With more than 3,000 tech start-ups, India is the fourth largest base for young businesses in the world and it is expected that by 2020 the base will increase to 11,500 tech start-ups. This along with other interesting findings were revealed in ‘Tech Start-up in India: A Bright Future’ a study report by National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) and Zinnov. The report suggests that the Indian start-ups with their unique solutions are witnessing increased traction in global whitespace opportunities such as Internet of Things, augmented realty, smart hardware, BI and many more.
With technology spreading its wings into different domains, ‘Domain+Tech’ solutions are taking over other trends. The emerging niche technology solutions are primarily focused on Ad-tech, Edu-tech, Health-tech, Agri-tech and many more. Geographically, Bangalore and National Capital Region (NCR) tops the chart for being home to maximum number of young businesses.
The findings also highlight that many trends are maturing in the ecosystem, especially funding aspect. Multiple and easily accessible platform like VC/PE, angel investors, incubators, financial institutes and even banks, are the driving force for the same. In fact, during 2010-2014 timeframe close to US$3 billion is expected to be invested in Indian start-ups.
Commenting on the new evolution of the ecosystem, Rajat Tandon, Senior Director, NASSCOM 10,000 Startups, added that “These latest findings clearly indicate the beginning of the golden era for young tech-based businesses, where opportunities for growth are much larger than the challenges in the ecosystem. We are proud to be once again at the cutting edge in helping to support a growing niche within this field, and we are excited to ink new partnerships as we close the year to accelerate our efforts in that direction.”
NASSCOM’s 10,000 Start-ups program has successfully paved way for 3 inevitable trends that are shaping the Indian economy with the potential to shake things up: Digitalization, faster innovation cycles, and the rise of young, ambitious talent. Start-ups are both a consequence and an accelerating catalyst of these trends. It’s exciting to be here, but we have much to do. This ecosystem is growing in scale and strength and as we move forward, we are focused towards domain specific strategic partnerships to drive it to the next level of maturity in FY 2015.
1. The Program is partnering with AstroLabs Dubai, to navigate Indian Tech Startups to the MENA region. This association will give a tangible edge to support tech entrepreneurs emerging from the 10,000 Start-ups program, both with the physical space and with formal training programs.
2. The Program’s partnership with ValPro, an investment banking and financial advisory services to leverage a web based platform “Enablers” which facilitates start-ups and SME’s to connect with HNI’s, Angels, and VC’s for fund raising. It is a tool that makes entrepreneurs investor-ready and handhold them through various stages of fund raising.
3. The Program inked another association with CampusEAI Consortium, a leader in the world of higher education information technology services. CampusEAI EduTech Venture Fund invests in early stage enterprise software, Internet and mobile companies that target the education market or companies created from intellectual property technology transfer from colleges and universities.
4. To support early-stage companies in Healthcare and Life-sciences domain, we partnered with Escape Velocity Accelerator to review applications for selecting entrepreneurs into its incubation program.
“The EduTech Venture Fund has successfully funded eight early stage start-ups in the education industry and we are in search of our next round of investments," states Anjli Jain, CEO of CampusEAI and Managing Director of CampusEAI's EduTech Venture Fund. “Our partnership with NASSCOM’s 10,000 Start-ups program gives us an opportunity to expand our portfolio and existing investments in India-based start-ups and provide early-stage entrepreneurs with the mentorship, guidance and funds they require to be successful. We look forward to working with NASSCOM and accelerating the mission of the 10,000 Start-ups initiative."
“We look forward to welcoming members of 10,000 Startups at AstroLabs Dubai, enabling their expansion into the growing Middle Eastern market and providing direct access to a region that has the highest smartphone penetration in the world." said, Muhammed Mekki, Founding Partner, AstroLabs.
The 28th International Conference on VLSI Design & the 14th International Conference on Embedded Systems, one of India’s largest and longest running technical conference was inaugurated here today. The conference focussed on the central theme, “IoT: Building a Smart Connected World.”
The conference also hosted industry’s First IoT-Ideathon, a 60 - hour long event, in which over 100 participants consisting of students and young professionals are putting their creative minds together to architecting 25 new and innovative applications in IoT.
The inaugural lamp was lit by Nandan Nilekani, Former Chairman, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) who also delivered the theme address on the topic, Hour glass architectures for IoT Era. Also participating in the inauguration ceremony were Guest of Honour, Janardhan Swamy, Former MP, Chitradurga, along with Vishwani Agarwal, Steering Committee Chair & Professor, Auburn University, Satya Gupta, General Co-Chair - VLSID 2015 & CEO Concept2Silicon, Kumud Srinivasan, General Co-Chair - VLSID 2015 & President, Intel India and Jaswinder Ahuja, Corporate VP, Cadence.
