Soon E-commerce Platforms In India Could Sell Mutual Funds

The e-commerce boom in the country has boosted Sebi's moral to use the boom to its advantage by pushing its plan to use the e-commerce platforms for distribution of mutual fund scheme into action. The main aim behind the step is to increase the penetration of mutual funds across India.

According to Sebi (Securities and Exchange Board of India) chief U K Sinha, a committee formed under the aegis of Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani is currently looking into how these e-commerce platforms can be used to sell mutual fund schemes in the country. The committee is expected to soon file its report on the same.

In addition to all this, the markets regulator is also working on bringing some changes into the current rules for rating agencies so as to bring in better disclosure in the ratings industry.

Speaking at the industry body Ficci's annual capital markets conference, Sinha said, Sebi is looking into the processes being followed by ratings agencies in the country when they rate companies.

Sebi has been involved in an ongoing dialogue with these ratings agencies since the questionable default of Amtek Auto, an auto ancillary company, that massively impacted investors in one of the foreign mutual funds.

"We had dialogues with ratings agencies and you can expect additional guidelines soon," said Sinha.

The market regulator is also contemplating looking into the regulations guiding debentures trustees, their disclosure structures especially how investors are informed.

Sebi is currently waiting for the Nilekani committee's report, following which it will issue rules that will allow e-commerce platforms to sell mutual funds.

"Hopefully in the next couple of months we will be coming out with a new set of regulations for distribution of mutual fund products," said Sebi's chief.

Indicating at the penetration of mutual fund investments in India, he termed it as "not a happy situation." According to him, the regulator's mission is to make buying and selling mutual funds as "easy and cost effective" as possible. The market regulator is hopeful that with the introduction of e-commerce platforms for mutual fund distribution, it will be able to bring about an entirely new paradigm in distribution of mutual funds.

It Takes 29 days To Start A New Business in India, Says World Bank

Yesterday the whole country went Gaga over how India has jumped 12 positions in a period of just one year in the World Bank's 'Doing Business 2016' report. Acquiring the 130th position among 189 economies, the country's this year ranking was a major improvement from its 142nd spot in the year 2014, which was later revised to 134 this year after data corrections.

Later, It dramatically turned out that India never moved 12 spots over last year.

The World Bank's website clarified that India only jumped 4 places, from 134 in 2015 to 130 in 2016. A dramatic change in methodology has meant that the ranking for 2015-a dismal 142-- was updated to reflect a new measurement philosophy. Based on data available as of June 2014 that changed the 142 rank to 130. This further implies that the substantial 8-point jump last year was updated to reflect the ease of doing business of policies implemented by the government in place till June 2014: 11 months of the UPA and 1 month of the current NDA government.

The overall rankings have been calculated on the basis of ten factors, which are-- registering property (138), getting credit (42), dealing with construction permits (183), getting electricity (70), protecting minority investors (8), paying taxes (157), enforcing contracts (178), trading across borders (133), resolving insolvency (136) and starting a business (155th rank).

While everything seems hunky dory from outside, India still has a long way to go when compared to other world powers. Even though India's ranking has improved to 155 from 164 in the year 2014 in terms of starting a business. It still takes 29 days and over 12 procedures to begin a venture in the country.

[cp_quote style="quote_normal_dark"]As per data collected for the report, 'Starting a business in India requires 12.90 procedures, takes 29 days, costs 13.50 per cent of income per capita and requires paid-in minimum capital of 0 per cent of income per capita.[/cp_quote]

Getting construction permits is still a fight for Indian entrepreneurs as the country's position in terms of getting construction permits marginally improved to 183 from 2014's ranking of 184. In terms of getting electricity, the ranking saw a jump of almost 30 positions to 70 from 99 in 2014.

REcent policies implemented by the government, the World Bank said, of forcing entrepreneurs to deposit Rs 100,000 to incorporate a new company have been done away with. That move brings India in line with the 105 countries out of 189 in the Doing Business ranking that have no minimum paid-in capital requirement.

Elaborating on the front of getting electricity, the report said, the utility in Delhi has made the whole process of getting a power connection much faster and simpler as it has eliminated the internal wiring inspection by the Electrical Inspectorate. Talking about Mumbai, it said, "The utility in Mumbai reduced the procedures and time required to connect to electricity by improving internal work processes and coordination."

Everything wasn't an upward movement for India. The country's rank tanked on two fronts - paying taxes and getting credit. India's position declined to 157 from 156 in terms of paying taxes and on the getting credit front, it declined to 42 from 36 last year.

In the light of the recent government's efforts to boost trade and business in India, how do we fare in the list next year, will be a thing to see.

Meet Vulcantronics, A Delhi Startup That Developed An Automated Cocktail Making Machine

[caption id="attachment_102192" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Team Vulcatronics, Makers of Barsys - An automated cocktail dispensing machine[/caption]

A New Delhi based startup called Vulcantronics has committed itself to building a future for technology and improving world's lifestyle.

Having spent all its time on Research and Development of products, Vulcantronics has been able to give birth to some amazing products till now.

One of its products, Barsys, is an automated cocktail dispenser which acts as a great tool for bar-tenders to cater to the needs of their customers. It can even function as your own personal bar-tender at your home/office. An android based interface ensures that the customers can choose/customize from over 1000 cocktails and even neat drinks.





Barsys has an android based interface which ensures that the customers can choose/customize from over 1000 cocktails and even neat drinks.



The idea for the startup first came to the mind of its founder Akshet Tewari, a Mechatronics Engineer from Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal. During the course of his degree, he realised that there was one common problem being faced during family parties, office get-togethers and college parties. The problem was that of a perfect cocktail and mocktail making machine. Hiring a bar-tender would be too expensive and moreover even if you did get a bar-tender, it didn't guarantee you great cocktails. That is when this idea of automated cocktail/mocktail dispensing machine struck him.

Since Barsys is a party regular, a special effort has been made to give it that stylish and attractive look for parties.

According to the startup, Barsys has been developed keeping human factors in mind. The startup has gone through several prototyping stages in order to bring out the best finished product.

The machine is very simple and user friendly. Once a user places the glass in the glass tray and chooses a drink, the glass tray moves linearly and collects the drink from different stations. It can prepare cocktail, mocktail and also dispense neat drinks as per the requirements of the user. Further, the Alcohol bottles are mounted on to the machine in an inverted manner. So, when a drink is dispensed, the air bubbles in bottle bring the awe factor. Inventory management, power failure safe, quick drinks are some of the other features of the machine.

The startup has already started taking B2B orders for Barsys. It plans to launch it for the consumers during Diwali this year.

Delhi-based mShipper Is A Crowdsourced Delivery Platform Delivering Packages In Real Time

Hasn't watching Transporter's Jason Statham, ever made you wonder what if you could also have the luxury of delivering things and making your livelihood based on your own schedule. How cool with that be? Well, not only have some youngsters wondered about this, they have actually put their plan into action and given birth to a crowdsourced delivery platform called mShipper.

Based in New Delhi, the delivery platform aims to connect senders and Freelance Shippers to send and deliver packages in real time. It is a technology oriented platform built on Asp.Net MVC4.0 Platform running on Windows Servers.

In order to win the trust of senders, the startup has an integrated unique pick up and delivery passcode authentication system in place.

All the Freelance Shippers and Senders are required to get verified via a 3 Layer Verification Process i.e. Mobile, documents and Physical Verification.

Nowadays with our loved ones living far off for career, personal reasons, it becomes a real struggle to find an effective and reliable way to get small parcel/packages delivered in a day/few hours/even in minutes either to local/national/International destinations. mShipper promises to take all our above mentioned troubles away. Unlike the quintessential courier service providers that we usually depend on to deliver our packages, mShipper claims to be different as it has Real time GPS enabled tracking and a Pay Per Delivery model to offer to its customers.

The unique startup has been able to get more than 100 registered, verified and active freelance Shippers, within the first week of its Beta version launch.

[caption id="attachment_102180" align="aligncenter" width="626"] Founding team of mShipper[/caption]

The Fantastic Four behind this fantastic delivery platform are Ranvijay Singh, CEO & Co-Founder, Saurav Sagar, COO & Co-Founder, Vishwa Bhaskar, CMO & Co-Founder and Kamlesh Kr. Chaurasiya, CFO.

