Every Village in India will be Connected with Optical Fibre Cable in Next 1,000 Days - PM Modi

Each village to be connected with optical fibre cable (OFC) connectivity in next 1000 days: PM Shri Narendra Modi

Lakshadweep also to be connected with undersea optical fibre cable in 1,000 days

“In the coming 1000 days, every village in the country will be connected with optical fibre cable,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his address on the occasion of 74th Independence Day earlier today. Shri Modi mentioned that before 2014, only 5 dozen panchayats in the country were connected with optical fiber cable.

In the last five years, nearly 1.5 lakh gram panchayats in the country have been connected with optical fiber cable. He further added that Participation of rural India and villages in Digital India is very important for balanced development of India. To enable this we will rapidly expand our optical fibre network. This will reach all the 6 lakh villages within 1,000 days.

Expressing his gratitude to the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi for this important announcement, Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Minister for Electronics & IT and Communications tweeted, “Today you have entrusted Department of Telecommunications with the responsibility to connect all the villages of India by optical fibre Internet in 1000 days. It's a game changer for Digital India. With your inspiration we will do it.”

During the 74th Independence Day speech PM also announced that in the next 1000 days, Lakshadweep will be connected with submarine optical fiber cable. "We have around 1,300 islands. Keeping in mind their geographical location and their significance in the development of the nation, work to begin new projects in some of these islands is underway. We have chosen some islands for rapid development.

Recently, we connected Andaman and Nicobar Islands with an undersea cable for a better internet. Next, we will connect Lakshadweep," he said while delivering his Independence Day speech from the iconic Red Fort. Earlier this week PM Modi inaugurated the first-ever undersea optic fiber link between Chennai and Andaman and Nicobar to ensure high-speed broadband connectivity for the Union Territory (UT) at par with services in the cities like Delhi and Chennai.

While commenting on announcement for high speed Internet services in Lakshadweep Islands, Shri Prasad said in a tweet that today Prime Minister set a target of 1000 days to provide submarine optical fibre connectivity to these islands. Like linking Andaman & Nicobar islands Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications will fast track this as well.

OFC connectivity to the villages and submarine OFC to the Lakshadeep islands will help the people in rural areas/villages and those in Lakshadweep islands in getting cheaper & better connectivity and all the benefits of Digital India, especially in improving online education, tele-medicine, banking system, online trading, boosting tourism and skill development etc.

India Korea Startup Hub Launched by PM Modi in Seoul

Prime Minister Narendra Modi lhas aunched India Korea startup hub in Seoul. Delivering keynote address at India-Korea Business Symposium Mr Modi said India has emerged as a land of opportunity and no other large economy in the world is growing at over 7 per cent year after year. 

The India-Korea Startup Hub is a one-stop platform to bring the Indian and Korean start-up ecosystems closer and to facilitate joint innovation between the two economies.

https://twitter.com/startupindia/status/1098546189790633984

The Hub was conceptualized as part of a joint statement signed between the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) and Invest India on 9^th July 2018. The Hub will enable collaborations between startups, investors, incubators, & aspiring entrepreneurs of both countries and provide them requisite resources for market entry & global expansion.

Prime Minister said, his government has introduced flagship program Start-up India with 1.4 billion dollars fund for four years to create a startup eco-system in India. He said India is one of the most open countries for FDI today and more than 90 per cent of its sectors are now on automatic route for approval. 

S. Korea, which is world's leading market for blockchain, has consistently shown interest in Indian startup ecosystem especially in last 3-4 years.

In 2016, Korean investor KTB Network had led the $7 million (Rs. 50 crores) funding round of Bangalore based NoBroker.com.