In his address, “Nandan Nilekani, Former Chairman, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) said, “Sensor technology and the “Internet of Things” is at the cusp of transforming many sectors from healthcare to the smart management of cities. This is an opportunity to 'leapfrog' on developmental solutions. The right platforms will combine standards with the innovative energy of our young entrepreneurs. I am confident that this conference will advance this mission”.
Addressing the delegates, Kumud Srinivasan, General Co-Chair - VLSID 2015 & President, Intel India, said, “It is exciting to host a platform that has brought together all key partners of the eco-system - industry, government and academia – and to witness their support & commitment to the innovation and creation of technologies for a smart, connected world. This conclave also marks impressive participation from young innovators, scientists and researchers. The future of the eco-system rests on their shoulders. And so we very much appreciate and encourage their focus and dedication to finding technology solutions to interesting societal challenges.”
Highlighting the pivotal role of IOT, Satya Gupta, Co-chair- VLSID 2015 & CEO of Concept2Silicon said, “IoT is on the verge of transforming every aspect of life with solutions that can accelerate India in domains like smart cities, agriculture, security, healthcare, energy, education to name a few. IoT in combination with sensors and wearables herald enormous opportunities for fundamental research in chip design, system engineering, new materials, sensors, communication, embedded software and various allied fields.”
According to a Frost and Sullivan report, by the year 2020, there would be an estimated 80 billion connected devices. Furthermore as per a Cisco Ventures report this will be a market of over than $10 trillion by 2022. India would be a $10 billion market.
The VLSI 2015 Conference hosted over 1,000 delegates from around the world consisting of policy and decision makers, business leaders, technology professionals, academia and students. Over a hundred research papers and 17 tutorials will be presented, besides 15 keynote presentations and panel discussions by senior leaders of industry and academia.
About the 28th International Conference on VLSI Design & 14th International Conference on Embedded Systems - www.vlsidesignconference.org
2015 Predictions of Karan Bajwa, Managing Director, Microsoft India.
Cloud adoption is no longer a technology buzzword tossed around in company corridors. It’s mainstream now than ever before and to be on the cloud is today every business’ priority. Cloud is real and businesses of all sizes are leveraging it across the globe and in India. Microsoft is the leader in cloud technology. It is not surprising that 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies run Microsoft’s cloud platform, and this is a trend that cuts across industries and geographies. The latest innovations in cloud computing are making business applications more mobile and collaborative. As this proliferates more, Cybersecurity will continue to emerge as a dominant focus area in 2015. In addition, newer technologies like Internet of Things and Machine learning will catch the imagination of business.
Organizations in India have already started to move in this direction. Covacsis Technologies, a provider of plant management systems for manufacturing companies, recently launch an Intelligent Plant Framework (IPF) that brings Internet of Things to the shop floor - for process and discrete manufacturing.
Modern technologies would impact the SMBs and consumers alike and make access to information possible at all times. These will also make processes efficient and drives customer satisfaction. Gartner predicts that by 2016-end, mobile digital assistants will be solely responsible for more than $2 billion in online shopping, globally. Work is already underway with early adopters like Ezetap, which launched their Point-of-Sale (POS) solution on Windows to meet customer demand.
Cloud services like Office 365 will enable professionals and individuals to be more productive. It will help organizations to support a truly mobile workforce that is geographically spread in a secure and efficient manner. For instance, Pricol, an automobile ancillary company, headquartered in Coimbatore, has secured its IP and sensitive data with Office 365.
In summary, we see the following trends dominating 2015:
Predictions for Large Businesses:
1. Internet of Things will go mainstream
2. Businesses will strengthen cybersecurity
3. Machine learning will give businesses a leg up on the competition
Predictions for Small and Medium Businesses:
1. SMBs will start leveraging Internet of Things
2. Niche apps and mobile payment will go mainstream
3. SMBs will capitalize on Big Data for business decisions.
Nuance Communications, Inc. has announced that Tata Sky, the leading direct to home operator in India, has deployed Nuance’s speech recognition technology in their contact centre. Customers calling into the contact centre can now speak naturally, in English, Hindi and ten additional Indian languages, to resolve their questions or be routed to the appropriate customer service representative.