Ranvijay is a Commerce Graduate From Delhi University and has over five years of working experience in the Business Development and Marketing Segments. Saurav, on the other hand, has done Masters in Computer Application and has worked with renowned companies like IBM & MacMillan. Vishwa is IIM Lucknow Alumni and is currently taking care of Marketing & Strategies in mShipper. The fourth wheel,Kamlesh is Chartered Accountant by Profession and has got great an experience in Finance and Taxation. He is handling all the Financial issues in mShipper currently.

Having received a seed funding of INR 50 Lacs from Delhi-based angel investor Vijai Laxmi, the startup aims to expand its operations from current Delhi & NCR region to more Metro cities within this Financial Year 2015-2016.

So now when you want to get any of your precious Diwali packages delivered to your family members or relatives, you know whom to contact to.

Locality App NearFox Provides Crowdsourced News & Happennings of Your Neighbourhood

In this 21st century, we're so consumed by our own self paced lives that we rarely come to know what's going around in our very own neighborhood. Sure, there are times when we all have planned to quit everything on a Saturday and go out and get to know the world around but seldom are we able to trade a comfy day lazing around in our bed and put that plan into action. If you're also one of these, who always had the urge but no time to stay updated on your local news and events, then we have the perfect thing in store for you.

NearFox, a Mumbai based startup, has taken up the responsibility to keep everyone updated about all the happening things happening around in their neighborhoods. From your neighbourhood news to fun events in the city to an awesome discussion forum, NearFox with its Android app promises to keep its users informed, entertained and clued in.

Kiran Patil and Pritesh Mittal, the brains behind the app, gave birth to NearFox after they observed that the information is either not available or is highly unorganized, on the micro-locality level. In fact, they faced the same problem on the hyperlocal level. That's when they decided to do something to fix the problem rather than just sit and crib about it.

[caption id="attachment_102162" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Team of Nearfox[/caption]

Kiran and Pritesh are both IIT Bombay alumni, having diverse experience in the business field.
Having been the brains behind successful ventures like Villcart and Organic Facts, Kiran has vast experience of the startup ecosystem to his credit. Before coming up with NearFox, he was also heading the sales division in Chaupati Bazar before it finally got acquired by Future Bazaar in the year 2010. Pritesh, on the other hand, had started his career with JP Morgan Chase soon after his graduation till he decided to quit the job to pursue his real calling. He also has an experience of managing the operations of a US based think-tank, Rakshak Foundation, for 2 years.

The main aim behind the app is to reform the long-lost community-interaction. We have become so involved in our own lives nowadays that we hardly ever come to know what's happening around in the area where we spend most of our time in. The app plans to do this by providing its users with content that really matters to them.

With features like local news, events and talk-platform, the app's mission is target a vast demography of users in terms of occupation, age and gender etc. The main attraction of the app is that, apart from the curated content, everything available on the app is user generated.

With NearFox:

1. You can quickly scan news from your locality


2. Submit a story that you have witnessed in your locality or come to know about while taking your dog out for a stroll


3. Having a boring weekend? Use the NerFox app and discover all the local, fun outings, workshops and exhibitions, etc happening in your locality. Say hello to fun weekends.


4. Use the app to ask and answer questions, discuss things related to the neighborhood



5. Remain updated about the goings-on in your locality

Having launched in September this year, the app has already received more than 3000 downloads over the span of a month. The startup is currently bootstrapped but they are open to raising funds in order to better their services to their customers.

Looking for a one stop solution to know everything about your locality, go, download NearFox app right away and get connected to your neighborhood peeps.

Founded By IITians, ShareACar Is Adding Practicality To Carpooling As We Know It

Nowadays, roads are more a sight of stagnant cars stuck in long traffics than moving cars. In fact, various state governments have also started various initiatives to curb the increasing figure of cars on roads and put a lid on the pollution problem. Car Free Day is one such initiative started by the Haryana government in Gurgaon and more recently in Delhi. The concept borrowed from the west, encourages the citizens to ditch their vehicles once a week and share a ride to office or use the public transport.

In 2009, carpooling represented 43.5% of all trips in the United States and 10% of commute trips. In India however, carpooling is still a relatively new concept which hasn't it picked up traction in the Indian Market yet. The Indian market is exactly at an infant stage in terms of the ride sharing or carpooling market.

Even though, India do have handful of homegrown ride-sharing or carpooling startups/apps such as Zify, sRide, Ridingo, among others, are providing its users decent platform which can be used for sharing rides.

Now, a relatively new carpooling app - ShareACar, claims to be adding practicality to carpooling as we know it.

ShareACar is a realtime ride-sharing app that helps connecting real verified users to share their rides together and helps them save fuel and environment in the process. The users can do the sharing in their own vehicles or book a cab for the same.


ShareAcar's co-founders - Rohit Karan and Shobhit Srivastava, both alumnus of IIT Kanpur, came up with the idea for ShareACar after realising the traffic epidemic that the Indian cities are suffering from. They realised that even though everyone wanted the problem to be solved but yet no one did anything concrete about the same. They also realised that even though most of the people were in favour of the idea of carpooling but yet they didn't consider it as a safe and practical option.

Mumbai-based ShareACar aims to solve this lifelong taboo associated with carpooling and ease commuting problems in Indian cities.

[caption id="attachment_102130" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Shobhit Srivastava and Rohit Karan [/caption]

There are many other carpooling players currently existing in the market, but no one has been able to make carpooling as practical an option as they have. They distinguish themselves from others in the market by offering the users a solution where people are empowered with no fixed fares (upto a certain cap), no route matching algorithm and complete flexibility to decide who they want to travel with. Further, every cash transaction is done through an online wallet, hence providing the people with an option to travel cashless.

The app has an attractive and super easy to use map based UI on which users can put in their coordinates. Further, the app is completely real time in order to ensure no unnecessary pre planning.

The startup which is self funded till now, has seen some 250 odd users registering over the last few weeks since its launch. Further, around 45 rides have already been shared on the app over the last 3 weeks.

The Mumbai based app plans to increase its presence in other cities in the coming future and is tying up with various agencies for the same.

India Proposes Legal Guidelines For Ridesharing Apps Like Uber And Ola

Though ridesharing apps like Uber, Ola cabs etc. have come like a heaven in disguise for the Indian citizens, same is not the case with the Indian government. These companies are not only different from the traditional cab companies, but many tech based companies, too. This results in difficulty on the part of the government to regulate them under the existing laws.

Interestingly, this is not the case only with India. Governments all around the world are having a hard time with these ridesharing apps and are rolling out guidelines to address the unique business models of these companies. China had recently posted draft regulations that may force these companies to functions more like taxi fleets.

Following the footsteps of China, the Indian government has itself proposed its own set of legal guidelines. The guidelines published on the website of the Ministry of Roadways and Highways, proposes all the ridesharing apps to have an emergency button. This emergency button will be in addition to the in app feature that allows the user to call the police directly. Further, the guidelines also advises these companies to operate more like traditional taxi fleets, with 24/7 call centers, an in-depth background check of all drivers, branded vehicles, and a meter that will track the distance traveled and the passenger’s fee for the same.

After the infamous case of the rape of a female passenger by an Uber driver last year, ridesharing apps like Uber and Ola had religiously started the activity of checking the background of all its drivers. They had also introduced various privacy and in-app safety features in their apps as a result of the case. Despite their these efforts, the companies have been having a difficult time in the form of bans in the Indian capital, Delhi, and strenuous police investigations. A similar thing happened as recent as last month when the Delhi government rejected Uber's plea to operate in the Capital.

While famous ridesharing apps like Ola, Uber and TaxiForSure (acquires by Ola in March this year ) have each had their respective applications for radio taxi licenses rejected by the government over the past year, they’ve all been able to work it out by functioning as digital aggregators similar to an online marketplace like Flipkart, Amazon etc.

As these guidelines are not laws, it's not necessary for these apps to follow them but considering the safety of their users, many of these ridesharing app companies have accepted these guidelines with open arms.

According to a statement given by Uber India president Amit Jain, "The guidelines are a significant step in the right direction. They rightfully distinguish between taxi operators and technology platforms, and lay down sector specific regulations for our industry. We applaud the MoRT&H for holding a stakeholder consultation to develop these guidelines and are pleased to have participated in this process."

Resonating the same views, a statement from an Ola representative said, "We welcome the advisory from the Ministry of Road Transport and we believe this is a major step towards positively impacting the ecosystem and its stakeholders, that technology platforms like ours have created. We will continue to work with the government, under the aegis of this progressive directive, offering our complete support and commitment towards building mobility for a billion people."

