Tech giant Microsoft on Wednesday launched a new programme Microsoft AI Innovate for nurturing and scaling start-ups that are leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI). The 10-week initiative will support start-ups in India leveraging AI technologies, helping them scale operations, drive innovation, and build industry expertise. Both B2B and B2C start-ups from various industries, including financial services, healthcare, education, agriculture, space, manufacturing and logistics, retail, and e-commerce can participate in the quarterly cohorts of this programme.
Their startup investments number 13 so far, compared to 17 deals in 2020.
An entrepreneur-friendly environment in India could lead to the next Microsoft or Google emerging from domestic shores.
The alliance combines capabilities of both the companies to offer a set of solutions comprising connectivity, computing, storage solutions, and other technology services and applications required by Indian businesses, and will span the broad Reliance Industries ecosystem, including its existing and new businesses.
Nine companies incubating at StartupVillage have made it to the second round of Nasscoms flagship programme to support 10,000 technology startups across India.
Altman said he was "looking forward" to returning to his previous role at the AI firm.
The TIME 100 AI list is an interesting assortment of titans. Indians make up about 20 per cent of the coveted list, which is pretty commendable, notes Sandeep Goyal.
Nadella was in India last December.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella loves cricket like most Indians. But ask him to choose between Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli, he is stumped. During a fireside chat, Microsoft India president Anant Maheshwari asked Nadella to choose between Kohli and Tendulkar.
Mobile application vulnerability detection start-up, Appknox is in talks to raise funds from Singapore-based Jungle Ventures, along with a slew of angel investors including Google India head Rajan Anandan.
Regulators must learn from past mistakes and act swiftly to prevent Big Tech from monopolising the AI ecosystem, argue Payal Malik and Nikita Jain.
'We are looking at the next target which is to be a $1 billion ARR firm in the next 4-5 years.'
We asked colleagues, present and past, to reflect on a man who has made such a difference to their lives and careers. Here it is then, a rich collection of memories that offer enchanting glimpses of the enigmatic Ajit Balakrishnan.
E-commerce is awash in money, raising concerns about whether this is just another unsustainable internet trend headed for a bust.
Email sent from these addresses is supported by leading service providers like Gmail and Microsoft
Flipkart eyes another $500 mn from eBay, which seeks to merge India ops with it and exit business
An initiative of Nandan Nilekani's EkStep Foundation, people+ai on Tuesday unveiled its vision for the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in India, dubbed 'Adbhut India' (Amazing India). It aims to harness AI as a powerful tool to enhance the lives of all Indians. The event marked the rollout of several initiatives by people+ai that are focused on discovering, demonstrating, and disseminating population-scale AI use cases for India.
If you are interested in working with OpenAI, feel free to email Sam Altman. In a free-wheeling fireside chat with university students on Thursday in Delhi, the CEO of OpenAI and his team seemed eager to welcome bright young IT practitioners of India into the OpenAI work space. Asked about the steep degree requirements for applying to tech giants such as Microsoft and Google, Altman said that his company was open to hiring undergraduates and even college drop-outs.
After startups and Big Tech, the layoff season may have begun at the $245 billion Indian information-technology (IT) industry. Bengaluru-based IT major Wipro is looking to cut hundreds of jobs, targeting mid-level employees working onsite as the company looks to improve margins, according to a media report, citing two sources. The company has said it is aligning its business and talent to the changing market environment.
Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella on Tuesday said there is a tremendous momentum in cloud adoption, as he termed cloud a "big game changer". Nadella, who is currently in India, addressed Microsoft Future Ready Leadership Summit in Mumbai on Tuesday. He is also scheduled to visit Delhi and Bengaluru this week, and will be meeting key customers, startups, developers, educators and students during his India visit.
Businesses of various scales can improve productivity and affordability of their products and services by building tech intensity, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said. Nadella noted that organisations globally are undergoing digital transformation amid the COVID pandemic, and that trends like hybrid work, hyperconnected business and multi-cloud environments require "a boundaryless digital ecosystem where trust between different parties needs to be established in real-time". "Digital technology is a powerful deflationary force in an inflationary economy. Businesses - small and large - can improve their productivity as well as the affordability of their products and services by building tech intensity," he said.
'Students of Tier-II and Tier III engineering colleges in the south may find 2023 to be one of the toughest years for getting jobs.'
Dubbed WorkMail, it will launch in Q2
Unique benefits, work-life balance, and fair share of profits were the top three areas where MNCs fared better over Indian companies
Postman, a leading application programming interface platform, has secured $225 million in a Series D round, placing its valuation at $5.6 billion. With this, Postman has emerged as the most-valued software-as-a-service (SaaS) firm started by Indian founders, overtaking web and mobile testing firm BrowserStack, which was valued at $4 billion in June. The valuation of the San Francisco-headquartered firm with offices in Bengaluru, where it was founded, has almost trebled in just about one year and risen multi-fold since 2019. Postman, with team members spread across four continents, had secured $150 million in a Series C investment round led by Insight Partners at a $2-billion valuation last summer.
Flipkart, the e-commerce company owned by Walmart, is intensifying its efforts to achieve profitability as it is eyeing a valuation of approximately $60 billion at the time of its initial public offering (IPO), now planned in 2025-2026, instead of this year, according to people familiar with the matter. The firm might consider listing in the US or any other geography, including India. The company, which counts the likes of Amazon and Reliance's JioMart among its competitors in India's burgeoning e-commerce market, had also contemplated launching an IPO in 2022-2023.
In the last 12 months, over 7,500 Indians have applied for a resident permit.
Sriram Krishnan, an Indian-origin technology executive, is "helping out" Twitter's new owner Elon Musk as he revamps the social media giant following its acquisition by the billionaire entrepreneur.
Stating that India has some brands that have already well established, Nadella said there was stunning cross section of starts ups in the country.
GenNext Innovation Hub is also pursuing a new global partnership program to collaborate with organizations in US, Europe and Asia.
How many of the apps downloaded in India deliver the GPT technology they say they are?
The idea that technology and startups with newer business models will not disrupt traditional businesses has been thrown out the window.
$47.6 bn capital invested across 921 deals in India in 2020, despite pandemic.
The Microsoft chief's comments come in the wake of Bill Gates' call for levying taxes on robots that take away jobs from people.
'Artificial intelligence works best on unstructured data. And no other country has the amount of unstructured data like India has.'
It was four employees who believed in their young founder, and did everything they could to make the tech startup FusionCharts what it is today.
Wipro, has set up a venture capital (VC) fund that will look at investing in early-to-middle stage technology start-ups globally.
IT body Nasscom has helped four start-ups raise funding of Rs 40 lakh as part of its programme to help entrepreneurs turn their ideas into successful businesses.
Reliance Jio, together with partners, has tested its 5G solutions in India, successfully demonstrating speeds of over 1 GBPS, and its 'Made in India' solution is "globally competitive", RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani said on Thursday. Ambani also exuded confidence that the company will be the first to launch full-fledged 5G services in the country. Jio is not just working to make India '2G-mukt' (free from 2G) but also '5G-yukt' (5G empowered), he added. Jio's engineers have developed a 100 per cent home-grown and comprehensive 5G solution that is fully cloud native, software defined, and digitally managed.
Anandan, also an investor in multiple start-ups, is slated to join venture fund Sequoia Capital.
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