Indian-Origin Entrepreneur Appointed As Trump's Senior AI Policy Advisor

Sriram Krishnan, an alumnus of Chennai's Anna University, has been appointed as the Senior Policy Advisor for Artificial Intelligence (AI) by President-elect Donald Trump.

Krishnan, an Indian-American entrepreneur and venture capitalist, will play a key role in shaping AI policies across multiple government sectors. He brings a wealth of experience from his previous roles at companies like Microsoft, Twitter, and Facebook. Krishnan expressed his honor at the appointment and his commitment to ensuring continued American leadership in AI.

Currently a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, Krishnan previously led product and engineering efforts at Twitter, Meta and Microsoft. He will work closely with David Sacks, who has been named the White House AI and Crypto Czar.

Krishnan's background is impressive. He has held leadership roles at major tech companies like Microsoft, Twitter, and Facebook. He was a founding member of the Windows Azure team at Microsoft and has been a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz.

Krishnan and his wife, Aarthi Ramamurthy, co-host a podcast called "The Aarthi and Sriram Show," where they explore technology, entrepreneurship, and culture. His appointment has been widely applauded, with many praising his ability to blend public policy, international affairs, and technology.

Sriram Krishnan earned his Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) in Information Technology from SRM Engineering College, which is affiliated with Anna University in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

It's quite an impressive journey from SRM Engineering College to becoming a senior policy advisor on AI!

Launched: RiseBack, the 1st EdTech Platform Offering Affordable Undergraduate/Graduate Degree Programs to American Students from Indian Universities

Students don’t need to worry about High cost of Education & Student debt. 

RiseBack is a small step in empowering the students to earn their future without Student Debt, this would make them more confident achieving their higher professional goals, leading to higher disposable income triggering economic activity. 

Indian American Social Entrepreneur Dr. Tausif Malik launches EdTech platform RiseBack.org to offer Affordable Colleges Degree to students.

RiseBack is one of the first and only EdTech platform offering Undergraduate & Graduate degree programs and has partnered with leading Indian Universities to offer Affordable Colleges Degree to American Students.

Dr. Tausif Malik, Founder of RiseBack.org

Dr. Malik said “The current situation in America doesn't offer affordable undergraduate & graduate degree programs to students. RiseBack would be a game-changing idea and would trigger paradigm shift or a disruptor in the American Education system”.

Students can study for Undergraduate & Graduate degrees at affordable fees and they don’t need to worry about the High cost of Education & Student debt. RiseBack wants to focus on offering affordable Undergraduate & Graduate degree programs to students, as academic degree programs paves the foundation for higher-paying jobs and education.

The objective of RiseBack is to leverage globalization by connecting students with Indian Universities, so they achieve their personal and their family’s dream of going to college.

Indian universities are established under the University Grants Commission of India and degrees are accepted in America and globally, hence Americans can pursue their professional and academic careers.

RiseBack benefits to students?

• Affordable Education
• Study from the comfort of home
• Work and Study
• Path to earn and achieve professional goals

What is RiseBack?

• EduTech Platform connecting Students with Indian universities to earn their Undergraduate degree.
• RiseBack additionally offers -
• Skill & Professional Training & Certification Programs
• US Evaluation of Degrees assistance
• Recruitment assistance
• Internship assistance
• Incubation & Acceleration services for Students Startups

How does RiseBack work?

• RiseBack is an EduTech platform, where students can review, choose and register for Undergraduate degree programs - B.A, B.Com, BBA, BCA & Masters (Graduate) degree programs MA, M.Com, MBA, MCA degree programs offered by Indian Universities.
• The Indian Universities directly deliver the lectures, assignments, and tests to the students.
• RiseBack offers value-added courses related to their Undergraduate & Graduate degree program or as per their career objectives.

Malik said that “RiseBack is a small step in empowering the students to earn their future without Student Debt, this would make them more confident achieving their higher professional goals, leading to higher disposable income triggering economic activity”.

America has been the magnet to attract the best talent to study at American Universities, and these professionals contributed to every facet of society's economy, innovation, & research. Many of them are from India and got their undergraduate, master's, or doctorate degrees from Indian Universities.

Indian Universities over the years created super successful alumni who are heads of Fortune 500 companies, Noble Laureates, Scientists, Academicians, IT Professionals, Serial Entrepreneurs & investors.

Dr. Malik concludes that this would be the best partnership for both countries and it would be a win-win situation.

The idea of RiseBack was conceived in the year 2012 when Malik saw that many Americans wanted to join the IT industry but going to college was expensive, as they shied away from this creating a shortage of local talent.

Therefore American companies are dependent on outsourcing or hiring foreign workers. Hence, he thought why not Indian IT professionals train the Americans in the IT Space. But, unfortunately, Malik had to drop the project and had to move to India to take care of his ailing mother.

