Author: Akin Naphtal

Leading global hospitality and property technology company GuestReady has officially launched in Saudi Arabia with the opening of its Riyadh office. This expansion means that GuestReady now offers short-term rental property services in more than 63 cities worldwide, with Riyadh being its second office in the Middle East after Dubai. The decision to expand to Saudi Arabia was driven by the country’s thriving real estate sector and the rapidly growing travel and tourism industry. With domestic tourism already strong in the kingdom and international travel set to play a larger role due to Vision 2030, GuestReady sees significant opportunities to…

Banque Saudi Fransi (BSF), a leading bank in Saudi Arabia, has successfully modernized its domestic and international real-time payments processing using Tata Consultancy Services’ (TCS) software suite, TCS BaNCS for Payments. The transformation aims to simplify and digitize BSF’s IT systems for deposits, lending and payments, enabling the bank to position itself as a modern and customer-focused institution in the region. TCS BaNCS is a comprehensive banking software suite developed by TCS specifically for retail banks. It offers a wide range of applications to help banks effectively manage their core banking operations. The suite includes modules for various banking functions…

ServiceNow, the American digital workflow company, has announced the launch of its Innovation Centre in Hyderabad, India. The new digital incubation hub aims to assist Indian enterprises in modeling, testing and demonstrating business strategies in areas such as generative artificial intelligence, hyperautomation and low-code apps. By establishing the Innovation Centre in Hyderabad, ServiceNow aims to transform the way Indian enterprises build digital businesses and deliver more efficient work processes. The location also allows customers to directly engage with ServiceNow’s engineers at the company’s largest development center outside the United States. This facilitates the integration of emerging technologies tailored to meet…

du, the leading telecommunications services provider in the UAE, has entered into a teaming agreement with Alliance Networks to offer high-capacity connectivity to potential clients within the region. Through this partnership, du and Alliance Networks, known for their regional network and commercial partnerships, aim to explore collaboration opportunities and deliver exceptional connectivity solutions to customers in the GCC and MENA regions. READ ALSO: Nokia Partners with TSSC and Kaushalya to Establish 5G Centre of Excellence in Gujarat Adel Al Daylami, CEO of Alliance Networks, expressed his enthusiasm about the strategic alliance, highlighting the combination of their regional expertise and network…

Jordan’s Ministry of Interior has announced the launch of a comprehensive range of electronic visa and residency permit services for foreign visitors and residents. Starting from July 23, all paper-based transactions related to these services will no longer be accepted by any official entity or portal, according to the Jordan News Agency, Petra. The newly introduced e-services can be accessed through the ministry’s dedicated online platform. These services will cover various visa and permit processes, including the issuance and renewal of permanent and temporary visas for purposes such as visit, transit, work, study and medical treatment. Applicants will also be…

Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, has introduced a new tool called CM3leon, which offers text-to-image and image-to-text generation capabilities. CM3leon achieves impressive performance in text-to-image generation despite being trained on significantly less computing power compared to previous transformer-based methods, according to Meta’s blog post. The architecture of CM3leon is based on a decoder-only transformer, similar to other generative AI models like GPT-3, GPT-4, ChatGPT and LaMDa. However, what sets CM3leon apart is its unique ability to input and generate both text and images, as claimed by Meta. READ ALSO: Jordan Launches Electronic Visa and Residency Permit Services for…

Finnish telecommunications equipment company Nokia has announced a collaboration with Telecom Sector Skill Council (TSSC) and Kaushalya – The Skill University to establish a Nokia Centre of Excellence (CoE) for 5G skill development in Gujarat’s ITI Kubernagar. The CoE will feature a skill lab dedicated to training candidates in 5G technology skills, with the goal of offering placement opportunities to at least 70% of learners within 4-6 weeks of completing the course. The program is expected to benefit around 300 candidates in its first year. Amit Marwah, Chief Marketing Officer of Nokia India, emphasized the company’s commitment to developing a…

Adobe has announced the expansion of its generative artificial intelligence (AI) offering, Firefly, to include support for text prompts in eight Indian languages, including Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu. This brings the total number of supported languages to over 100 globally, allowing users to generate images and effects using their native language prompts. Additionally, localized versions of Firefly are now available in 20 languages, such as French, German and Japanese. Firefly is part of Adobe’s family of generative AI solutions, which was launched in March. It builds upon the existing generative AI tools that Adobe introduced in Photoshop, Express and…

AI Robotics company, Figure, has secured a $9 million equity investment from Intel Capital, a tech renowned investor, to bolster Figure’s financial position and accelerate the development of their autonomous humanoid robot, Figure 01. Furthermore, the investment will also support the expansion of Figure’s AI data pipeline for autonomous operations and drive the company towards eventual commercialization. Intel Capital joins other prominent investors in Figure’s Series A funding round, with bids from Parkway Venture Capital, Brett Adcock, Aliya Capital, and Bold Capital Partners, among others. “Intel Capital is at the forefront of making big, bold frontier bets and we are…

Flutterwave has unveiled Tuition to help Africans pay several fees to secondary schools, universities, colleges, and other edtech platforms in their local currencies on the continent and abroad. Currently, the product is only available in Nigeria with over 40 institutions in the UK supported. However, there are plans to expand to schools in other African countries, the UK, US, Canada, France and Germany. Students, parents, guardians, and sponsors in other African countries should be able to access the product as rollout continues in the coming months. Parents and guardians can easily track their transactions by checking the status and history…