Tata Sky has a widespread network, providing over 270+ channels and Interactive services Pan India. Previously, customers calling into the contact centre would have to navigate through lengthy menu prompts to be routed to the appropriate agent to handle their question, causing unnecessarily long call times. Tata Sky turned to Nuance to implement speech recognition technology into their Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system so that callers could simply state the reason for their call. A popular service provided by Tata Sky is allowing customers to simply say the name of a movie and the desired time for viewing in order to watch a Showcase movie. This process is now completely automated and saves customers from having to wait to speak to an agent to order a Showcase movie, reducing unnecessary call transfers and allowing agents to answer more complex queries.
Harit Nagpal, the CEO & Managing Director of Tata Sky, said: “We wanted to provide our customers with a convenient experience that provided them with the service they desired quickly and eliminated the need to wait for an agent. We looked to Nuance’s solutions because of Nuance’s ability to service our customers in English, Hindi and ten additional Indian languages as well as the robustness of the solution in terms of handling calls quickly and efficiently. Nuance’s professional services helped us to build a solution that integrated well with our current system and mapped well with our business processes. This deployment has successfully impacted the customer experience at Tata Sky.”
“Tata Sky’s IVR speech implementation has given them a real advantage when it comes to servicing their customers, setting them apart from the competition,” said Sunny Rao, General Manager, India & ASEAN, Nuance. “Speech recognition allows customers to have an experience that exceeds expectations. Customers can now receive service how and when they want, by choosing their preferred language and speaking conversationally.”
HP has unveiled HP Haven OnDemand, an important milestone in its Big Data strategy that gives organizations of all sizes cloud-based access to key components of HP’s world class analytics platform.
HP Haven OnDemand, which runs on the HP Helion cloud, enables customers to analyze all forms of data, including business data, machine data, and unstructured, human information. Developers can also leverage this innovative web service, as well as engage with a robust and growing community to create next-generation applications and services.
“Thomson Reuters is the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals; we deliver critical information via a combination of innovative technology and industry expertise,” said Chris Blatchford, Director, Business Operations – Platform Group Thomson Reuters (@thomsonreuters). “For a recent hackathon event, we utilized HP’s Haven OnDemand platform to produce several innovative new applications over an incredibly short amount of time. In particular HP IDOL OnDemand’s intuitive interface and wide array of API’s allowed our developers to ‘think big’ and realize their vision.”
HP also announced that it will embed its unique Haven assets deeper into the HP Software application portfolio with new offerings that leverage Big Data analytics to help businesses transform their IT operations, power information governance and compliance, and achieve greater levels of information security.
Empowering the Entire Enterprise with Data Discovery and Next-Gen Applications. HP Haven is a powerful platform that allows organizations to put data and insights at the core of their business, transforming every aspect of an enterprise, from the data center to mobile, customer-facing applications at the edge. With HP Haven OnDemand, customers, partners, and developers can tap into key components of the HP Haven Enterprise platform to gain blazing fast insights, rapid time to value and analytic functionality on all types of data, within minutes.
The launch of several initiatives by the new Government, changing sentiments around corruption and an intense regulatory push made 2014 a watershed year for India. Corporate India seemingly followed suit, propagating good governance but at the same time, struggling to stay compliant. The general disposition of industry leaders’ points toward increased awareness around risks related fraud, bribery & corruption; but there is still immense ground to cover. Arpinder Singh, Partner and National Leader, Fraud Investigation & Dispute Services, EY India lists five key trends that organizations should look out for in 2015 as they move toward a more transparent and ethical way of doing business.
Corporate India to overpower ethical dilemmas
The introduction of several regulatory changes such as the Companies Act 2013, revised SEBI guidelines, Lokpal Bill have demonstrated the government’s commitment to weave a more ethical business fabric. These changes, which can be attributed to a more globalised environment, have been strategically outlined for enhancing the state of corporate governance. Throughout the last year, organizations have been inducted into the new norms, made efforts to imbibe sound governance practices in their corporate DNA, including roadmaps to compliance. Given the legal implications that could arise out of flouting rules, companies have been assessing the moral standards of their employees and laying down expected behaviour in form of comprehensive codes of ethics/conduct. A recent survey conducted by EY’s Fraud Investigation & Dispute Services practice on the public perception on anti-bribery and corruption revealed that a strong majority, 87% stated their willingness to blow the whistle if they witness some unethical activity. However, 94% of the respondents still believe that greater enforceability is required. We can expect to witness greater regulatory enforcement in 2015, with the government coming down heavily on companies not complying with the regulations (may also amount to penalties being levied).
Protecting the portfolio
PEs and VCs have continued to bet big on Indian entrepreneurial ventures, anticipating bigger return on investments. So while the ‘India innovation’ story is still going strong, some investors did end up burning their fingers in recent deals. This has made them more cautious than ever before. In 2015, it is expected that PEs will closely monitor their investments through increased due diligence – not just before but also post investment. Their approach to gauge the feasibility and sustainability of the venture will go beyond just weighing the business plan – and they will evaluate the credibility and depth of the ‘new age’ entrepreneurs. This will enable building a strong ethical foundation so the venture continues to progress as it achieves scalability.
