Latest news with #AnujTyagi
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Business Standard
09-07-2025
- Health
- Business Standard
61% of young Indians prioritise health insurance amid rising costs: Report
As healthcare costs surge across India, a growing number of young Indians are making health insurance a priority. According to a recent survey by HDFC ERGO General Insurance and NielsenIQ, 61 per cent of millennials and Gen Z respondents prefer to invest in health insurance as part of their financial planning. Rising costs trigger demand The study, conducted among 2,200 respondents in 17 tier-II and tier-III cities, highlights how escalating medical expenses are prompting younger generations to secure coverage. Nearly 37 per cent of participants cited rising treatment costs as the main reason for purchasing health insurance, while 36 per cent were attracted by wellness benefits such as health check-ups. 'Millennials and Gen Z account for over half of India's population. Their evolving expectations are reshaping the insurance industry,' said Anuj Tyagi, managing director and chief executive officer of HDFC ERGO General Insurance. 'They value transparency, quick turnaround times, and hyper-personalised services.' Barriers to adoption remain Despite this growing interest, gaps persist. The survey revealed that 44 per cent of Gen Z respondents are hesitant due to lack of awareness, while 43 per cent of millennials rely on their employer's group health insurance and feel no need for a separate plan. Preference for offline purchases Interestingly, even as India's youth embrace technology, a significant majority still prefer offline channels for buying policies. About 60 per cent of millennials and Gen Z purchase health insurance through agents, citing trust and the need for guidance during claims as key reasons. What young buyers look for? When evaluating policies, 27 per cent prioritise a wide hospital network and 24 per cent value simple policy terms. Family and friends play a key role in influencing Gen Z's decisions, while millennials often use aggregator websites to compare options. As medical inflation continues to strain household budgets, financial planners stress the importance of early health insurance planning. Flexible premium payments and comprehensive coverage are now emerging as must-have features for India's younger population.
Forbes
08-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
An Essential Guide To Business Continuity And Disaster Recovery
Anuj Tyagi is a seasoned SRE with more than a decade of experience in cloud, AI & cybersecurity. Tech speaker and open-source contributor. getty In an era of cyberthreats, pandemics and natural disasters, risk isn't just a probability—it's a certainty. Three years ago, a ransomware attack hit one of our key clients at 2 a.m. on a Friday, paralyzing their customer service operation and threatening $50,000 per hour in losses. What saved them from catastrophe? Robust business continuity and disaster recovery plans. What A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) Is A BCP outlines how an organization continues delivering essential services during disruptions. Whether it's a server outage, supply chain failure or natural disaster, a BCP ensures critical functions operate without interruption. BCPs are essential for reducing downtime and maintaining customer trust. They help protect revenue, especially for mid-sized e-commerce businesses, which can lose between $10,000 and $25,000 for every hour of disruption, in my experience. BCPs also support compliance with regulatory requirements and play a critical role in preserving an organization's reputation. How To Create Your Business Continuity Plan Developing a strong BCP starts with understanding your organization's critical operations and the risks they face. 1. Establishing Policy And Ownership Start with a formal C-level commitment and appoint a dedicated BCP coordinator. Without executive buy-in, you'll lack the resources for effective implementation. 2. Conducting A Business Impact Analysis (BIA) Identify critical business functions and map their dependencies. Quantify financial, operational and reputational impacts of downtime. This analysis reveals recovery priorities and interconnected vulnerabilities. 3. Defining Recovery Objectives Establish realistic targets: • Maximum Tolerable Downtime (MTD): Absolute maximum offline time • Recovery Time Objective (RTO): How quickly processes must be restored • Recovery Point Objective (RPO): Maximum acceptable data loss 4. Developing Recovery Strategies Evaluate multiple options: redundant systems, multisite architecture, cloud failover and manual workarounds. The best approach often combines multiple strategies. 5. Documenting Everything Create usable documentation including business functions, RTO/RPO targets, roles and responsibilities, communication plans and escalation procedures. Write as if explaining to someone unfamiliar with your organization. 