India Makes Aadhaar Number Compulsory For Entrepreneurs To Register New Business

Planning to register your business/startup in India? Make sure you have your Aadhaar card handy. According to a new directive by the Indian government, Aadhaar card is now compulsory to have for any budding entrepreneur in order to register his/her new business venture.

Notably, this is nothing to do with UEN (Unique Entrepreneurship Number) that government introduced last week for entrepreneurs in India, which government officials says - can be used in completing their various statutory registrations and report compliance with tax and labour laws.

Apart from UEN which is yet to implemented on ground level, an entrepreneur will now be required to submit his Aadhaar number during the registration process. In fact, startups can't even 'fill' the new online form for registration unless the Aadhaar credentials of their promoters are duly filled and validated online.

Taking a cue from prime minister Narendra Modi's monthly radio broadcast, Mann Ki Baat, where he had talked at length about the need to simplify procedures to start a business with the help of a single-page registration form, the Minister for micro, small and medium enterprises had only last month notified Udyog Aadhaar.

According to the Supreme Court, the Aadhaar card is only allowed to be used by the government 'voluntarily' for a few social welfare schemes. Hence, the recent move by the government regarding the usage of Aadhaar card for business registration purposes can be considered as a gross violation of the SC order.

"The Supreme Court has been crystal clear on the Aadhaar number being voluntary for now," said Pavan Duggal, a Supreme Court lawyer in a statement to a national daily. "So this would be a violation of the apex court's order and could be a fit case for contempt of court. This would also infringe on citizens' right to equality, as it would discriminate against people who don't have Aadhaar numbers yet."

Some state government have already voiced their unhappiness and apprehensions about this recent move of the center to ask only for an aspiring entrepreneur's Aadhaar card number rather than other identification proofs in order to register their businesses.

According to MV Ahmed, additional director of industries and commerce in the Assam government, "In our state, Aadhar enrolment has only begun in three districts. We had advised the central government to consider allowing PAN cards or other identity documents as well." "But with Aadhaar linkage being mandatory in the form, we will not be able to submit any applications from our state," said Ahmed in a statement to a national economic daily.

Though investors are allowed to set up units using the state's own portal for registering investment under Rs 10 crore, but the data cannot be shared with the Centre because of the above mentioned 'technical fault'.

Keeping their point of view on its action, an official associated with the project said, "A large chunk of enterprises in India are simply not registered due to the cumbersome paperwork involved in the process and, therefore, can't tap the government schemes for them. The KV Kamath panel on financing the MSME sector, that has been the biggest job creator in recent years, had recommended that the registration should be universalized."

Whether this move by the government makes the path easier for aspiring entrepreneurs or adds to the problems of the government, is a thing that we will have to wait and watch.

Chennai-Based Demoport Allows Users To Book Free Demos Before Purchasing The Products

Chennai-based Demoport is the online marketplace that you have been yearning for since years. It boasts of being a first-of-its-kind ​India-focused ​Hyperlocal Online+ Marketplace that enables buyers to ​seamlessly ​connect, interact and transact with brand-authorized neighbourhood sellers​.

Using Demoport, users can book free demos before purchasing the products.

Demoport list over 2000 products, which are predominantly bought offline, under six verticals namely home, office, education, healthcare, hospitality and construction. The customer can book free demos for any number of products at a date and time convenient for him/her.

While the user is free to buy or not buy the product after the demo, the platform also works as an online negotiation space for those who want to go ahead with the purchase. The partnership is directly with the brands and hence there is no need to build additional infrastructure. The brands' merchant partners and dealers come along with the partnership making it very scalable

Using features such as dynamic cart structure and process control block, it aims to deliver a more personalized and reassuring online shopping experience to its customers. It also has a Real-time Lead Sharing App on offer.

The startup's mission is to help people make buying decisions quickly. Using the service, people can quickly connect with local sellers for a pre-sales engagement, book an enquiry or demo, get their queries clarified, place orders, negotiate deals, and have the fulfillment done both quickly and locally.

The marketplace has products under 6 distinct verticals across 500+ categories and covers more than 20000 products.

[caption id="attachment_102042" align="alignleft" width="217"] MV Praveen - Founder, Demoport [/caption]Founded by MV Praveen in 2014, Demoport was launched in June this year and the startup already has 105 Sellers Onboard, 4-5 national brand partnerships. Further, it gets a decent 10-15 bookings per day for demos.

According to the founder, the reason for the great response is the fact that Demoport is a unique platform that enables a pre-sales engagement between the buyers and sellers. In addition to this, it also allows buyers to get their queries clarified and sellers to understand the buyers' requirements and recommend the right products.

Owned and operated by KORGEN Technologies (P) Limited, Demoport is currently bootstrapped and aims to become a leading online marketplace in the country.

Demoport services are presently available in over 200 Tier I and Tier II cities across India.The company plans to cover more cities and establish a robust national footprint by the end of 2016.

IoT To Add Up To $11 Trillion To Global Economy By 2025

The Internet of Things or IoT, as many of us famously call it, has become like a frequently occurring word in our tech news updates for the last few years. While we all might be aware of what the technology is all about and what all impact it is having on the tech world, we never really saw any concrete proof of what the technology was doing for the global economy. In order to provide us that concrete proof, McKinsey and Company, a consulting firm, has carried out a comprehensive economic study of the technology's much talked about economic potential benefits.

According to the study, the total economic benefit of IoT in the year 2025 could hit anywhere between $3.9 trillion to $11.1 trillion, with the high estimate equivalent of 11 percent of world GDP in 2025.

McKinsey & Company's Global Institute conducted the research with the motive of exploring the potential value of the much famous Internet of Things (IoT) on the global economy. The report, ‘The Internet of Things: Mapping the Value Beyond the Hype’, talks in detail about the potential surplus value gained by the consumers, as well as value generated from business applications.

Establishing its base on an earlier research done related to the IoT, the consultancy firm decided to analyse more than 150 potential applications of the technology globally. It then estimated the kinds of benefits and the economic value of the technology, using a bottom-up economic modelling approach.

The factors taken in consideration in order to estimate the value of the IoT included time savings, improved asset utilisation and productivity improvements. Further, it also included an approximate economic value for reduced number of accidents, deaths and diseases.

[caption id="attachment_102037" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Credits - Consultancy.uk[/caption]

The analysis of the report revealed some startling figures. According to it, the technology will have a potential economic impact of between $3.9 trillion and $11.1 trillion per year in the year 2025.


Consumers are expected to be big gainers as the consumer value is expected to be at $2.6-7.6 trillion by the year 2025 and consumer surplus is expected to be at around $1.0-2.8 trillion.

The report further revealed that different segments will generate different kind of value. According to it, the health and wellness sector could create value anywhere between $170 billion and $1,590 billion. Retail environments, on the other hand, could experience economic gains between $410 billion and $1,160 billion. But, the report predicts, It is particularly industrial applications, or what is called industry 4.0 in the industrial world, that would experience the greatest economic benefit of the technology by the year 2025. The gains could be worth anywhere between $1,210 billion and $3,700 billion.

After the consumers, comes the cities. The report reveals that cities are expected to see the second largest gain from the introduction of the IoT. They're expected to benefit in the range of anywhere between $930 billion and $1,660 billion by the year 2025.

[caption id="attachment_102038" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Credits - Consultancy.uk[/caption]

With Nearly Rs.150 Crores of Loans Disbursed, FinTech Startup BestDealFinance Is Only Online Platform Focusing on MSMEs

Juggling numbers is not everyone's cup of tea but still each and every one of us has to go through this ordeal because we have to manage our finances.

BestDealFinance is an online 'Financial Tech Super mart' which helps people make informed financial decisions and provides an end to end fulfillment to all their financial needs. It does so by offering them a wide range of financial products and services.

BestDealFinance has recently raised raised $3mn in Series A funding led by Kalaari Capital with participation from YourNest Angel Fund, Globvestor & Dexter Angel Circle in Sept, 2015.

The Mumbai-based startup claims of being one of the largest financial online market available in India at the moment. Its customers can choose the best suitable deal to them across a wide range of financial products such as insurance, credit cards, SME advisory services, construction financing and loans.

It also boasts of having the largest bouquet of loan options available for its customers. From personal loan, education loan, two wheeler loan, car Loan, home loan to loan against security, business loan, loan against property, they have it all.

The startup which keeps the best of all its customer at its heart, has an integrated network of affiliation with 35 renowned financial institutions so that it can offer a wide range of choices to its customers.