Finally, Malik thought the best idea would be to offer affordable university degree programs, hence he approached Indian universities of promoting their degree programs globally starting with the USA.

Indian-American IBM Scientist Bags Inventor of the Year Award for Improving AI Capabilities

Prolific Indian-American inventor Rajiv Joshi has bagged the prestigious Inventor of the Year award in recognition of his pioneering work in advancing the electronic industry and improving artificial intelligence capabilities.

Dr Joshi, who is a master inventor with more than 250 patented inventions in the US, works at the IBM Thomson Watson Research Center in New York.

He was presented with the prestigious annual award by the New York Intellectual Property Law Association early this month during a virtual awards ceremony.

An IIT Mumbai alumnus, Joshi has an MS degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a PhD in mechanical/electrical engineering from Columbia University, New York.

His invention span from novel interconnect structures and processes for more scaling, machine learning techniques for predictive failure analytics, high bandwidth, high performance and low power integrated circuits and memories and their usage in hardware accelerators, meant for artificial intelligence applications.

Many of these structures exist in processors, supercomputers, laptops, smartphones, handheld and variable gadgets and many other electronic items. His innovations have advanced day-to-day life, global communication, health sciences and medical fields impacting the world.

“Necessity and curiosity inspire me,” Dr Joshi told PTI in a recent interview, adding that the identification of a problem and providing out of the box solution as well as observe and think help him immensely to generate ideas.

Joshi said that while growing up, his parents always told him stories about great, renowned inventors like Guglielmo Marconi, Madame Curie, Right Brothers, James watt, Alexander Bell, Thomas Edison and other great stalwarts. Their success stories and inventions really shaped his thought process and helped develop an interest in science and technology.

In his acceptance speech, Dr Joshi said thar cloud, artificial intelligence and quantum computing not only remain the buzzwords, but their utility, widespread usage is advancing with leaps and bounds.

"All these areas are very exciting and I have been dabbling further in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and quantum computing,” he said.

Quantum computing, which has offered tremendous opportunities, also faces challenges, he noted, adding that he is involved in advancing technology, improving memory structures and solutions and their usage in AI and contributing to quantum computing to advance the science. PTI LKJ

Automation Anywhere Raises $300 Mn from Softbank Vision Fund At $2.6 Bn Valuation

Indian-American founded "software bots for enterprises" firm Automation Anywhere has announced that it has raised $300 million from the SoftBank's tech-focused Vision Fund bringing the company's valuation to $2.6 billion.

Based out of California, US, Automation Anywhere had earlier raised $250 million in Series A funding in July and with this fresh funding from Softbank, the company's total financing is now over $500 million.

"With this additional capital, we are in a position to do far more than any other provider. We will not only continue to deliver the most advanced RPA to the market, but we will help bring Artificial Intelligence (AI) to millions," said Mihir Shukla, CEO and Co-Founder at Automation Anywhere.

The latest funding is subject to regulatory approvals and satisfaction of other customary closing conditions and is an expansion to the company's series A round.

Founded in 2003, by Mihir Shukla, Ankur Kothari, Neeti Mehta, and Rushabh Parmani, Automation Anywhere is a provider of Robotic Process Automation (RPA), a technology that refers to use of software robots (bots) to automate business processes that are currently managed manually by human workers.

RPA or 'Software Bots' are digital workers which can complete mundane tasks, and also tackle more complicated problems as well. RPA enables companies to automate business processes, increasing productivity and enabling people to focus on more challenging and fulfilling work.

Automation Anywhere offers a complete suite of products capable of automating business processes at scale.

"Enterprises of all sizes are in the midst of a major transition to digital platforms and we are excited to partner with Automation Anywhere to accelerate this transformation," added Praveen Akkiraju, Managing Partner at Softbank Investment Advisers.

According to Automation Anywhere, it has about 1,500 enterprise customers including General Motors, Mastercard, and LinkedIn. They use its software to automate processes in functions ranging from supply-chain logistics to accounting.

The financing builds on an exceptional year for Automation Anywhere, which saw a rapidly growing roster of marquee customers (some of which can be seen here) and key executive appointments globally.

Following its Series A funding in July, Automation Anywhere announced it has so far this year established nine new locations based in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Miami, Paris, Seoul, Tokyo, Toronto, Warsaw and Washington, DC.

These new locations bring the company's total number of global offices to 19, including four others in the US, three in India, and one each in London, Melbourne and Singapore, Automation Anywhere said in a statement on Wednesday.

Automation Anywhere has opened its Bot Store, an app store-like marketplace of downloadable bot applications that are designed by the company and its partner ecosystem to meet specific automation requirements for common business processes. Additionally, the company has also announced that its enterprise solution would soon be available in traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean and Spanish.

