Friday, 16 May 2014

Infosys chairman to employees: Think big and act boldly

5/16/2014 10:07:00 pm BUSINESS, EDUCATION, TECHNOLOGY No comments

Infosys chairman to employees: Think big and act boldly

Infosys chairman and chief mentor NR Narayana Murthy termed his company's performance as "creditable".

BANGALORE: Infosys chairman and chief mentor NR Narayana Murthy termed his company's performance as "creditable" and assured investors that the company remained on track to regain its lost momentum in two years.

In his first address to shareholders since his return last year in June, Murthy asked over 160,000 employees at Infosys to "think big and act boldly" and hinted that bold steps are in the offing he believes "nothing is as painful as staying stuck where you do not belong".

"We have done creditably this year by doubling our revenue growth to 11.5% (in US dollar terms)," Murthy wrote in a letter in the annual report. "Further, our operating margin improved from 23.5% in Q1 'FY 2014 to 25.5% in Q4 FY 2014. This is laudable by any standard. I congratulate every Infoscion on this stellar performance."

In April this year, Infosys kicked off the earnings season with quarterly results that matched its toned-down expectations and forecast modest growth for the 2014-15 fiscal, an outcome analysts said is reflective of the challenges that the company is facing. At 7-9%, its revenue growth guidance is some way below the 13-15% prediction by industry grouping Nasscom for software export growth.

"Growth is painful. Change is painful. But, nothing is as painful as staying stuck where you do not belong," Murthy wrote.

In what could surprise many, Murthy in his letter also thanked Mohandas Pai, the former CFO at the company, for helping the founder come back and steer the company.

The Bangalore-based software exporter is currently looking for its fifth chief executive officer—who will also be its first non-founder CEO—after SD Shibulal expressed his desire to step down from the company earlier than his planned retirement in March 2015.

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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s big test: Next-generation Surface tablets

5/16/2014 09:58:00 pm BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY No comments

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s big test: Next-generation Surface tablets

But Microsoft is expected to unveil the third generation of its Surface devices at an event on March 20.

NEW YORK: Satya Nadella has enjoyed a fairly smooth ride in his first 100 days as Microsoft chief executive, but he risks hitting a rough patch next week when he unveils the latest models of the tepidly received Surface tablet.

Investors have lapped up Nadella's "mobile first, cloud first" strategy to recast the venerable software maker as a "devices and services" company, sending its shares up 9% since he took the helm.

So far he has stressed the services side of the business, making the momentous move to put Microsoft's Office suite on Apple's iPad. This was popular with Wall Street and more importantly with consumers, who performed 27 million downloads in a matter of weeks.

But Microsoft is expected to unveil the third generation of its Surface devices at an event on Tuesday, laying hints that it will also introduce a smaller tablet, to address the fast-selling lower end of the market dominated by Apple's iPad mini, Amazon.com's Kindle Fire, Google's Nexus and Samsung's Galaxy range.

The devices side of the strategy has been a challenge. Microsoft's Surface, launched in October 2012, has about 2% of the market and has not made a dent on Apple's iPad. That fits with Microsoft's 3% global share in smartphones.

Given that tiny market, some investors believe Microsoft should not waste time and money on the low-margin hardware business. ValueAct Capital, which led the shareholder revolt last year which culminated in previous CEO Steve Ballmer's retirement, has lobbied against Microsoft's hardware effort, including its costly acquisition of Nokia's handset business.

"Nadella is off to a golden start as CEO, although turning around the tablet and mobile business over the next 12 to 18 months remain his two key Herculean tasks," said Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets. "If the turbulence gets too rough on the tablet and/or mobile segment, we can potentially see some strategic changes on the horizon around the hardware business."

Despite unspectacular sales, there are signs that Microsoft's Surface Pro 2, which runs the full Windows operating system, is starting to attract Microsoft's core business customers.

"There's certainly tons of interest in the Surface Pro as an Ultrabook (lightweight laptop) replacement that has tablet capabilities," said J.P. Gownder, an analyst at tech research firm Forrester. "It is the No. 1 model I get asked about, it's going to have a lot of eyes on it."

Even if the Surface never dominates the market, Gownder thinks Nadella and Microsoft are right to persevere with hardware, if only as a way of showing other device makers how best to make use of Windows.

