• Variety of framework availability on handheld devices
• For Java ME framework, different OEMS have different implementations of the framework.

Over and above, there are device specific variations like:

1. Screensize
2. Keycodes

Drona is an attempt towards ubiquitous solution by making a layer of abstraction for some of the widely used underlying hardware and software on the phones.

Drona is a desktop application, serves as a user interface to create mobile based assessment applications which are ubiquitous in nature and allows promoting “concept testing” in the educational and corporate training sectors.

Drona is a layer on top of multiple technologies, frameworks and devices to create a demarcation between functional users and device level specifications. This enables the end user to simply create tests irrespective of underlying differences.

In its current version, Drona supports ubiquitously gamut of Java enabled handsets, Blackberry and winCE based pocket pc’s and smart phones.

Drona created mobile applications maintain similar UI, features and navigation across all handsets irrespective of their fundamental differences.  It is aimed to work with phones carried by the student fraternity to high end phones carried by corporate, thus covering a big spectrum of mobile phones.

Our innovation has worked and stressed the importance of ubiquitous solution. Our strategy “Applications to serve every phone” would ensure more ubiquitous solutions in the area of mobile learning from Deltecs Infotech.

Take the demo version from www.deltecs.com

Blackberry Based Training for Corporates

Deltecs InfoTech Pvt Ltd (earlier Delta Technologies), a leading enterprise providing M-learning (learning on Mobile phones) solutions have started offering Mobile based training to corporates and training Institutes. Earlier this month, Deltecs Infotech had launched a unique product, “Drona Authoring” An integrated mobile and desktop authoring tool for delivering mobile learning and desktop learning applications and now they have come up with a complete mobile training and Blackberry based training solution for corporate training segment.

Most of the corporates having large-distributed workforce give Blackberry phones or High end mobile phones to their senior and mid level executive employees so that they can access mails and other important information anytime-anywhere. Deltecs’ M-Training and B-Training tools are an attempt to transform Mobile/Blackberry phones into classrooms on the move, offering information on demand via text, info-graphics, video, audio, tests etc. In simple terms, M-Training and B-Training is the art of using mobile technologies to enhance the learning experience and make learning on Mobile/Blackberry phones a reality. This concept of training marks a turning point in the online training industry, which was so far limited to either Web-based or virtual classrooms.

“In the current scenario where time is critical and training needs are a constant, Mobile/Blackberry based corporate training (M-Training and B-Training as we call it at Deltecs) is an apt tool for time-pressed high/mid profile corporate executives to complete their training needs. Most of the senior management employees struggle to find time for desktop based or classroom training as they are committed to their busy scheduled work. Moreover, with an acute shortage of trained individuals, growing training needs, and strict timelines, M-Training (Mobile Training) or B-Training (Blackberry Training) is well suited to be part of a blended learning model.” says Jinen Dedhia, Director – Execution, Deltecs Infotech Pvt Ltd.

Deltecs InfoTech provide Mobile Authoring tool as a part of their solution to corporates for authoring their own Mobile Training and Blackberry Training applications within their infrastructure. All kinds of training material like assessments, corporate presentations (PPTs), Audios and videos which are integral part of most corporate training programs are converted to Mobile training applications using Deltecs’ Mobile Authoring tool. A single authoring tool enables authoring for gamut of mobile phones which includes all JAVA enabled phones, Blackberry OS phones and Windows Mobile OS.

“Large numbers of companies are realizing that if their reps are on roads then their training and communication needs to be mobile too. Most organizations are hence turning to blended learning with mobile training as a key component.” says Divyesh Kharade, Director – Product & Innovation.” Mobile training is well suited for organizations having large-distributed workforce. It becomes necessary for them to use Mobile based training in their sales training and product training programs” he added. Organizations are becoming more geographically distributed while their sales/product teams are becoming increasingly tech savvy, therefore many companies are taking advantage of Mobile technology and distributing information consistently to ensure attention and retention.

For more Information Visit: http://www.deltecs.com