So far through its platform BestDealFinance claims to have disbursed approx. Rs.150 crores of loans, so far.

To all those people confusing Bestdealfinance.com with an aggregator, the startup offers services much more than what an aggregator normally provides. It is basically a FinTech company that offers end to end solutions to individuals as well as Bank/NBFCs. It is in no way a lead selling model.

Some of the qualities that distinguishes Bestdealfinance.com from any other platform in its domain are as follows:

1. End to End fulfillment – It is not a lead selling platform but a disbursement focused model.


2. Only online platform focusing on MSMEs


3. Technology-Platform: System Integrations – Policy digitization and Rule Engine to facilitate the process of online loan approval


4. The startup has a unique business associate network. A business associate is basically an influencer who provides free advice to consumer and friends. Such a network helps the startup in reaching out to each and every consumer segment and tap into customers even before they starts their journey for financial need.

BestDealFinance.com was founded in 2014 by Manavjeet Singh, who is also CEO of the company, and Sandeep Nambiar (ex-Wipro executive), with a vision of bring transparency and revolutionising the customer experience with help of technology in the financial services domain. Having an experience of more than 25 years in the field of banking and finance, Singh is a veteran banker and a well known name in the industry. Sandeep on other hand is an electronics engineer by profession with over 10 years of experience with over 10 years of experience in driving both, web and mobile technology related projects.

Currently, the startup is functional in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Pune. They soon plan to expand their operations to Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai with Bangalore being their tech centre.

Here Are Nasscom’s Top 10 Hottest Product Startups of 2015

India has seen the sudden outburst of startups since the past five years. Rather than working for big corporations, people nowadays prefer starting their own venture and being their own bosses. Companies such as Flipkart, Zomato are successful examples of such startups.

Nasscom, India's very own software lobby, yesterday announced its EMERGE 10 Awards. The award "recognises information technology products and services organizations that are redefining the benchmarks of excellence for the technology industry". In short, NASSCOM EMERGE 10 identifies the "top 10 hottest" start-ups of India.

Here are the awesome ten.

1. HackerEarth

Founding Year: 2012
Founders: Sachin Gupta , Vivek Prakash

Location/Headquarter: Bengaluru

HackerEarth is basically a product company that provides its clients with disruptive technical recruitment solutions for talent sourcing and skill assessment.

The idea for HackerEarth came to Sachin Gupta when one of the best programmers of his batch at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkie, in 2011 wasn't able to land a job in any of the top companies. This came as a rude shock to Sachin Gupta and his friends. That is when he realized that "the problem was not with this candidate but in the evaluation process of the hiring companies". The unique platform allows recruiters to quickly identify and hire the right candidates from its diverse community of highly knowledgeable and hard-working developers. Further, each of these developers on is scored and ranked by its unique ranking system. The ranking is based on various online programming challenges and developer's profile created by proprietary algorithm and data sciences which assesses a programmer's skill set by analysing his publicly available coding data.

2. Instakash

Founding Year: 2015
Founder(s): Gaurang Sanghvi, Sudarshan T.N.

Location/Headquarter: Bengaluru

Instakash is the result of the founder's, Gaurang Sanghvi's, first hand experience with personal loans in India. When his loan was rejected in October last year, he realised that it was a tedious task to get a loan in India without any credit history. This is when he thought of starting Instakash. Started in January this year, Instakash is an online platform for assessing credit scores for consumers and and helping them in getting loans from banks. It even assesses credit scores based on the data users’ smartphones. This assessment includes behaviour-based data points such as purchase history, location, travelling history, social network presence and modes of transport used etc.

3. Mapmygenome India Ltd.

Product(s): Genomepatri
Founding Year: 2012
Founder(s): Anu Acharya, Subash Lingareddy

Location/Headquarter: Hyderabad

Health is wealth and Mapmygenome understands this very well. The Hyderabad based startup is a molecular diagnostics company that aims to make people prioritise their health by providing them helpful insights based on their genetic data assessment. According to Anu Acharya, founder and chief executive, "The main aim is to build an Indian-centric genetic database that will help in personalized medicine for the Indian population." Acharya thought of the startup while casually reading a book on financial risk management. While reading the book, she wondered if a similar thing could be done for healthcare as well and that's how Mapmygenome was born.

4. MoEngage

Founding Year: 2014
Founder(s): Raviteja Dodda, Yashwanth Kumar

Location/Headquarter: Bengaluru

MoEngage has emerged from the problems that the two co-founders faced in their previous venture, DelightCircle, a mobile application. Overtime they realized that the app had a high churn issue —people uninstalling the app and inactive user base. This is when they decided to solve their this problem by starting MoEngage. The startup is typically a user analytics and engagement platform. The focus of the startup is mainly on mobile app companies. The startup helps the companies in reducing uninstallation rates and inactive user base.

5. Parablu Systems Pvt. Ltd

Products: BlyKrypt, BluSync, BluVault
Founding Year: 2012
Founder(s): Anand Prahlad

Location/Headquarter: Bengaluru

Cloud storage has come as boon for various industries but the only negative associated with the concept is of safety. Parablu aims to take care of this negative and keep your data stored on clouds completely safe and secure. The startup is basically a file synchronisation and sharing solution for mobile devices. The software rather than keeping the data restricted only to the business network, allows the user to write to any cloud destination. This data is then safely and privately transferred using encryption technologies to which only the user/business has the key.

6. Qustn Technologies Pvt. Ltd

Product(s): Qtrain
Founding Year: 2014
Founders: Mrigank Tripathi , Sachin Grover

Location/Headquarter: Noida

This one year old startup basically helps its clients, asses, train and engage with remote workers. The startup's product was launched in March this year. Various studies conducted in the country have shown that their is huge gap between education and knowledge, which means though many people are well educated, very few of them are able to acquire skills and knowledge that make them employable during the course of completing their studies. Qustn aims to abolish this gap. The startup uses mobiles to train people and help them acquire skills that can make them an employable resource.

7. Khemeia (branded Stelae Technologies)

Founding Year: 2012
Founder(s): Aruna Schwarz, Maria Shiao, Pierre Fraisse and Sandeep Raizada

Location/Headquarter: Bengaluru

Founded in 2012, the startup Stelae is a software product company that provides content analysis and pattern recognitions algorithms, based on machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques. It allows the transformation of unstructured data into structured, analysable and searchable information.

8. Insightful Labs Pvt. Ltd (branded TargetingMantra)

Founding Year: 2013
Founders: Saurabh Nangia , Rahul Singh

Location/Headquarter: Gurgaon

The idea for TargetingMantra came to Saurabh while working in the core personalization team at Amazon Inc. in Seattle. His team there developed a personalization platform for Amazon's various companies and subsidiaries. There, it struck him, that though such a sophisticated technology and machine-learning platforms were available to big corporations and ecommerce giants, smaller e-commerce companies still couldn't make use of these technologies. This is when he decided to start a world-class personalization and marketing automation platform to e-commerce players globally and provide an even playing field to everyone.

Nangia, co-founder of TargetingMantra, claims that his company's proprietary machine-learning technology has been able to increase conversions for e-commerce companies by about 20%. The technology helps e-commerce companies to provide a hyper-personalized experience to every customer on various channels including email, web, mobile notifications and Web notifications.

TargetingMantra has also been chosen as 10 Promising Gurgaon Startups of 2014 by IndianWeb2

9. Happay

Founding Year: 2012
Founder(s): Anshul Rai, Varun Rathi

Location/Headquarter: Bengaluru

For a company, every rupee counts. And, Bengaluru based Happay makes sure that the company gets the real worth of each rupee spent by keeping a track of its expenses. The online expense management system lets companies issue cards to employees and helps them in keeping a track of their spending in real time. It is a mobile and web based solution. Using the service, the employees can click a picture of the receipt and tag it to the respective expense, select expenses based on trips and submit them for approval. The company's future plans involve providing a unified platform where business can keep a track and manage every single paisa they spend.

10. Vidooly

Founding Year: 2014
Founder(s): Ajay Mishra , Nishant Radia , Subrat Kar

Location/Headquarter: Noida

Videos are the next big thing and Facebook with its auto video play feature further strengthens the growing popularity of this trend. Noida based Vidooly Media Tech Pvt. Ltd recognised this trend a year earlier and started the YouTube intelligent marketing and analytics suite. The startup helps companies, brands and content creators build audience base, maximise their YouTube views and grow faster as a company. Currently, Vidooly is being used by more than 5,000 YouTube channels all over the world.