6. Training And Testing Conduct regular simulations and tabletop exercises. Make them realistic with communication challenges and time pressure. Update plans based on test results and organizational changes. Sample BCP Template Here is the essential structure of a BCP: • Purpose: Strategic importance and objectives • Scope: Covered business units and processes • Critical Functions: Ranked operations with dependencies • Recovery Objectives: MTD, RTO and RPO for each function • Contingency Resources: Backup sites, suppliers and emergency resources • Roles And Contacts: Staff assignments and emergency numbers • Communication Plan: Stakeholder messaging and escalation • Testing Schedule: Drill frequency and review cycles What A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) Is A disaster recovery plan focuses specifically on recovering IT systems and data after a disruption. While BCP addresses the entire organization, DRP zeroes in on the technology infrastructure that underpins business operations. DRPs are critical because technology recovery often becomes the bottleneck for overall business recovery. Even minor IT outages can cascade into major operational losses. How To Create Your Disaster Recovery Plan Creating an effective disaster recovery plan involves outlining the steps your organization will take to restore systems, data and operations after a disruption. 1. Inventorying Critical Assets List essential hardware, software, databases and cloud services with their interdependencies. Conduct workshops with both IT and business units to avoid gaps. 2. Defining IT-Specific RTO And RPO Collaborate with business stakeholders to determine system restoration speed and acceptable data loss. For example, payroll systems might require an eight-hour RTO with a two-hour RPO, while e-commerce sites need a 30-minute RTO with a 15-minute RPO. 3. Selecting Recovery Solutions Choose based on cost and recovery speed: • Cold Sites: Cheaper but slower activation • Warm Sites: Mid-cost with partial readiness • Hot Sites: Expensive but near-instant failover • Cloud Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS): Enterprise capabilities at lower upfront costs 4. Establishing Communication Protocols Map out notification procedures and escalation trees. Account for primary contacts being unavailable and use multiple communication channels. 5. Creating DRP Documentation Include defined roles, step-by-step recovery procedures, contact information, communication protocols and testing guidelines with success criteria. 6. Testing And Maintaining Simulate real disaster scenarios beyond just checking backups. Review logs, fix gaps and update regularly for infrastructure changes. Sample DRP Template The essential structure of a DRP includes: • Scope: Covered systems, databases and applications • Recovery Priorities: Ranked list with RTO/RPO targets • DR Strategy: Site approach (cold/warm/hot, cloud or hybrid) • Team Roles: Coordinator, network, security and vendor liaisons • Procedures: Detailed backup, restore and failover instructions • Vendor Information: Support contacts with service levels • Testing Plan: Frequency and types of testing Key Actions To Take Right Now Start by focusing on your top three critical functions rather than attempting to build a comprehensive plan all at once. Within the first 30 days, conduct a tabletop exercise, even if your procedures are still incomplete, to identify gaps early. Be sure to document everything clearly, writing procedures as if for someone unfamiliar with your company. Prioritize crisis communications by establishing methods that don't depend on office systems. Finally, calculate the real costs of potential disruptions, including lost revenue, customer churn, regulatory fines and reputational damage, to help justify further investment. In our digital-first business environment, disruptions aren't an "if"—they're a "when." Effective business continuity and disaster recovery plans ensure your organization can bounce back quickly with minimal loss. Both plans must be management-backed, continuously tested, periodically updated and clearly communicated. The time to build your parachute is not when you're falling. Start building your resilience today, because tomorrow's disruption is already on its way. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
Forbes
30-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Why On-Prem Data Centers Still Matter In The Cloud Era
Cloud computing has reshaped how businesses manage IT infrastructure, but it hasn't eliminated the need for on-premises data centers. For many companies—especially those with strict compliance requirements or performance-sensitive workloads—on-prem infrastructure still offers key advantages, including better security, cost control and sustainability. As cloud costs continue to rise and data demands increase, hybrid cloud strategies that combine cloud services with on-premises solutions are gaining momentum. Below, members of Forbes Technology Council share why companies should still consider on-premises data centers as part of a modern, flexible infrastructure strategy. 