"Microsoft would be nuts not to have devices in the mix. The danger is in not exploring," said Gownder. The Surface "is an important product to basically show what their overall vision is for Windows, and also to offer businesses and consumers another choice.
"

Samsung Galaxy Note 4 could have flexible screen

5/16/2014 09:55:00 pm BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY 1 comment

Samsung Galaxy Note 4 could have flexible screen

Korean media first reported that an upcoming Galaxy device will come with a "bent" display.

We haven't exactly been short of rumours about the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 coming with a bendy display, and now a Samsung exec has confirmed that the company is at least thinking about it.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Samsung VP of mobile Lee Younghee confirmed that Samsung is thinking about a flexible display. The caveat is that the device is still being developed: There's no final design yet and a flexible display is just one of the options, so nothing is set in stone.

Bend it like Samsung
Korean media first reported that an upcoming Galaxy device will come with a "bent" display, then a patent application revealed a device with a screen that curves around the side of a Note-type device.

So if you're a fan of the bendy curvy display, keep your eyes peeled around August/September time; we're expecting Samsung to announce the Note 4 at IFA 2014 alongside its Galaxy Gear Glass specs.

Moto E sales hit 80,000-1 lakh in less than a day

5/16/2014 09:51:00 pm TECHNOLOGY No comments

Moto E sales hit 80,000-1 lakh in less than a day

Flipkart had stocked between 80,000 and 1 lakh units expecting them to last for a few days, but they were sold out by mid-day on Wednesday.

NEW DELHI: Motorola Mobility seems to have struck gold with its latest offering, the affordably priced Moto E smartphone.

Online retailer Flipkart said it will resume shipping the Rs 6,999 smartphone within a week to 10 days after it ran out of stock soon after it started taking orders at 12am on May 13.

According to senior executives, it had stocked up between 80,000 and 1 lakh units expecting them to last for a few days, but they were sold out by mid-day on Wednesday. A Flipkart spokeswoman refused to comment on the number of devices sold but confirmed that it was "entirely sold out" at present.

Motorola Mobility didn't comment on the order volume, but company executives termed as positive the market response in the few markets where it is selling the product.

The Flipkart spokeswoman said the company was working with Motorola Mobility for fresh stocks. "Customers can book their Moto E with us now and we will start shipping in seven to 10 days," she said. The marketplace has started taking orders with the assurance of delivery within a week.

Senior executives at Motorola Mobility said the orders had surpassed their highest expectations and the US-based company was arranging for a "significant" number of devices to be arranged from China soon. Magnus Ahlqvist, corporate vice-president for Europe, Apac, Middle East & Africa, told reporters on Tuesday that it was better prepared this time, having experienced overwhelming demand and stock outage within hours of the launch of its first device, Moto G, in late 2013.

Customers have been more than eager to get their hands on the handset attracted by its features and attractive price tag, and the massive demand caused a temporary shutdown of Flipkart's website.

"Based on the phenomenal response saw with Moto G, we anticipated a big spike in midnight traffic for Moto E and we scaled up all our web services accordingly. But the pace at which the Moto E purchases shot up at midnight caused the checkout process to slow down for about 30 minutes," the spokeswoman said. Flipkart expanded capacity and got the website and mobile apps working at usual performance levels by 12:30 am Wednesday.

Motorola sells exclusively online via Flipkart in India and it plans to continue with the strategy even though off-line retailers are more than willing to sell its devices — Moto G, Moto X and Moto E
.

Moto E sales hit 80,000-1 lakh in less than a day

5/16/2014 09:51:00 pm TECHNOLOGY No comments

Moto E sales hit 80,000-1 lakh in less than a day

Flipkart had stocked between 80,000 and 1 lakh units expecting them to last for a few days, but they were sold out by mid-day on Wednesday.

Samsung to dump Android for Tizen in Galaxy Gear smartwatch: Report

5/16/2014 09:46:00 pm TECHNOLOGY No comments

Samsung to dump Android for Tizen in Galaxy Gear smartwatch: Report

It looks like the South Korean electronics giant will also update its first smartwatch, Galaxy Gear to run Tizen.

NEW DELHI: Samsung decided to ditch Android for Tizen for its new smartwatches and now, it looks like the South Korean electronics giant will also update its first smartwatch - Galaxy Gear to run the OS.

In line with reports that had come out in February suggesting that Samsung had decided to replace Android with Tizen on Galaxy Gear, online publication SamMobile has posted a video that features the watch running a test build of the OS.

Tizen is the Linux-based operating system developed under the leadership of Samsung and Intel.