In May of same year, SoftBank Ventures Korea had made an investment of an undisclosed amount in True Balance, one of India’s integrated, one touch prepaid mobile balance manager app. This was followed by selection of
Kerala-based hyperlocal e-commerce firm Buyfie in S. Korea's highly prestigious and popular acceleration programme, in2Korea,

Nasscom Product Council, Accenture Plans To Collaborate With Israel Innovation Authority

Relation between India and Israel is at its peak after PM Narendra Modi’s visit to the nation known as the ‘hub of technology startups’. In the same line, to help startups to grow and nurture, the Nasscom Product Council and Accenture, an IT consulting major plans to collaborate with Israel Innovation Authority. This step is taken to help both the countries startups in joint product development, knowledge transfer and in the creation of hardware ecosystem.

This move comes after the Prime minister Narendra Modi visited Israel in July 2017. During his visit to the country, Prime Minister had promised collaboration in technology, defence, and security along with bilateral cooperation in entrepreneurship and cyber security.

According to ET report, the Nasscom Product Council's co chair Somdutta Singh and Avnish Sabharwal, MD, Accenture Ventures and Open Innovation, Accenture India plan to take the delegation of product council leaders, startups to Israel in the first week of September.

Commenting on the development, Somdutta Singh said, "We are working with startups in Israel and the collaboration between the two countries will benefit the world at large with new hardware innovation. This will also overcome the cultural challenges in workspaces in both the countries."

As per the Avnish Sabharwal, the collaboration will happen around artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), blockchain, cybersecurity and in the areas of healthcare, pharmacy, agriculture among other industries.

"Every year, around 40 delegations go to Silicon Valley from India. We want the kind of traffic between Israel and India. We shall figure out MoUs with Israel Innovation Authority and other bodies there," said Sabharwal.

Sabharwal believes that with this collaboration they would be able to make the Israel-India corridor as strong as the Silicon Valley-India corridor and bring Israel based accelerators to India. Further Singh highlighted that for India to go ahead and change its image from an IT services nation, it’s important to frame policies better which will encourage the current product startup space.

Further, Singh highlighted that for India to go ahead and change its image from an IT services nation, it’s important to frame policies better which will encourage the current product startup space.

This is not the first time when such initiative is taken. Earlier in July 2017, Idein Ventures, a global private equity firm with its India offices in Hyderabad and Mumbai, had expanded to Israel.

In the same month, India’s Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) announced that they are going to invest a whopping $ 25 million in Israel-based technology incubator, Jerusalem Innovation Incubator (JII).

Ivanka Trump Is All Set To Lead Entrepreneurship Summit In Hyderabad, India

India and US will be co-hosting the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) at Hyderabad from November 28, 2017. The event is being organised by the NITI Aayog in coordination with Ministry of External Affairs. This announcement was made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi through a series of tweets.

According to the Prime Minister, the main motive behind the three-day event is to bring together entrepreneurs of the two countries.

Commenting on the development, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, "The Summit is a unique opportunity for bringing together entrepreneurs and startups with global leaders. We look forward to Ms Ivanka Trump’s presence at Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2017-Hyderabad as the leader of the US delegation."

Look forward to Ms. Ivanka Trump’s presence at #GES 2017 Hyderabad as the leader of the US delegation. @realDonaldTrump @IvankaTrump

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 10, 2017

Modi, who had earlier invited US President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka during his meeting with Trump in Washington in June. Ivanka will be leading the American delegation in the upcoming event in Hyderabad, India

Ivanka presence was confirmed by US President Donald Trump through a tweet where he said, "@IvankaTrump will lead the US delegation to India this fall, supporting women's entrepreneurship globally. #GES2017 @narendramodi.”

Later on, Ivanka retweeted Modi tweet and tweeted "Honored to lead the US delegation to #GES2017 in India & meet with Prime Minister Modi & passionate entrepreneurs from around the globe!"

Honored to lead the US delegation to #GES2017 in India & meet with Prime Minister Modi & passionate entrepreneurs from around the globe! pic.twitter.com/yVyGGWua2x

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) August 10, 2017

Earlier in July 2017, IndianWeb2 reported how India and Israel have deepened their business relationship by announcing the launch of a technology fund, the Israel India Innovation Initiative Fund, or I4F, that will focus towards growing the two countries’ business relations. In the same month, Indian Prime Minister had launched India-Israel innovation bridge to encourage startups and innovators.