Source - ToI, WSJ

[Top Featured Image - Youtube/PEX Network]

Tiger Global Invests $3 Mn in NY-based Checkmate, A Delhi University Alumnus Startup

New York-based Checkmate, which is a platform that helps small & medium sized restaurants to integrate with multiple online ordering plaforms, has closed a $3 million Series A investment round led by Tiger Global Management.

[caption id="attachment_127213" align="alignleft" width="426"] Checkmate Founder & CEO, Vishal Agarwal[/caption]Checkmate is a U.S.-Indian startup founded in 2016 by Vishal Agarwal, a Delhi University alumnus (B.Com - Hons). Checkmate integrates orders coming from various online ordering sources such as UberEats, GrubHub, Caviar, Delivery.com, and Ritual directly to the POS systems, including Brink, Toast, and Revel, among others.

The funding comes within a few weeks after Tiger Global has raised $3.75 billion in its latest venture capital fund named as 'Tiger Global Private Investment Partners XI', touted as one of the largest fundraisings of its kind in 2018.

Initially started as a bill-splitting app, Checkmate currently solves a peculiar problem of restaurants wherein food orders from various online ordering platforms and delivery services are received by restaurants on separate tablets and must be manually entered into the restaurant’s POS system.

With Checkmate, all orders from all platforms are streamlined by automatically confirming and entering into a single POS system – and they print out automatically on the same kitchen printer as the restaurant’s walk-in orders. Checkmate currently works with a number of national restaurant brands, including Five Guys, a fastest growing fast-food chain in the US.

[tnm_video layout="mnmd-post-media"]https://vimeo.com/294409146[/tnm_video]

Checkmate integrates multiple online ordering sources such as UberEats, GrubHub, Caviar, DoorDash, Delivery.com, Ritual and many others directly to restaurant POS systems including Brink, Toast, and Revel at a flat monthly pricing.

Although the platform is not operational for restaurants in India, Checkmate do has its base in India as its operations and tech team of 25 is located in its India office.

Previously working with e-commerce company Choxi.com, Vishal Agarwal, who's also the CEO of Checkmate, plans to utilize the freshly raised funds in doubling down on its R&D, and in particular more platforms for integrations, by using this Series A raise for hiring.

said, “We are very honored to have the backing of Tiger Global Management and believe we can grow rapidly as the volume of online orders is only going to grow, and we can help restaurants massively streamline their orders from these sources at a fixed cost."

“As restaurants streamline their operations to take advantage of rapidly increasing online orders, we expect hundreds of thousands of restaurants to benefit from Checkmate’s unique solution," said Scott Shleifer, Partner, Tiger Global Management.

Source - BusinessWire, TechCrunch

This Indian Origin Entrepreneur Led Startup Is Riding $2.2 Trillion Pipeline

We often are so much set in are own ways that we resist any kind of change. Same is the case with various old process, traditions and rituals that we still follow, without questioning anything about its existence and working. Karthik Sridharan of Kinnek is not one of those. He's an excellent example of an entrepreneur who takes an ancient business problem and solves it simply using modern technology at his disposal.

In year 2012, Karthik along with Rui Ma founded Kinnek, a B2B platform that allows small businesses to request and receive customized quotes from suppliers for their purchases.. The startup which has been making waves since beginning, and recently made $20 million in Series B funding round led by Thrive Capital . It Series A funding, which closed about a year ago, was led by Matrix Partners and raised a total of $33 million.

The small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) end up spending about $2.2 trillion annually on supplies and equipment. Kinnek helps these businesses in procurement of goods and equipments. The platform receives roughly about $1 billion in quotes per year. Further, more than 20,000 businesses make use of the startup's services on the buy side and about 2,000 suppliers.

Kinnek is a perfect marketplace for business owners and purchasers. Typically they approach the marketplace with their needs, and then the vendors respond to them with a quote. The platform charges the sellers, in a hybrid based model, which is part subscription fee and part commission on sales. The service is absolutely free of cost for the buyers.

[caption id="attachment_102846" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Karthik Sridharan (left) and his Kinnek co-founder Rui Ma[/caption]

As many as 20,000 businesses use Kinnek on the buy side (up from 10,000 a year ago), and about 2,000 suppliers. And according to a recent TechCrunch article, Kinnek is the only one of four similar platforms that hasn’t limited itself to one industry vertical.

According to Sridharan, SMBs are continuously looking for customized goods and equipments but many of them cannot afford to have dedicated procurement teams like a big business. This is where Kinnek comes to their rescue.

With $20 million in their kitty, the company already has plans ready to use the money for two areas: firstly, they plan to expand their offerings into new industries; and secondly, they are considering adding up more features like invoicing, shipping and receiving. The ultimate goal is to make Kinnek the social graph of businesses, akin to Facebook and LinkedIn.