While the watch will obviously not get the hardware features such as the universal remote control that its successor boasts of, it will get better battery life and access to Tizen apps. It may also bring features like sleep tracking that measures sleep patterns and a standalone music player. The original Gear was only capable of streaming music from a compatible Galaxy phone.

Samsung has not confirmed the exact time frame of the update's rollout.

The company is also expected to introduce a new Android smartwatch based on Android Wear, Google's recently announced OS for wearables. The OS is different from Samsung's Android-based OS that powers the Galaxy Gear.

Narendra Modi's victory tweet creates record

5/16/2014 09:43:00 pm GENERAL No comments

Narendra Modi's victory tweet creates record

NEW DELHI: On counting day, a tweet by BJP's prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, has broken all records in India becoming the most retweeted tweet ever in the country.

While the National Democratic Alliance is leading by a large margin as per current trends, Modi proclaimed victory with a tweet that says "India has won! भारत की विजय। अच्छे दिन आने वाले हैं।" (India has won! We're approaching the good days). At the time of writing this story, the tweet has been retweeted 39,742 times and favourited 21,691 times.

Twitter India's official account also confirmed that the tweet is indeed the most retweeted tweet ever from India.
It's worth pointing out that Twitter has played a major role in the Indian elections with candidates using it as a medium to reach out to voters and news organizations leveraging its capability to disseminate information and update users. Just a day ago, Twitter India had announced that more than 56 million election-related Tweets were tweeted from January 1 till May 12, in 2014.

Today's victory tweet has been retweeted almost 8 times more compared to Narendra Modi's other highly retweeted tweets. Modi's last highly retweeted tweet had registered 4842 retweets.

Earlier in the year, during the Oscars ceremony, host Ellen DeGeneres managed to set a retweet record with her star-studded selfie that caused a Twitter outage that lasted well over 20 minutes.

The tweet has been retweeted 3,42 million times retweets and favourited 2.02 million times, even breaking a record set by President Barack Obama's tweet with his picture hugging First Lady Michelle Obama after his re-election in 2012. That tweet had got merely 774,931 retweets.

Google already getting information take-down requests: Source

5/15/2014 12:01:00 pm TECHNOLOGY No comments

Google already getting information take-down requests: Source

Google is already getting requests to remove personal information from search results after Europe's top court ruled that subjects have "right to be forgotten," a source said.

SAN FRANCISCO: Google is already getting requests to remove objectionable personal information from its search engine after Europe's top court ruled that subjects have the "right to be forgotten," a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

The world's No. 1 internet search company has yet to figure out how to handle an expected flood of requests after Tuesday's ruling, said the source, who is not authorized to speak on the record about the issue.

The decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union, which affects the region's 500 million citizens, requires that internet search services remove information deemed "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant." Failure to do so can result in fines.

"There's many open questions," Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt said at the company's annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday in response to a question about the ruling and its implications on Google's operations.

"A simple way of understanding what happened here is that you have a collision between a right to be forgotten and a right to know. From Google's perspective that's a balance," Schmidt said. "Google believes having looked at the decision, which is binding, that the balance that was struck was wrong."

He was not asked about the recent take-down requests.

Google will need to build up an "army of removal experts" in each of the 28 European Union countries, including those where Google does not have operations, the source said. Whether those staffers merely remove controversial links or actually judge the merits of individual take-down requests are among the many questions Google has yet to figure out, the source said.

Europeans can submit take-down requests directly to internet companies rather than to local authorities or publishers under the ruling. If a search engine elects not to remove the link, a person can seek redress from the courts.

The criteria for determining which take-down requests are legitimate is not completely clear from the decision, said Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at the George Washington University and head of the National Constitution Center.

The ruling seems to give search engines more leeway to dismiss take-down requests for links to webpages about public figures, in which the information is deemed to be of public interest. But search engines may err on the side of caution and remove more links than necessary to avoid liability, said Rosen, a long-time critic of such laws. He was asked by Google to speak to reporters on Tuesday's ruling, but has no formal relationship with the company.

Search engines will also have to authenticate requests, he noted, to ensure that the person seeking a link's removal is actually the one he or she claims to be.

Google is the dominant search engine in Europe, commanding about 93% of the market, according to StatCounter global statistics. Microsoft's Bing has 2.4% and Yahoo has 1.7%.