Emerge 50 2015 from NASSCOM Product Connect

DrWheelz Bringing Car Service Centres To Your Doorstep

Every car user goes through a huge pain while getting their car serviced/repaired, they usually get corned with hefty bills or they may be charged for spare-parts that the service centre has not even replaced.

To solve this problem a Bangalore based startup called Drwheelz is bringing the car service centre for your car to your door step. Yes, you door step. Instead of you taking your car to a service station, the startup decreases your time, effort and transparency by bringing the service station to you. Customers can drive their car with confidence as DrWheelz carry out all the service/repairs evidently at the customers' place.

Often the car owners are sceptical whether the service of their cars is being carried out legitimately or not, or if they are only paying for the services availed. But, with Drwheelz, all these worries take a back seat as the startup comes and services the car evidently at their own place.

Further, their customers do not have to be dependant on public transport while their car is being serviced/repaired as DrWheelz staff can go to customer's office, home or even a movie theatre for that matter.



DrWheelz customers has to pay on hourly basis after the repair/service is completed and customers do not have to be dependant on public transport while their car is being serviced/repaired.

By bringing the service centre to the customers doorstep, the bills are cut down by at least 30% – 50% compared to any service centre. Billing has been made easy for the customers as they have to pay on hourly basis after the repair/service is completed.

Drwheelz is currently operating pan Bangalore and serving about 120 customers per month. Their future plan involves expanding to tier-1 cities of south India by the end of this year, and then moving on to all the tier-1 cities of India by the end of next year. Post this, they will expand pan India.

Founded by Balaji and Atin Veda, the startup has got a seed funding of Rs. 25 lakhs from Paul Kumar, a Delhi-based business person.

Govt. Introduces Flexible Norms & Unique Entrepreneurship Number (UEN) To Encourage Startups Growth

The Narendra Modi government has been extremely vocal about its views and plans about encouraging the startup culture in India. And, now it finally seems, the government is finally ready with a blueprint in order to achieve its these aims and plans.

The blueprint prepared by the Government of India will help encourage more and more startups as it introduces flexibility in hiring norms and allows failed start-ups to wind up faster.

Further, it also has a plan set to encourage more and more women entrepreneurs to enter the business industry. Special women centric incentives include giving preference to women backed enterprises in public procurement and making it easier for them to access capital for their startups.

The government is quite hopeful that all this overhaul of the regulatory framework for startups would help in preventing an exodus of successful business ventures to foreign lands. The government's focus is on making it easier to launch, run and close a startup in the country.

Keeping in line with Modi's 'Start Up India, Stand Up India' initiative, the government of India has decided to allot a unique entrepreneurship number (UEN). This Unique number can be used by every startup to complete their various statutory registrations and report compliance with tax and labour laws. Thus, taking care of most of the hassles that a company has to face while starting up. Currently, the government is working on a composite application form for obtaining all statutory nods. Apparently, all the concerned ministries have already agreed on the idea.

According to Jyotsna Sitling, joint secretary in the ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship, "It is critical that there is some flexibility for startups in hiring and retaining employees during their first three or five years of operations. We are also pursuing easier exit for enterprises that fail to take off in their first three years of operations."

"We want to promote a rescue culture by revisiting bankruptcy rules as well as provide advisory services to ventures that are struggling to take off. Incentives for angel funding and venture units in the quasipublic sector to bring in equity funds are also on the cards," she further added in a statement given to an economic daily.

The Government's main focus of the new approach is on entrepreneurship education. It aims to achieve this by a blend of experiential and online learning (through massive open online courses or MOOCS). "We will be starting entrepreneurship courses in 3,000 colleges, which are located around 325 industrial clusters with 50 nodal entrepreneurship hubs (e-hubs) over the next five years," said Sitling talking about the same.

A mobile and web based platform will help students connect with a national network of accelerators, mentors and incubators. It will also help them in tapping government programs and schemes for small enterprises such as 'Self-Employment and Talent Utilisation' or SETU, the Rs 1,000 crore venture fund announced Budget 2015 and the Atal Innovation Mission etc.

Facebook Is Experimenting On Project To Answer Apple's Siri

Are you one of the few hundred lucky Facebook users who got an unusual chance last month to talk to a mysterious new contact called M?
M is actually Facebook's Cyborg Virtual Assistant powered by a mixture of algorithms and human operators.

Facebook’s Vice President of Messaging Products David Marcus today announced 'M' in August this year, however its not available all FB users but limited to testing for few hundred users in US.

M's cyborg design makes it efficient for handling much more complex requests than its Apple (Siri), Microsoft (Cortana), and Google counterparts. While Siri, Cortana, and Google's search app are capable of understanding simple commands or queries, such as "What’s the weather forecast for Delhi?" But they can't answer a more complex question such as "Where can I get good Punjabi Food in Bangalore?" They aren't capable of doing a back-and-forth conversation or booking a taxi or a flight.

M, on the other hand, can do all the above stated tasks because the software hands over the things it can't do to human operators called "trainers". Of course in some cases, the trainer has to do all the work, but M is equally capable of taking queries it recognizes but can’t filter them into easy-to-process summaries that make a trainer's handling the task more efficient.

Morover, unlike other AI-based service like Apple Siri and Google voice search, M can actually complete tasks on your behalf. It can purchase items, get gifts delivered to your loved ones, book restaurants, travel arrangements, appointments and way more.

In August this year Wired reported that a few hundred San Francisco Bay Area (in California) Facebook users opened their Messenger apps to discover 'M'. Facebook would prompt them to test it with examples of what M can do: Make restaurant reservations. Find a birthday gift for your spouse. Suggest—and then book—weekend getaways.

Currently, this model isn't efficient enough for M to be more than an experiment. This is mainly because it requires too many human workers. But, according to Alex Lebrun, who leads the team working on the assistant, It has the capability to become a real product because the actual work of the human trainers is to gradually teach the software how to do a greater share of the work itself.

AWS launches Amazon IoT, A Cloud Service Platform for IoT Data

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been providing companies of all sizes with an infrastructure web services platform in the cloud since the year 2006 when it was launched. On October 8th, Thursday, the AWS announced a new service, Amazon IoT.

Amazon IoT can be used by companies to hook up with Internet-connected devices and build applications based on them.

So essentially, AWS IoT is a managed cloud service that lets connected devices easily and securely interact with cloud applications and other devices. AWS IoT can support billions of devices and trillions of messages, and can process and route those messages to AWS endpoints, such as AWS Lambda and Amazon Kinesis, and to other devices reliably and securely.

According to Amazon's chief technology officer Werner Vogels, working with devices, networks, security, and data collection for Internet of Things (IoT) applications has been quite difficult until now. But, with Amazon's this new service, all this is set to change.

Speaking at the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, he further added, a new feature called Device Shadows offered in the new service will “make it easy for you to actually control your devices without having to have the specific knowledge of how to communicate with that device."

This new amazing offering from Amazon has a plethora of things in store for its users. It comes with a rules engine, a publish-subscribe Device Gateway feature that supports the MQTT protocol and a device registry.

In order to help developers work with the new service, it also comes with an Arduino library, new C and JavaScript software development kits.

In addition to all this, Amazon IoT can be connected up with many other AWS services, such as DynamoDB, S3, Lambda, and Amazon Machine Learning.

Amazon IoT is currently out now in beta. Its pricing starts at $5 for every million messages.

Some major tech companies like Intel, Cisco, IBM etc. have already made a lot of noise about the Internet of Things in the past few years. It’s a highly promising, emerging area, and now Amazon Web Services has a product to offer for it.

sRide is An Uber For Instant On-The-Go Carpooling Service Solving Last-Mile Problem

sRide a new carpool app, is the first of it's kind. sRide connects riders and car owners to help commuters save money, reduce traffic, stay green and possibly earn friend.

Targeted at everyday office going people, Pune-based sRide is making entire carpooling experience seamless using cutting edge technology under the hood cutting. Making a commute easier, cheaper and safer. sRide, follows the motto of 'Connect on the go', share a ride, share a moment, and save money at the same time. It's a personal carpool tool - an easy way to find safe and friendly ride partners based on your social networks, and bring about a lifestyle change moving away from self-owned automobile dependency to shared services and active transportation.

sRide also claims to be the 1^st carpool app in India to do cashless transaction for carpooling. Integrated with payTM, it gives user choice to pay through payTM rather than doing all cash transaction hassle.

sRide was launched in Pune in April 2015 and the startup claims that its user base is growing at 400 per cent every month. Currently present in Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore, sRide has more than 25000 active users and many of its power users use sRide on a daily basis on both side.