Whereas in May 2017, Modi had invited startups to focus on research for innovative medical devices and use technology to make healthcare more affordable.

10 Must Know Startup News From The Week Gone By [03 - 08 July]

Missed the happening of startup world? Here is the recap for you. Mentioned below are the 10 news which made buzz during in the week gone by.

Homegrown E-commerce Giant Snapdeal Rejects Flipkart’s $850 Mn Buyout Offer

Flipkart, Snapdeal merger is taking twist and turns with time. Recently, Jasper Infotech owned Snapdeal’s board has refused the initial offer by Flipkart. E-commerce major, Flipkart has completed the due diligence process and has made an offer of $800-850 million to buy Snapdeal. But Snapdeal’s board felt that offer made by Flipkart undervalued the company. Snapdeal’s largest investor, SoftBank has been proactively mediating the sale for the past few months.

India, Israel Launches 5 Year Technology Fund

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel has become the buzz of the town. The PM visit to Israel has further strengthen the relation between two nation by announcing the launch of a technology fund, the Israel India Innovation Initiative Fund, or I4F. The fund will focus towards growing the two countries’ business relations. In addition to the tech fund, the two countries also signed a total of seven accords aimed at boosting India and Israel’s cooperation in a number of crucial sectors right from agriculture and water to space research etc.

Not only this, the two countries have unveiled a bilateral innovation challenge that will see Indian and Israeli startups coming together to conceive solutions to fight some of the most critical challenges that the world is facing right now like water, agriculture and digital healthcare etc. The bilateral innovation challenge will be hosted on a new online platform called the India-Israel Innovation Bridge.

VC Investments in Startups Lowest in Last 3 Years, Decline By 25%

As per a report by Venture Intelligence, a research firm led by media entrepreneur Arun Natarajan, the quarter ending June saw venture capital investments in Indian startups decreasing by 25 percent from the figure locked in a year ago. The report highlighted that the venture capital investment amount in startups in India has decreased to $275 million in 78 investments from last year’s figure of #309 million in 104 deals. Venture Intelligence, which is considered as a leading source of information and analysis on private company financials, transactions and their valuations in India, also revealed that the June quarter was the lowest VC investment quarter seen by the Indian startup ecosystem in the last three years period.

WeWork Launches First Collaborative Work Space in Bengaluru

New York-based collaborative workspace, WeWork has launched its first community workspace in Bengaluru – ‘WeWork Galaxy’. WeWork targets two new centers’ in Koramangala and Whitefield respectively. The Bangalore launch also coincides with the opening of first location in Brazil (Sao Palo).

WorkSpace is well equipped to cater to 2200 members, powered by beautiful, functional work spaces, swimming pool and gym. The company is aiming to reach out to entrepreneurs, freelancers, SMEs and SMBs, startups across e-commerce, IT/ITES, retail, FMCG, healthcare, legal, and marketing segments amongst others.

Numaligarh Refinery To Assist Startups in Assam

Assam-based Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) has decided to promote startups in Northeast India region. If we talk of the funds, initially, to assist startups, company has come up with a fund of Rs 10 Crore which will come as a grant for startup venture. Commenting on the development, P.Padmanabhan, Managing Director, NRL said, “We want to create entrepreneurship ecosystem in Northeast India. Once the ideas are submitted, jury will evaluate the same. We will evaluate if the project requires seed funding, scale up funding or any other assistance. We will tie up with incubation Centre.”

Flipkart Executives To Deliver Packages To Customers

E-commerce major, Flipkart has recently flagged off a program where its employees will visit customers across the Indian subcontinent in the month of July as a part of the company’s 10th anniversary celebrations. As a part of the program, Flipkart’s top executives, which includes its CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, and its employees across business functions will get an opportunity to personally visit a customer, especially in tier 2, 3 and 4 towns like Bhopal, Patna, Amritsar, Vijaywada, Guwahati, Cuttack, Nashik and Jamnagar to thank them for supporting the company for ten long years.