Google has some experience dealing with take-down requests in its YouTube video website, which has a process to remove uploads that infringe copyrights. Google has automated much of the process with a ContentID system that automatically scans uploaded videos for particular content that media companies have provided to YouTube.

Google may be able to create similar technology to address the EU requirements, said BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis.

Even if Google does not automate the process, the extra cost of hiring staffers is likely to be insignificant to a company that generated roughly $60 billion in revenue last year, Gillis said. If Google were to pay staffers $15 an hour to process take-down requests, for example, the company could get a million hours of work for $15 million, he said. "It's the cost of doing business for them."

Google has said it is disappointed with the ruling, which it noted differed dramatically from a non-binding opinion by the ECJ's court adviser last year. That opinion said deleting information from search results would interfere with freedom of expression.

Yahoo is "carefully reviewing" the decision to assess the impact for its business and its users, a spokeswoman said in a statement. "Since our founding almost 20 years ago, we've supported an open and free internet; not one shaded by censorship."

Microsoft declined to comment
.

Worst breakfast options to start your day

5/15/2014 11:57:00 am HEALTH TIPS No comments

Worst breakfast options to start your day

Worst breakfast options to start your day (Thinkstock Photos/Getty Images)

We all know that breakfast is the most important meal for us. Eating a healthy breakfast every morning can reduce the risk for diseases such as cancer and diabetes. But do you know that some of the a.m. choices that we make is completely wrong. Here go the foods to avoid for breakfast.

Sugary cereals and bakery items
Some cereals are full of carbs and sugar. When you eat them, your blood sugar rapidly spikes and then comes down. It is not right to let your energy crash at the beginning of the day and hence it is best to avoid such cereals and bakery items. Instead, choose cereals with higher fiber and protein. Add flaxseed or walnuts for more of fiber and protein.

Packaged pancakes, donuts..
Packaged pancakes, donuts are sugar-coated or honey-coated and will only satisfy your sweet tooth. Do yourself and your waistline a favor and opt for a whole wheat toast with lite butter.

Store-bought granola
Most store-bought boxes of granola that might appear to be a health mixture of honey, sugar, oats and dried fruit actually contains lot of fat and calories. Many boxed granolas also contain lot of hidden sugar, unless you're reading labels and consciously buying an organic or natural variety made with simple sugars. Otherwise, you're basically eating dessert for breakfast.

Take-away sandwich
It may have the makings of a balanced breakfast—with egg, meat, cheese, and toast—but when you really break down that breakfast sandwich you're getting a greasy fried egg, processed ham or bacon and full fat cheese. Instead, make one at home using a poached egg and low fat cheese.

Smoothies
Smoothies are full of refined sugar. Most store-bought varieties contain full fat milk, or worse, cream, so it's really more of a dessert shake than a breakfast beverage. Instead, blend a healthy version at home using yogurt, almond or skim milk and fresh fruits and nuts
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Snapdeal to go public in 1-2 years: Co-founder Kunal Bahl

5/12/2014 07:38:00 am BUSINESS No comments

Snapdeal to go public in 1-2 years: Co-founder Kunal Bahl

Snapdeal co-founder Kunal Bahl

MUMBAI: Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, co-founders of online marketplace Snapdeal, have been the typical nimble-footed entrepreneurs not wary of changing business models. In a span of three years, they have traversed three different types of businesses and still not hit a home run. "But creating success was paramount for our venture," says Bahl, "which is what kept us going."

At the end of 2011, the two Delhi lads decided to move away from a fairly successful daily deals site - some called them the Groupon of India - to becoming a marketplace selling products ranging from mobile phones to televisions. The move was fraught with risks at a time when most e-tailers were inventory-led, but going the marketplace way really jump-started Jasper Infotech, which runs Snapdeal.com, into the big league. Today, Snapdeal locks horns with e-commerce biggie Flipkart, is nearing a billion dollars in sales, and targeting a US public float over the next year or so. But the turnaround was not easy.

Money Saver to Snapdeal

Bahl and Bansal started off in 2007 with Money Saver, a physical coupon book business that offered discounts to consumers across retail outlets. Bahl, having returned after graduating from Wharton, and Bansal, armed with an IIT-Delhi degree, found it tough to get their distribution in place, pushing them to transition from a physical format to mobile couponing. "We were not able to move the needle as offline businesses are very tough to scale up," Bahl, 32, says. The two kept going till the idea of starting a daily deals site struck them in January 2010. By now, they had already changed business models twice and then a third one beckoned.