[caption id="attachment_101873" align="alignleft" width="218"] Lakhsna Jha[/caption]

sRide is the brainchild of Lakshna Jha, a women Entrepreneur.She is an MBA from Columbia Business School and worked as a technology leader for leading technology companies. Lakshna strongly believes that we need to improve our commute experience while reducing the number of cars on the road.

"Think of sRide as a revolution in the world of carpooling: your one-stop (pun intended) shop to find a ride when you are on the go. sRide is touting as Facebook of transportation," said Lakshna.

sRide is self-funded and bootstrapped startup which, in March'15, got investment of around $1.5 million from private investors (friends & family).

By using technology to make sharing rides easier, sRide is creating a new transportation option for community that's saves people money, reduces the number of cars on the road and cuts pollution.

sRide does something else that not many companies can claim to do: bring different people physically together, and foster the opportunity for them to really get to know each other especially in a world when everybody is glued to their phones, breaking down cultural barriers and connecting people in a real way.

sRide differentiators -

• Safety- Verification of all profiles for company name else company name is shown UNVERIFIED on profile


• Every trip has to be reviewed so social feedback loop


• Matching is done by complex propriety algorithm

sRide is said to be driven by smart analytics and has a patent based recommendation engine that recommends rides to people based on their earlier preferences. Users get automatic notifications for their regular rides as well.

sRide competes with other car pooling players operating in India such as BlaBlaCar, Tripda, Orahi and Ziffy. While Brazilian firm Tripda has raised close to USD 11 million in two different rounds of funding, Hyderabad-based Ziffy raised total of around USD 190K.

Noida-based Siftr Lets You Create Your Own Photography Website From Existing Online Content At Instagram, Flickr or Facebook

A picture is said to say a thousand words. It somewhere also depicts the story and the aspirations of the photographer behind it. Every photographer aspires to do something big in his/her career but, unfortunately, most of times their dreams are just confined to a Facebook page with borrowed likes. Changing this scenario and making these amazingly creative people realise their dreams, is a Noida-based startup called Siftr.

Launched a month ago, Siftr is a machine learning based photo curation platform. The platform auto-creates photographers' website from their existing online content present on sites like Instagram, Flickr, Behance, 500px or Facebook, and presents the best photographs in a visually appealing manner.

No doubt, there are hundreds of platforms (eg. Squarespace, Smugmug, etc.) already present online which help photographers create their own websites but the whole creation process involved in these sites is very painful. Further, keeping these sites always updated and fresh with all latest photos is an extremely tough task to achieve.

This is where Siftr's self-updating capability takes the cake and sets it apart from all the other platforms. A Siftr user is never asked to upload even a single photo himself to create/update his website. The platform uses artificial intelligence to continuously analyzes all your photos online and find the best shots to create visually appealing and professional photography shots.

As a result, Siftr claims to be the World's first zero-maintenance, self-updating website.

[caption id="attachment_101898" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Screenshot of a photography website created using Siftr platform[/caption]

The platform is indeed quite handy for pro photographers as Siftr eliminates the need for constant updating. One can just keep uploading new pictures on their preferred social networks and the Siftr platform automatically finds new photos and keeps adding the best ones to the website, which can then be customized according to the requirements. So, while having a client meeting a pro photographers can just bring his or her Siftr link/URL and save a lot of time collecting & curating photos.

Founded by Romil Mittal and Mayank Bhagya, Siftr was launched just 4 weeks ago and is currently fully bootstrapped. It has so far analysed more than 1 million photos.

"We haven't done any paid marketing till now, but plan to start that soon," said Romil. The founders current future plans involves keep building upon their machine learning platform and improve their photo curation algorithms.

Siftr's mission, as the co-founder of Siftr - Romil says is to help these hobbyist and serious hobbyist photographers realise their photography dream and help them get more opportunities and nurture their talent further.

The startup's main target audience are the various hobbyist and serious hobbyist photographers present out there. Due to the phenomenal rise in good quality mobile phone cameras and photography based social platforms, various people have realised their photography talent. Unfortunately though, because of have a day job in a non-photography domain, many aren't able to devote time to showcase their talent to the world.

[cp_special_text color="red" size="normal"]Special Text[/cp_special_text]

In Just 4 Months This Latest Logistics Startup Is Doing Close To 1K Orders Per Month

A Bengaluru based startup called Sendit is aiming to provide businesses a one stop solution for all their logistics needs.

Calling itself an online logistics marketplace, Sendit.in is currently providing solutions for intracity movement of goods. It has a fleet of vehicles which cater to businesses on a per-demand basis.

Founded by five cofounders, Darpan Jain, Puneeth B, Pankaj Sisodia, Gaurav Jain and Naveen Bagrecha, the startup, which is currently in just 4th month of its operation is already doing around 1000 orders/ month. They have been operational in Bangalore since mid-June and have recently step foot in the Pune market. They have got a fantastic response from their customers as a result of which their revenue has increased 100 percent Month-over-Month and 60 percent of their customers are repeated users of their service.

The USP of Sendit has been the lead time of 30 minutes tha company guarantees. Flexibility to customers with payment options is another advantage that the startup provide.

The Indian logistics sector has been stagnant in terms of technological advancements for the last few decades. Currently, there is no common platform available where the end-user can interact with the transport operators. The current scenario involves the user interacting individually with the operators and this eventually raises a lot of pricing, trust and customer experience issues. On the other end, operators also don't have any common interface to receive orders. This leads to transactions taking place in isolation and not enough space for effective optimization of time and resources on the operator's end. Sendit.in wishes to bridge this gap for users and operators and become a common platform where demand and supply can meet. According to them, with the rise in the use of mobile devices and current technological advancements, this is the perfect time for such platforms to be built.

The startup is currently Self funded as of now but talks are on with investors in advance stage.

Their current future plan includes consolidating their reach in multiple metro cities by on-boarding transport operators and gaining customer loyalty. Following which, they plan to move to actual marketplace model for intra-city logistics, and provide technology enabled services for intercity logistics.

Few Tips for Launching Minimum Viable Products Inside Big Companies

While we mostly talk about startups and young entrepreneurs on IndianWeb2, today is going to a bit different. Today, we're going to talk about ways in which established enterprises can keep pace with their startup counterparts.

According to me, there has been no better approach in the history which has been able to capture the yearning of big companies wanting to get more nimble than the lean startup method. The startup method involves quick building and launching of minimum viable products (MVPs) and then iterating and pivoting based on the market feedback.

"We have to disrupt ourselves before the market does." It's not an uncommon mandate today. Established enterprises need to innovate to keep pace with the more nimble, smaller startups.

Here are some ways in which big startups can keep with startups.

1) Make failure an option -

In a big enterprise, the team building the minimum viable products should try acting like a real startup. They need to workout a mechanism where they should have funding to take care of salaries for the team as well as money for all their expenses. Further, this funding needs to be calculated on the basis of the company's expectations around the team's performance. If those expectations are not met by the team, the funding also needs to stop. We know this is a little harsh but this can prove to be very effective for the business.

2) Build a good team -

A good team can take you great miles. Startups have the option of hiring and building a team with the right people according to their needs and demands. This is what makes a lot of difference to their business. They have people who are right for the job and enthusiastic about the product. When forming a team for a particular purpose or project in a big company, make sure you get the right people on the team. Even if it takes a lot of time or involves hiring people from outside the company on freelance basis.

3) Get out of those cubicles -

A major reason for the success of the startups and their products is their proximity to their end users. They know what the consumer needs and how they need it. This is majorly because of the rigorous ground work that they have done. Nothing new can be achieved if the big enterprises keep themselves confined in those buildings. There is an urgent need for them to get out of their building and get to know their users/customers.

4) Creating a realistic MVP is the key -

Nowadays, the concept of MVP means different things to different people. In order to be successful, remember to keep it simple and stick to basics. MVPs are meant to be very simple products that let you test your concept. A good MVP can become a catalyst in enabling big enterprises to innovate and give a good competition to smaller organisations.

List of First 100 Train Stations Which’ll Get Google’s WiFi

Last month, when Indian PM Narendra Modi visited Google’s headquarter in US and met its CEO Sundar Pichai, Google announced that it will provide high-speed public Wi-Fi in 400 train stations across India before the end of 2016.

