In what could come as a big blow for India's homegrown ecommerce giant Flipkart, a panel of venture capitalists at the recent Silicon Dragon event in New York City picked Amazon as a leader in the list of companies that would be leading tomorrow's tech landscape. Considering Amazon and Flipkart are currently going head to head in the Indian ecommerce market, this global recognition can really raise the former's stake in the Indian subcontinent.

The tech landscape has seen some significant changes over the last couple of years. Nowadays, it is no more about helping people solve just one everyday need by tech, but it is all about having numerous businesses under one roof that can solve several challenges in every day life, right from communicating over long distances without interference or bearing the burden of high costs, to paying bills without the hassle of dealing with mountains of paperwork and standing in long lines for hours. Big names like Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and China's Baidu, Tencent Alibaba are all currently combining technologies that used to previously exist in isolation.

Not only this, the tech world is also witnessing a revolution in the speed at which innovation is taking place and the rate at which it is getting adopted by consumers and businesses in the country alike.

All these massive changes in the tech world can be attributed to the changes being lead by artificial intelligence, robotics, Internet of things, drones and virtual/augmented reality. These changes are uprooting the traditional industries and marking them better and faster. For example, the traditional banking and payments sector has been invaded by innovation in a good way and fintech and digital currencies are gaining popularity by the day, the transportation sector has been upturned by self-driving cars, GPS and ride-sharing services and they are several other industries that are undergoing revolutionary changes courtesy tech innovation.

The panel's decision to pick Amazon to lead tomorrow's tech landscape didn't surprise many as Amazon's recent decision to buy Whole Foods Market Inc., a 465-store chain selling natural and organic groceries, for a jaw-dropping $13.7 billion, including net debt gave us a preview of what the global e-commerce giant is capable of doing.

According to David Teten, managing partner of HOF Capital, the one-time online book seller has assets that no other company can come close to even touching. Erik Lassila, managing partner of Peakview Capital, who also voted Amazon as the future tech leader also added that Amazon is not only helping to solve the problem of handling the last mile of deliveries, but the company is also into drones. This is where Flipkart is lagging. For instance, Flipkart has nothing to offer to compete with Amazon’s Prime Video service. This is not to say that Flipkart has never tried. The homegrown giant did launch a music download service with its digital store Flyte a few years ago but ended up shutting it down within a year of its operations.

Surprisingly, Google failed to impress the VC panel as they pointed that the software giant is nowadays only relying on Google AdWords for its profits and not doing something extraordinary in the tech world. The panel accoladed Intel for continuing to innovate leading chips for modern-day technologies. Apple also found a mention during the topic discussion with experts saying that though Apple can be bigger than any of the tech companies today by buying them all today but the company believes in doing things at its own pace. So, the writing in the sky is clear. Amazon is the future of tech, at least the panel of VCs at recently held Silicon Dragon event thought so.
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