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Yesterday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was in Mumbai to pitch his company's technology and programs as ways to help India modernize both its technical and physical infrastructure. Nadella, as well as executive vice president Scott Guthrie, will also speak at Future Unleashed 2015, a Microsoft event taking place Thursday and Friday, in Mumbai.

At the event, Microsoft announced partnerships with three e-commerce players - Justdial, Paytm and Snapdeal - and launched a special cloud initiative for start-ups aligned to smart cities.

Additionally, Microsoft also announced a new initiative for startups delivering solutions for government's smart cities programme. Under this, Microsoft will work with startup accelerators, and startups will be able to apply for individual access to funds up to $120,000 worth of Azure computing for their smart cities solutions and pilots.

This cloud infrastructure funding by Microsoft, for startups working in smart cities solutions, came at time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi had already announced plans to build 100 'smart cities' by 2022 to decongest existing urban centres. The Microsoft CEO said his company was looking to engineer solutions to burgeoning urban migration and urban issues in India.

The program, in addition to open source friendly Azure, provides free software, developer tools, and technical support to help startups

Talking about its partnership with - Snapdeal, Paytm and Justdial, the company stated that Justdial and Microsoft will explore the use of Bing and cloud-based analytics to provide and enhance customer experience.

Paytm and Microsoft are working on three core areas of partnership. The companies will integrate the Paytm app and Paytm Wallet into Cortana, AI-based mobile assistance, to enable consumers to pay for their utility bills and carry out mobile transactions easily. Paytm will use Office 365 for their merchants' inventory and account management," Satya Nadella, the Indian-born chief executive of Microsoft, said in a statement.

"Lastly, Paytm will facilitate and support Microsoft service sales via their merchant network," company added.

Snapdeal will work with Microsoft Cloud platforms to create a digital automotive dealership that is expected to change the way customers make automotive buying decisions.

Under its funding program for startup working in smart cities solutions, Microsoft is partnering with 13 startup accelerators to roll out this program in the country. These include 91Springboard, Reliance GenNext, Zone Startups and Pitney Bowes among others. Globally, Microsoft is partnering with 150 startup accelerators in 47 countries to deploy this program. India, with its vibrant startup ecosystem, is a key country for Microsoft.

Late last month, Microsoft announced it was opening new data center regions in Pune, Chennai, and Mumbai.
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