Pichai in his company’s official blog post also posted a map of India depicting locations where Google will be deploying its high speed public Wi-fi. The map however doesn’t clearly points the exact location/cities.

Using the same map released by Google, we did little research and figured out the locations/cities which will get Google’s WiFi by cross-verifying this map with map of Indian rail network and finally come out with 95 cities where Google could deploy its high speed public Wi-fi.

Disclaimer – The cities listed below is unofficial and a guess work where locations/cities were figured out using ‘first 100 WiFi train station map‘ released by Google and India railway network schematic map.

Here’s a state-wise list of first 100 Railway Stations to get Google high-speed WiFi:

Delhi

1. New Delhi Station
2. Delhi Junction
3. Hazrat Nizamuddin

Andhra Pradesh

4. Bibi Nagar
5. Hyderabad
6. Secunderabad
7. Tirupati
8. Vijayawada
9. Visakhapatnam

Assam

10. Guwahati

Bihar

11. Bhagalpur
12. Hazipur
13. Patna
14. Samastipur
15. Gaya

Chattisgarh

16. Bhilai
17. Bilaspur

Gujarat

18. Ahmedabad
19. Anand
20. Bhavnagar
21. Gandhinagar
22. Rajkot
23. Surat
24. Vadodra
25. Valsad
26. Waghal

Haryana

27. Kurukshetra
28. Paninpat

Himachal Pradesh

29. Shimla

Jammu

30. Jammu Tawi

Jharkhand

31. Ranchi
32. Tatanagar

Karnataka

33. Bangalore
34. Chikballapur
35. Mysore

Kerala

36. Calicut
37. Cochin
38. Ernakulam
39. Trivandrum
40. Trichur

Madhya Pradesh

41. Bhopal
42. Gwalior
43. Indore
44. Jabalpur
45. Jhansi
46. Khajuraho
47. Ujjain
48. Jabalpur

Maharashtra

49. Bhusawal
50. Mumbai Central
51. Mumbai CST
52. Dadar-Mumbai
53. Bandra – Mumbai
54. Lokmanya Tilak – Mumbai
55. Nagpur
56. Pune
57. Solapur

Orrisa

58. Puri
59. Bubhneshwar

Punjab

60. Ambala
61. Amritsar
62. Chandigarh
63. Ludhiana
64. Patiala

Rajasthan

65. Jaipur
66. Ajmer
67. Jodhpur
68. Bharatpur

Tamil Nadu

69. Chennai Central
70. Chennai Egmore
71. Tambaram – Chennai
72. Coimbatore
73. Vellore
74. Madurai
75. Salem

Uttaranchal

76. Dehradun
77. Haridwar
78. Rishikesh

Uttar Pradesh

79. Agra Cantt.
80. Allahabad
81. Bareilly
82. Ghaziabad
83. Gorakhpur
84. Kanpur
85. Lucknow
86. Mathura
87. Moradabad
88. Varanasi

West Bengal

89. Bandel
90. Durgapur
91. Barddhaman
92. Kharagpur
93. Howarah – Kolkata
94. Sealdah- Kolkata
95. New Jalpaiguri

This Innovator From Goa Is Looking To Crowdfund His Smart Clock Which Got Recognition from Apple Co-Founder

[caption id="attachment_101843" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Jason (second from right)[/caption]

For those well aware of the technology industry, must be well versed with the personality, Jason Fernandes. Belonging to the same school as Steve Jobs, Richard Branson and Linus Torvalds, Fernandes also has a bucket of awards to his credit. But, what makes us talk about him now is his new startup, SmartKlock Inc.

Fernandes has recently began a Kickstarter campaign to raise $350,000 as initial capital for his new venture. SmartKlock Inc. has created a platform to receive and manage notifications through an RFID-enabled clock.

Touted as the worlds first socially aware, always connected Smart Clock, SmartKlock makes internet connected devices that in addition to telling the time also provide visual audio or tactile notifications from a wide range of internet based sources.

The startup has already created its first device, SmartKlock One, which is like a platform to keep track of notifications and updates. The platform can prove to be of great help to any industry that includes monitoring of multiple metrics simultaneously, such as medical, fitness or the finance industry.



One of the things that sets the 32-year-old Fernandes apart from all his contemporaries is his ability to defy the odds and keep working hard towards his goals. Despite of being born with dyslexia, dysgraphia, hyper activity attention disorder and dyscalculia, he has been able to reach where he is now.

[caption id="attachment_101842" align="alignleft" width="286"] Jason Fernandes[/caption]

According to Fernandes, the best appreciation that he has achieved till date is from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. In December 2014, Fernandes was acknowledged as an innovator by Mr. Wozniak, when he shared his idea about SmartKlock One with him.

His first venture was the RecordTV, the first legal Internet based TV recorder in the world which he had co-invented with his brother Carlos Fernandes. After six years Fernandes decided to take a break and start his own venture.

Fernandes already has awards like Startup@Singapore, the first national technopreneurship competition at Singapore, the "Best Business Plan" award from Sybase Singapore in the Global Entrepreneurs Challenge at Stanford University, California etc. to his credit.

The habitual entrepreneur started on his entrepreneurial journey quite young. While in kindergarten, most of us were figuring out how did actual money work, Fernandes had already started what he calls his 'first business venture' and started making money. " I commandeered the play horse and I began to charge students to ride it," divulged Fernandes to a national daily.

Taking cue from his own life and experience, he has also started a non-profit organization called LDkids.org. The organisation works as a support group and information centre for people with learning disabilities.

With all this achieved at such a young age of 32, we're sure that Fernandes has a long successful path ahead of him and we wish him all the best for the same.

India Ranks 81 Among 141 Countries On The Global Innovation Index

The recently released Global Innovation Index (GII) 2015 reveals good as well as bad news for India. Though the Index ranks the country 81 out of 141 countries, which is well behind middle income countries such as South Africa and China. But, the country still retains its top position in the in the Central and Southern Asia regional ranking.

Globally, Switzerland, followed by the UK, Sweden, Netherlands and the US were ranked as the most innovative countries in the world, according to the Index.

The Global Innovation Index is calculated on the basis of how a particular country performs on seven key parameters - human capital and research, infrastructure, market sophistication, knowledge, business sophistication, technology outputs, institutions and creative outputs.

The report revealed that top scoring middle income economies, such as India, China and Brazil are working hard towards decreasing the gap with the developed world on innovation quality. This has largely been possible because of an exponential improvement in the quality of higher education institutions in these countries.

[caption id="attachment_101815" align="aligncenter" width="905"] Via - Economist.com[/caption]

Indian along with the economies of China, Vietnam, Uganda, Kenya and Malaysia, is part of a group of countries that are outperforming their economic peers. Further, India is also one of the eight economies that can be seen as innovation achievers outperforming their peers on overall economic score.

Although India has faced a five positions in the overall rankings since 2014, it still has been able to register its place along with 10 other developing countries, in being categorised as innovation outperformers.

According to Chandrajit Banerjee, director general of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), " the relative fall in India's overall ranking this year is due to availability of old data up-to 2103-14 period, and it does not truly reflect the performance of the economy in last one year." "The new innovation policies put in place by the new Indian government, which are not yet effectively captured by the data used in the GII", he added.

According to the report, India's strong points are knowledge diffusion (ranked 34th), research & development (44th), general infrastructure (43rd) and investment (42nd). On innovation quality front, the country acquires the 3rd position among middle income countries.

Amid Digital India Programme, India Slips Down in UN's Broadband Ranking

At a time when the Government of India is pushing the Digital India initiative, the recent statistics revealed by the United Nations in its broadband penetration ranking is not encouraging.

India's broadband penetration ranking has slipped to 155 from 113, according to the State of Broadband 2015 report by the UN.

However, the report also had some good news. The number of people with broadband access on mobile phones has gone up to 5.5 per cent of the population when compared with 3.2 per cent figure in the year 2013.

According to some sources, currently, the total number of unique mobile subscribers is between 3.7-5 billion.

According to the report by the UN, some experts are considering this as an indication that the digital divide that is currently prevalent in the world might soon be bridged.
Though the situation is slowly improving but digital divide is still persistent in terms of access to broadband internet, including the challenges of extending last-mile access to infrastructure and facilities to rural and remote communities.

Only 43% of the world’s population is currently online with some form of regular access to the internet revealed the recent data released by International Telecommunication Union's (ITU). This automatically means that 57% or some 4.2 billion of the world's people still do not have regular access to the internet.