That's when the change of name happened - from the Money Saver avatar to Snapdeal. They began as a local merchants' marketplace where restaurants, spas and salons could list their services. Within a year of its launch, it had over 10 million subscribers.

Vani Kola from Kalaari Capital, one of the early venture funds that invested in Snapdeal, says, "If you don't adapt and attempt to take big leaps, you will be a footnote in history at best. We never doubted them as entrepreneurs, else we wouldn't have been their first investor."

Daily deals to marketplace

Bahl says, "In order to build a large company, we had to command a bigger share of the consumer's wallet. The two of us had a very important decision to make: Should we stick to what we were already good at or start selling products through the marketplace, which was a different business altogether?" Bahl, says, at a time when

He is not only fighting domestic major Flipkart but even online retail's juggernaut Amazon in a three-way battle for supremacy of the fast-growing e-commerce market touted to touch $8 billion in size by 2016.

It has been more than two years since the pivot (an industry parlance for change in business model) from doing daily deals to becoming a marketplace. Today, Snapdeal boasts of over 5 million products from more than 30,000 sellers across the country. "We have seen a 600% growth in the last one year," Bahl claims.

Over 50% of sales on Mobile

Comparisons to Alibaba, in news for its much-ballyhooed US IPO valuing it at around $200 billion, have been rife. Going public just like its Chinese peer is something Snapdeal could explore after gaining substantial size. "We're building for the long term and, given our rapidly increasing scale, IPO is looking like a foreseeable path. It is likely to happen in the next 12-24 months," Bahl says.

Flipkart, too, has said an IPO is in the pipeline but a timeline has not been drawn up by its two founders Sachin and Binny Bansal.

Earlier this year, eBay increased its stake in Snapdeal to around 20%, leading a $134-million investment at a valuation topping $800 million, igniting takeover talks. Bahl says that's an unlikely scenario.

Operationally, Snapdeal has been expanding its reach and categories, making acquisitions, introducing services commerce by launching an education marketplace and strengthening last-mile delivery systems.

Mobile is another key focus area for the e-commerce player, just like its rivals, which contributed 5% of the overall transactions until eight months back, and is now over 50% of all transactions.

Sahara may exit finance business by December 2017

5/12/2014 07:35:00 am BUSINESS No comments

Sahara may exit finance business by December 2017

NEW DELHI: Faced with a tight cash flow, Sahara is contemplating to exit its finance business by December 2017and focus on retail, real estate, life insurance and mutual fund, its chief Subroto Roy has said in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The letter signed by his son Smanto Roy was sent to PM on April 15 after Roy had spent over one month in Tihar jail over its legal standoff with stock market regulator Securities & Exchange Board of India (Sebi).

"Sahara wants to go away totally from financial business to non-financial business. Had there not been the Sebi issue, we could have achieved this stage by 2015," the letter said."However, now plans are all in place, but cash flow has been badly beaten up. Nonetheless, if we are left in peace we shall definitely be done with the financial business maximum by December 2017," it said.

The Sahara India Pariwar, which has a net worth of Rs 68,174 crore, has been locked in a legal battle with Sebi over the issue of refunding of Rs 24,000 crore by its two companies — Sahara India Real Estate Corporation (SIREC) and Sahara Housing Investment Corporation (SHIC) — to investors from whom they had raised the money. Sebi says the funds were raised illegally.

The Supreme Court had ordered Sahara to refund the money raised from investors with interest. Roy has been sent to jail for his failure to comply with the top court's orders. He has been in Tihar jail since March 4. While the SC has given him bail, the company has been unable to meet the bail conditions so far.

Last year, the firm announced plans to expand into retail, luxury retail, diary and food business. The company says it plans to recruit 56,000 employees across sectors and provide employment to 4 lakh people in the next three years.

"From 2009, I totally concentrated on a new plan that is to promote non-financial business. My target was to switch over to non-financial business by the year 2015," said the letter, which was dictated to his son by Subroto Roy.

"But one has to go according to God's wish. From 2010, we got stuck with the Sebi OFCD issue. Cash flow went haywire. The year 2012 was the worst year as far as cash flow issue is concerned. Everything was out of control," the letter said.

It details the plans the company has put in place to shift its focus and enable the firm to provide jobs to its nearly 12 lakh employees.

"With the above plan having reached its optimum level, we shall be able to give respectable livelihood with a considerable growth opportunity to nearly 6-7 lakh people on salary basis. Around 4 lakh shall come in sales and most of them shall become franchisees," the letter said.