Shamik Sharma To Join pi Ventures As Venture Partner

Early stage venture fund, pi Ventures has appointed Shamik as a Venture Partner. He was previously the Chief Product and Technology officer at Myntra where he was responsible for driving technology strategy and culture. At pi Ventures, Sharma will work with portfolio founders to help them get past critical hurdles, design their product roadmaps and hire specialised talent. His role will involve supporting pi Ventures in deep understanding of technology and IP via technology deep dives of prospective portfolio companies and support in bringing interesting startups aligned with pi Ventures’ investment theme to their deal pipeline.

Capsula.Studio to Set Up a Startup Accelerator

Capsula.Studio at Tel Aviv University has partnered with a commercial vehicles seating and interiors company, Pinnacle Industries, to establish a startup accelerator, Pinnacle Capsula.Studio in Pune. The partnership aims to accelerate innovative entrepreneurs to market through Capsula’s proven ‘Mentored Customer Validation’ program and knowledge center which connect entrepreneurs with global value network players and the research community.

The Studio has been conceived as a not-for-profit entity which will be located at The BHAU Institute which is a part of the College of Engineering. It will act as a bridge between Indian and Israeli entrepreneurs and will allow novel ideas rapidly gain market traction.

Housing’s Rahul Yadav Joins ANAROCK Property Consultants

ANAROCK Property Consultants, which prominent real estate industry stalwart Anuj Puri launched last month has appointed Housing.com’s co-founder and ex-CEO Rahul Yadav as Chief Product & Technology Officer. Yadav’s experience in harnessing the consumer housing market at via technology will add the key element to the business.

Yadav, who will be based out of ANAROCK’s Mumbai offices in Bandra-Kurla Complex, assumes his new role from July first week and is already building his team of product and technology experts.

Edtech Startup BYJU’S Acquires TutorVista And Edurite

The creator of K-12 app, BYJU’S has acquired TutorVista and Edurite from Pearson. The partnership is focused on expanding international reach and creating a diverse product portfolio. Launched in 2015, BYJU’s has become one of the preferred education app for students across age groups with 8 million users and 4,00,000 annual paid subscriptions. With an average time of 40 minutes being spent by a student on the app every day from 1700+ cities and towns, the BYJU’S app is making learning enjoyable and effective. BYJU’S is making learning contextual and visual, and not just theoretical.

Reluctant to Criticism, Govt To Launch A Digital Platform To Counter Foreign Media

It has often been seen that a majority of foreign media's reportage of India is still stuck in the medieval times and hasn't evolved much as the country has evolved. In order to change this situation and the perception of people in other countries about the Indian subcontinent and its people, the Indian government is now reportedly planning to launch an official digital platform which will challenge the anti-India narrative in foreign media through hard and compelling commentary. Not only this, the platform would also be providing India's take or point of view on several important global events, something which doesn't get reported currently, neither in foreign media nor local.

Whether the platform is really aiming to achieve the aforementioned objectives or the government is simply trying to brush the criticism the Modi government and some of his programs are receiving in the foreign media under the carpet, remains to be seen.

For the first three years, the goal of the platform would be to reach somewhere between 10 million to 100 million page views a month, 1 million YouTube subscribers, and 1 million mobile app downloads.

According to a report in the ET, the idea of an official digital platform has already been approved by the Prasar Bharati Board. The committee for the same reportedly included Prasar Bharati board members Shashi Shekar Vempati and Sunil Alagh, University of San Francisco professor Vamsee Juluri, Prasar Bharati interim chief executive Rajeev Singh and Swarajya magazine editorial director R Jagannathan. The committee was headed by Prasar Bharati chairman A Surya Prakash.

Reportedly, the idea to launch a global news channel first came to the United Progressive Alliance government, but unfortunately the idea only remained an idea and never took off the ground.