1. They Meet Data Sovereignty And Compliance Requirements One key reason is data sovereignty and compliance—certain industries and regions require strict control over where and how data is stored. On-prem data centers offer full control, enabling companies to meet regulatory requirements, reduce legal risk and safeguard sensitive information that can't legally reside in the cloud. - Anuj Tyagi 2. They Support Real-Time Operations In Manufacturing On-prem or edge presence is critical for manufacturing companies where a large amount of Internet of Things data gets generated from the production line. If you talk to plant managers, their No. 1 priority is to ensure there are no downtimes in production. Network downtime or cloud bandwidth bottlenecks can bring production to a halt, causing losses of millions of dollars and, worse, loss of customer trust. - Apurva Wadodkar, Autodesk INC Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify? 3. They Give Companies Control Over Critical Infrastructure It's important to stay in control of your tech core. Cloud vendors may refuse needed features, and even a minute of downtime on Black Friday—even if within service-level agreement limits—can cost a fortune. Your own team is more motivated to fix issues than a vendor, especially if you're not a top client. Cloud fees for traffic or requests scale poorly and get expensive fast. - Alexander Krizhanovsky, Tempesta Technologies 4. They Address The Rising Cost Of Cloud-First Infrastructure The rising cost of using cloud-first infrastructure is one of the main reasons to consider an on-prem data center as an option. With the adoption of more gen AI tools, this cost will continue trending up. - Swati Kirti, Walmart Global Tech 5. They Power Real-Time AI Inference At The Edge Manufacturers using machine vision to inspect for defects on the production line cannot afford a cloud round trip. These systems need to capture, analyze and respond in milliseconds. A slow decision could allow a defective product through or falsely reject a good one. On-prem AI inference (via GPU or edge servers) ensures this analysis happens in real time. - Amy Gu, Dynamsoft 6. They Protect IP And Sensitive Data Intellectual property protection is a primary reason companies should still consider on-prem data centers. Whether it is insights into business processes, code, proprietary customer data or financial information, the exposure envelope and risk for data leakage are reduced with a properly structured and protected on-prem data center versus a cloud-based data center. - Mark Francis, Electronic Caregiver 7. They Maximize Financial And Tax Advantages One reason is the financial management opportunities they present. On-prem data centers are capitalizable, unlike most SaaS and cloud platforms, which are typically operational expenditures. The costs are recorded as assets, enhancing asset-to-liability ratios that support borrowing. There are potential tax opportunities from depreciation or amortization of capitalized costs that can reduce taxable income over time. - Gladwin Mendez, GEC Prudentia 8. They Boost Security And Reduce Cloud Dependence Two of the main reasons are enhanced security and independence. When dealing with real-time data—especially from machines generating gigabytes daily—it's daunting to rely solely on the cloud. A hybrid solution offers a balance, even if it's less cost-effective. Plus, there's the risk of third-party providers cutting off access to your data if you stop paying. On-prem keeps you in control, reducing dependency. - Adrian Stelmach, EXPLITIA 9. They Minimize Data Gravity One key reason is data gravity: When massive volumes of data are generated or consumed locally (as happens in manufacturing and healthcare), moving it to the cloud comes with latency, cost and complexity. On-prem lets companies process sensitive or high-throughput data faster, with more control. In hybrid strategies, it's not legacy, but at that point, it becomes a performance and compliance enabler. - Raghu Para, Ford Motor Company 10. They Reduce Latency For Bandwidth-Hungry And Legacy Systems One of the major reasons for considering an on-prem data center is data latency, particularly for bandwidth-hungry and AI- and graphic-intensive apps like enterprise resource planning, the IoT, shop floor manufacturing execution systems, and real-time microsecond and millisecond trading floors. The other reason for non-data-intensive apps to stay on-prem is legacy workloads like mainframe or client-server, as they may not be able to leverage cloud-native functions. - Rajat Sharma, NGN Advisory 11. They Offer Improved Resilience When your entire infrastructure depends on a single cloud provider, any outage becomes a full stop. That's not innovation; that's risk consolidation. On-prem isn't about resisting the cloud; it's about balancing it. Real resilience means having a fallback, especially when everything else is floating and moving to more decentralized environments. - Doug Shannon 12. They Deliver Deterministic Performance For Sensitive Sectors One key reason is the need for deterministic performance in ultra-sensitive operations. In sectors like aerospace or financial trading, even minor latency or unpredictable network behavior can disrupt mission-critical outcomes. On-prem data centers offer direct control, physical isolation and architectural consistency that cloud environments cannot fully replicate in high-stakes scenarios. - Nicola Sfondrini, PWC 13. They Ensure Dependable Access To Data Going by my personal experience with the migration of an on-prem financial fraud screening platform into a vendor's cloud, I can definitely say that dependable accessibility to data gets severely impacted post cloud migration if crucial details are not looked into thoroughly. - Sunny Banerjee, First Citizens Bank 14. They Enable Cost Analysis