"We shall definitely very aggressively run Life insurance, mutual fund or may be housing finance and nothing else," the letter to the PM said, while urging that the company be allowed to execute its shift to non-finance business.

Smith and Faulkner steal epic heist

5/12/2014 07:26:00 am CRICKET No comments

Smith and Faulkner steal epic heist

Smith, along with Faulkner produced an astonishing partnership, scoring 65 runs off the last 17 balls of the match.

Chasing 191 was always going to need something special, and Rajasthan Royals got it from Steven Smith and James Faulkner, who is fast becoming the embodiment of the modern-day ice man. In a counter-attacking partnership of 85 in just 38 balls that came from the depths of 106 for 5, the Australian pair pulled RR out of the mire and completed a chase of 191 with seven deliveries remaining, leaving Royal Challengers Bangalore shell-shocked.

Smith finished not out on 48 off 21 balls and Faulkner unbeaten on 41 off 17, which included a stunning sequence of 6, 2, 4 and 6 that made a mockery of the situation. With this win, Royals moved to third on the IPL 7 leader board with 12 points.

How was it possible, you ask? That will take some answering, but after the defeat RCB captain Virat Kohli mumbled something about his bowlers not being able to hit any yorkers at the death. In truth, on a true batting surface encouraging hard-hitting and with small square boundaries the margin of error for the quicker bowlers was minimal, and RCB's trio of Mitchell Starc, Ashok Dinda and Varun Aaron bowled too many hit-me deliveries. It still required some special batting and Smith and Faulkner produced just that, finishing a match that looked out of their grasp with an astonishing partnership. The pair scored 65 runs off the last 17 balls of the match.

When the pair joined at the fall of Karun Nair for 56, the fourth wicket to fall to Yuvraj Singh, RR's asking rate had been in excess of 13. With four overs left, that jumped to past 16. No matter to Smith and Faulkner. Faulker smashed his Australia team-mate Starc for two fours and a six in the 17th, Smith hit Dinda for 23 off the 18th, and Faulkner completed a sensation five-wicket win with 17 in four balls from Aaron. It was unbelievable batting.

This amazing finish shoved into the background a memorable and pulsating all-round demonstration from Yuvraj, who had almost single-handedly left RCB on course for a win. In an all-round impact not seen since since the 2011 World Cup, Yuvraj blasted 83 off 38 balls to boost RCB to 190 for 5 and then derailed RR's chase with 4 for 35.

Joined at 40 for 3 following the wickets of Kohli (4), Chris Gayle (19) and Vijay Zol (16), Yuvraj and de Villiers put on 132 in 65 balls with the left-hander dominating. He began aggressively with three fours in first eight balls and from the offset favoured the legside heavily, sweeping and lofting with precision and power, and raised his second fifty of the season off 24 balls with a massive off Kane Richardson.

Loosening his shoulders after Yuvraj's assault on Shane Watson, AB de Villiers smashed Faulkner for successive sixes and sliced Richardson over extra cover for four, before Yuvraj slammed two sixes off the Australian quick in the same over. He fell trying to dump another over square leg for six, but de Villiers took two more sixes off Faulkner's 20th over to ensure a big target had been set. RCB scored 84 off the last five overs.

The Royals' chase was given a 54-run start from Nair and Ajinkya Rahane but unfolded with three wickets in 12 deliveries, two of them coming to Yuvraj in one over. Rahane (24) fell to the first delivery of the eighth over, cutting Yuzvendra Chahal into Parthiv Patel's gloves. Watson entered at No 3 with the asking rate inching towards 11 and departed after five balls, bowled when trying to cut Yuvraj. Three balls later, Stuart Binny's brain fade resulted in a catch out to deep extra cover with Yuvraj bellowing in celebration. From 54 for 0, RR were 63 for 3.

Yuvraj pocketed a third when Sanju Samson popped back a simple return catch, and completed his spell by bowling Nair for 56, meaning that RR had lost half their side with 106 on the board. Then came an unforgettable alliance from two outstanding Australian cricketers.

Brief scores: Royal Challengers Bangalore 190 for 5 in 20 overs (Yuvraj Singh 83, AB de Villiers 58) lost to Rajasthan Royals 191 for 5 in 18.5 overs (Karun Nair 56, Steven Smith 48*, James Faulkner 21*, Yuvraj 4/35) by five wickets.

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