Hence, an initiative like Digital India is surely the need of the hour. How successful will the initiative be is something that we will have to wait and watch. Keep checking this space as we keep a close watch on the story.

RePhone kit: World’s First Open Source Modular Phone

What if I tell you that you can now create your own phone? You would consider that I'm crazy but fortunately, this crazy idea could soon become a reality, all thanks to Seeed Studio's RePhone kit.

The RePhone kit helps one to create his/her own phone within a few minutes. The kit provides slim modules, customizable phone enclosures and accessible software to help the users build their dream phones. Open source components like RePhone Core GSM + BLE module or RePhone Core 3G model are also made available, which can even help the user to add cell connection to his/her phone.

To some of you, this modular phone might reminds you of Google’s much-awaited Project Ara modular phone however it is not open source like RePhone.

The kit also comes with 8 more modules, apart from the above stated core modules. – a 5×7 LED board, a NFC board, a GPS board, a 1.54-inch touch screen, an audio board, an Arduino-compatible microcontroller, a GSM breakout board and a basic sensor board.





All these above mentioned modules can be hooked together with a varied choice of connectors like FPC ribbon cable, soldered wires etc.

The kit also offers its customers a rich library for hooking into Arduino IDE, JavaScrip and Lua. It also comes with detailed examples to teach everyone how to develop things in an easy way. They also provide a complete SDK based on Eclipse IDE for C/C++ developers in order to help them work with complex applications.



For those who are not very well versed with programming, the kit comes with an easy drag and drop feature for files for them. One just needs to download them online and put them in their RePhone.

Along with the the RePhone modular smartphone kit, the user also gets a very cool Kraft paper foldable case. The user can make her their own RePhone, call their friends and listen to music. Further, by connecting it to IFTT, one can even setup logic to convert it as an IoT device.

Largest 3D Printing Factory In Southeast Asia Opens In Singapore

Singapore saw the launch of Southeast Asia's largest commercial 3D printing facility in its country on Monday.

Owned by Ultra Clean Holdings (UCT), the factory which targets the aerospace and medical sectors, will provide its services to both consumers and businesses.

UCT spent close to $5 million to open the enormous 3D printin facility which currently boasts fifteen 3D printers to start, meant to provide services for clients in the aerospace and medical industries. Their mission with the Singapore factory is to have much more rapid access to their clients in Asia.

According to a blog post by Lavi Lev, senior vice president for Asia at UCT, the factory was initially launched in November, 2014 in a semi-operational state.

The now fully operational facility will now be able to print in 17 materials. This includes the precious ones like gold and brass.

Further, the blogpost also revealed that UCT decided to invest in the facility because they believe there's a lot that can still be done on the "serious" side of 3D printing. According to the firm, there's much more that can be done on the manufacturing end of 3D printing and for businesses such as construction sites, factories, and home parts suppliers such as washing machine makers etc., that rely on the production of such parts.


In order to achieve its this aim of a bright future for 3D printing, UCT decided to increase its 3D printing capabilities in Singapore. Further, this would also help them in reaching the manufacturers in Asia faster.

Outside of Singapore, the California-headquartered and Nasdaq-listed firm that provides contract manufacturing services including machining, welding and assembly, has five offices in the United States, two facilities in Shanghai, and one in the Philippines.

In India, Whatsapp Is Most Popular Video Sharing Platform Followed by Facebook

Online videos are the new trend in India. While videos have always remained a part of our lives, it's only in the recent times that videos have become such an important part of our social networking. This trend can be attributed to the huge presence and success of various Vloggers on these social media sites like Superwoman, The Viral Fever and AIB. I Think, every Indian must be well aware of these video celebrities who have become a hit with the nation in the recent past, all because of their viral videos on various topics.

This fact has now been authenticated by a new survey. The survey was done over April to June this year and covered 5,000 mobile video viewers in Middle East, India and South East Asia. The survey results revealed that Whatsapp is the most popular medium in India to share videos, followed by Facebook coming at a close second.

The survey was carried by Vuclip Global Video. Vuclip is one of the leading premium mobile video on demand services for emerging markets.

According to the survey, about 51% respondents of the survey revealed that they shared their videos mostly via Whatsapp, 45% did it on Facebook and just a mere 15% made use of Google+. These figures highlight the increasing popularity of instant messaging platforms and social networks among the Indian citizens. Further, about a fifth of the survey respondents shared videos at least once a week while 14% revealed that they shared videos at least once a month.

"People respond to this powerful combination by sharing. This has been the key driver for the tremendous organic growth and consumer driven adoption of mobile videos in the emerging markets that we operate in," said, Arun Prakash, COO, Vuclip, in a statement to a national daily.

As more and more Indians embrace smartphones, content and video quality have become the key factors in driving video shares on mobiles, which is itself increasing, a trend that is similar to the one prevalent in emerging markets like Middle East and South East Asia. About 49% of respondents surveyed used Android Operating System (OS) based devices, while 40% used feature phones and some 4% used other OS based devices like iOS, Windows and Blackberry etc.

High video quality, followed by quality content and celebrity appeal and popularity of the video, were the top three criteria for sharing videos for Indian Consumers.

While Indians prefer WhatsApp, the citizens of Philippines (70%), Indonesia (66%) and Thailand (61%) voted Zuckerberg's Facebook as the most preferred medium for video sharing. In markets such as Indonesia and UAE, the 140 characters, Twitter, acquired the second position for the most preferred medium for mobile video sharing.

Meet 4 Brand Ambassadors for Modi’s Digital India

(L-R) Kruti Tiwari, Satwat Jagwani, Pranav Mistry and Ankit Fadia

 

While the PM was away in a foreign land, there was much speculation going around back home about who actually were the government's pick for the brand ambassadors for the Digital Media initiative. After much speculation, the government has finally cleared the air and announced its chosen four.

The buzz regarding the brand ambassadors for the initiative were actually a result of a Facebook post put by Fadia where he shared the news of him being selected as one of the Digital India’s brand ambassador. The post created quite a buzz and criticism, which resulted in the Indian government issuing a statement denying any such appointment, only to retract the statement stating a need for clarification.

The freshly issued press release now clarifies that Ankit Fadia is indeed one of the four appointed brand ambassadors for the initiative. The other three appointed ambassadors are IIT-JEE toppers Krati Tiwari and Satwat Jagwani, as well as Samsung’s Pranav Mistry. They have been appointed for a period of one year. Fadia however is being trolled on social media for his appointment as brand ambassodor.

The government's press release declaring the appointment of four Digital India Brand Ambassadors is as follows:
"As part of the Digital India week (July 1-7, 2015) following four Brand Ambassadors were nominated for a period of one year to propagate the product and applications being launched by the department under Digital India Program:

1. Shri Satwat Jagwani, All India IIT-JEE — Advanced Topper -2015 (Student)

2. Ms. Krati Tiwari, All India IIT-JEE — Advanced Girl Topper -2015 (Student)

3. Mr Ankit Fadia, Author & Ethical Hacker

4. Shri Pranav Mistry, Samsung USA (Computer Scientist/ Author of 6th Sense)

Thereafter, no other person has been appointed as Brand Ambassador for Digital India.

The services of these Brand Ambassadors will be used, as and when required for generating mass awareness for the program."

"The services of these Brand Ambassadors will be used, as and when required for generating mass awareness for the program," read the press release.

17-year-old Satvat Jagwani topped the Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE) Advanced tests this year. That achievement not only secured his spot to the B.Tech course in computer science in IIT Powai, but also took him from being a boy in a small town in Madhya Pradesh to brand ambassador for the Indian government's campaign.

Kruti Tiwari  is an outstanding performer, standing out as one of the top-scoring candidates from the 3,049 girls. She is a native of Indore, attained 47th rank in JEE Advanced 2015 and was personally picked up by the president.

34-year-old Pranav Mistry is a computer scientist and Inventor. At present, he is the Global Vice President of Research at Samsung and the head of Think Tank Team. He is best known for his work on SixthSense.

Ankit Fadia, however,  as an ambassador is not going down with many as according to them, his past records don't essentially qualify him as an ambassador material. Fadia first acquired the news headlines when he proclaimed himself as an ethical hacker prodigy. Ever since then, he has written over 16 books and also has certification courses under his name. He's also infamous for having allegedly hacked CHIP magazine's website in the year 2013, though this claim was denied by former CHIP editor Charles Assisi via a post on the Forbes.