"It couldn't happen earlier for whatever reason. But this is the right time to have a global media presence," Surya Prakash said in a statement to ET.

Prasar Bharati has suggested to create the digital platform through an appropriate corporate structure under the Indian Companies Act, 2013, so as to ensure both financial autonomy as well as global competitiveness. According to the report submitted by the board, the main aim of the digital platform will be to become a “global news brand for the voice of India”.

Let's see if the BJP government is able to achieve something what the UPA government couldn't get a step further from the drawing board.

Jugnoo Garners Support from PM Narendra Modi Through Twitter – Launches ‘Jugnoo Pay’

Prime Minister Narendra Modi led government, enabled auto-rickshaw based hyper-local startup, Jugnoo to launch its UPI enabled payment solution, ‘Jugnoo Pay’ by solving their issues within 48 hours of a tweet to PM.

Aligning itself to the Government of India’s vision of making India a cashless economy, Jugnoo had been working towards the launch of a UPI enabled payment solution since past few months but the brand had been facing certain technical issues in terms of SDK. However, Jugnoo managed to get immediate government support through the social networking and microblogging site, Twitter. Samar Singla, Founder and CEO, Jugnoo tweeted to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about their problem and validating the government’s stance towards the startup ecosystem, the issue was resolved within 48 hours of the tweet.

@narendramodi maybe banks should give us UPI sdk at least. Have been trying for months via @jugnoose

— Samar Singla (@samarsingla) November 27, 2016

Giving a better perspective on ‘Jugnoo Pay’, it is a UPI enabled payment solution that allows merchants to request and consumers to approve payments directly using their respective bank accounts with their mobile number as an identifier.

Adding to the insights, following the launch announcement of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) application by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) towards the end of November this year, there were 30 banks offering the UPI app on Google play store. Not only were these banks conferred with the authority to offer the payment service to its customers but were also given the control to further proliferate the technology to other merchants. Thus betting big on payment solutions and aiding the vision of cashless economy, Jugnoo collaborated with YES Bank to enhance the reach of UPI based payment solutions. Therefore, Jugnoo Pay works with all the NPCI approved 30 banks across the country at present.

Adding his bit to the whole scheme of things, Ronak Goyal, VP Engineering, Jugnoo commented, “UPI enabled Jugnoo Pay is the latest offering from Jugnoo to our customers. Factoring in the array of drawbacks in e-wallets, UPI is the next big thing and digital wallets will eventually become obsolete. So, we have enabled customers with a new and more hassle free payment option. Furthermore, the current government’s proactivity towards fulfilling its vision is commendable. Our collaboration with YES bank not only gave us access to the UPI software kit, but also to the NPCI’s tech library that immensely helped us create Jugnoo Pay. In this new era of governance, where the government has made itself so easily accessible to the public, I believe the nation should come together to make the most of technology and collectively take India to new heights.”

The recent move of demonetizing 500 and 1000 currency notes, made it absolutely clear of what the government intends. Tiding on these trends, while Jugnoo had already announced that it will introduce UPI to its app in the September 2016, however, after demonetization, the brand nailed it with the launch of Jugnoo Pay.

Post the announcement of ‘Startup India Campaign’ the entire entrepreneur’s fraternity stood in unanimity to support the mission not only in words but through various innovative startups. These startups not only make life easier for public, but are also enhancing the economy of the country. Treading on these line-of-thoughts, Jugnoo Pay offers hassle free money transaction directly through a user’s bank to their friend’s bank account via UPI.

“While existing Jugnoo customers can directly login and use this service, new customers need to sign up on Jugnoo platform to use the service. In next iteration, Jugnoo Pay will be integrated as a payment option in Jugnoo app so that users can pay their ride amount, groceries and meals directly from their bank accounts. Furthermore, it will soon be open for other e-commerce and businesses as payment solution. Jugnoo is also working on offline solution to ensure financial inclusion for all.” Ronak added.

Jugnoo Pay mobile application is available on Google Play store for Android users and will be soon available on Apple App store for Apple users.