Issues around rising NPAs in corporate loans
The financial services sector has been under intense regulatory and media scrutiny with the rapid increase in Non-Performing Assets (NPA) in 2014. Questions have been raised around the reasons behind these mounting cases – are they business decisions which went askew; were there any mala fide intentions; and is the lending and monitoring business conducted with integrity? The general sentiment with bankers seems to focus on enhancing internal controls around NPA reporting and monitoring. In 2015, it will be prudent to invest more resources to proactively handle stressed accounts through independent borrower checks, leverage technology & data analytics to catch early warning signals, develop internal skill sets on credit assessment and evaluation etc. These will play an instrumental role in easing the banker’s life.
Government impetus on transparency
For this first time in 18 years, India fared better as compared to China in the Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International. Moving up by 10 places, it stands at 85 in the 2014 rankings which is a marked improvement in perception. Changes undertaken in the regulatory framework such as the Public-Interest Litigation (PIL), Right to Information Act (RTI, Companies Act 20`3 and the Jan Lokpal Act reflects the sentiment shift from the India Shining story to ‘Ache Din’. On the back of these changes, the government has also undertaken multiple initiatives such as ‘Make in India’, ’Invest in India’, ‘Digital India’, opening up of foreign investment in new sectors and amendments in labour laws. These initiatives are game-changers from the perspective of delivery of pro-citizen good governance which is a synchronised and coordinated engagement of the entire government. In the coming year, the government’s propaganda toward driving transparency within corporate India through pending anti-corruption bills (Prevention of Bribery Bill, updating of the Anti-Corruption Bill, Whistle-blowers' Protection Bill etc.) will see precedence. We expect to see an increase in the enforcement of anti-bribery and anti-corruption regulations with stringent measures.
Increased litigation and disputes
India has emerged as a strategic and cut throat market. To create a level playing field, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) has stepped in with an agenda to sustain competitiveness but at the same time, reduce instances of companies abusing their dominant positions. It is also opening up to arbitration being a cost-effective and swift mechanism for dispute settlement. There has been an increasing rise in institutional arbitration compared to ad hoc arbitrations; inclusion of arbitration clause will also continue to be an essential part of contracts to expedite resolutions. Going forward, litigations and disputes are expected to see an increase with organizations vying for a bigger slice of the market pie in their respective sectors. The use of e-Discovery will be critical in litigations as costs will need to be managed prudently. The introduction of electronically stored information in legal procedures will bring a new era of litigation, one which would not have businesses cut corners.
Juniper Networks , a industry player in network innovation, today unveiled its first ever Global Bandwidth Index Report, which explores differences between how people use mobile Internet connectivity in their day-to-day lives at work and at home and what they hope to achieve using their connected devices in the future.
Juniper Networks commissioned the independent firm Wakefield Research to survey 5,500 adults in developed markets, comprising Australia, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, which are typically moving quickly to implement high bandwidth Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks capable of delivering mobile services up to 100 times faster than older networks. Wakefield also sampled consumers in emerging markets, comprising Brazil, China, India and South Africa, where networks tend to be slower and less reliable.
The study reveals that twice as many people in developing countries regularly use connected devices for educational purposes as compared to those in developed markets. In India, for example, 45 percent of people surveyed say connectivity has fundamentally changed how they access textbooks, complete coursework or use teaching tools, compared with just 7 percent in Japan.
Further, access to the Internet plays a crucial role in the professional environment of an individual in India, as 69 percent of the respondents indicated poor and / or lack of connectivity had an impact on their professional opportunities. The study also reveals that 55 percent of respondents have experienced a significant improvement in their earning power due to connectivity in India.
The Global Bandwidth Index Report also yielded the following key findings for India:
Emerging Satisfaction
Consumers in developing markets are significantly more satisfied with their networks than their counterparts in developed countries, a surprising result given that network speed and reliability tend to be slower and less reliable in the developing world.
* Respondents in the study gave India an “A+” grade (A being the highest and F, the lowest) in the matter of connectivity satisfaction, while the U.K. and Japan received an “F” grade.
* 58 percent of respondents in India are satisfied with the current Internet connection. That being said, the majority (63 percent) of the respondents feel that speed still keeps them from fully utilizing the mobile connectivity capabilities.
* 48 percent of the respondents state security concerns as a reason for mobile connectivity capability utilization being low.