And Vendor Flexibility Having an on-prem data center enables companies to perform cost predictability analysis for new and existing apps, especially in terms of performance, storage or latency-sensitive workloads. It allows organizations to negotiate better cloud pricing, avoid vendor lock-in and retain the flexibility to host critical, sensitive or regulatory workloads on-prem when the cloud isn't a perfect fit. - Harikrishnan Muthukrishnan, Florida Blue 15. They Allow The Use of Local Renewable Energy Sources One unique sustainability-driven reason to consider on-prem data centers is the ability to leverage local renewable energy sources and advanced cooling innovations, such as geothermal or liquid cooling. Unlike hyperscale cloud, on-prem could provide companies direct control to design efficient, net-zero facilities tailored to their region's green energy infrastructure. - Rahul Wankhede, Humana 16. They Maximize Uptime And Operational Control While cloud offers flexibility, on-prem still excels when uptime and operational control are absolutely critical. In industries like semiconductor manufacturing or real-time logistics, even brief cloud delays can disrupt output. On-prem lets companies build systems with zero tolerance for downtime, ensuring continuous, uninterrupted operations. - Umesh Kumar Sharma 17. They Give Teams Physical Access For Fast Troubleshooting Sometimes unplugging is the fastest fix. Physical control equals instant accountability. When you need to yank a cable, swap a drive or keep a trade secret actually secret, on-prem puts your hands where your cloud console can't. - Joel Frenette, 18. They Accelerate Recovery During Critical Incidents On-prem data centers provide direct control over recovery operations during critical incidents. When hardware failures, human errors or cyberattacks occur, having physical access to your infrastructure allows for immediate, hands-on recovery implementation without dependencies on third-party response times or Internet connectivity, significantly reducing data restoration timeframes. - Chongwei Chen, DataNumen, Inc. 19. They Allow Greater Precision In Governing AI Models One reason companies should still consider on-prem data centers is AI model governance. As enterprises train and deploy proprietary models, especially in regulated sectors, they need granular control over data lineage, compute environments and audit trails. On-prem setups offer unmatched visibility and security, ensuring responsible AI practices that cloud abstractions may not fully guarantee. - Pawan Anand, Ascendion 20. They Strengthen Leverage In Cloud Vendor Negotiations Owning on-prem infrastructure gives companies leverage in cloud vendor negotiations. On-prem provides an 'exit option' from the cloud. This optionality is a strategic asset, especially when cloud bills creep up and cloud platform loyalty gets expensive. Running even part of your stack in-house lets you demand better pricing, support or custom terms from a cloud vendor. - Kehinde Fawumi, Amazon
Time of India
28-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
General insurance industry to invest Rs 100 cr annually for next 3-5 yrs in nationwide awareness campaign
The general insurance industry has committed to investing Rs 100 crore each year for the next 3–5 years in a awareness campaign to improve insurance adoption. Backed by the General Insurance Council and regulatory support, the campaign is looking to bridge the gap between insurance availability and its penetration across vast population and diverse geographies. The industry leaders today came together to discuss the need for the campaign- Achha Kiya Insurance Liya- with a vision to increase the insurance penetration which at 1% of the GDP against the global average of 3.3%. Tapan Singhel, MD & CEO of Bajaj Allianz General Insurance , said the industry quietly pays claims when it matters the most, that is at the time of need. 'Last year alone, 2.69 crore families benefited from health claims worth ₹83,000 crore. During COVID-19, the industry paid five times its annual profit in claims, without a single bailout request from the government. Insurance silently cushions people in their most vulnerable moments,' he said. Live Events Drawing a sharp comparison between developed and developing economies and how the two gets affected post a catastrophe, he said, in Florida, when a hurricane hits, the state's GDP goes up, thanks to insurance payouts fueling recovery. 'In India, GDP dips because of underinsurance. This campaign is about changing that reality,' he said. He said that ninsured MSMEs take the biggest hit during catastrophes, dragging GDP down by 1.82%. 'If we plug this leaking bucket, India's 6–7% GDP growth can climb to 10–11%. That's the power of insurance,' he said. Anuj Tyagi, Joint MD, HDFC ERGO General Insurance , stressed the role of digital infrastructure in expanding reach saying that with data from IIB, we can now pinpoint uninsured vehicles on Indian roads. 'This opens the door to precise, data-driven enforcement and outreach,' he said. 'Insurance is the only product needed from birth to death,' said Mayank Bhatwal, CEO of Aditya Birla Health Insurance. 'Whether rich or poor, people don't want to compromise on quality healthcare, and only insurance can make that quality accessible.'
