T-Hub Partners with Silicon Valley-based FalconX for Global Startup Immersion Program

Startup founders from across India will have an opportunity to enter the US market through this five-week-long program.

The top three startups from the immersion program will receive USD100K strategic funding each from FalconX.

T-Hub, which leads India’s pioneering innovation ecosystem, today announced its partnership with the US-based technology accelerator, FalconX for the ‘Global Startup Immersion Program’ in the Silicon Valley, USA. The program will enable prospective startups across the country to launch their products in the US markets and steer them towards growth and success.

FalconX has curated this five-week program to select and help high-impact startups expand their businesses in new markets, primarily in the US. The immersion program will provide tailored business, technical and leadership mentoring from over 40 serial entrepreneurs, investors, and experts in Silicon Valley. The program will culminate in a ‘Technology Day’ where startups can pitch to more than 100 venture capitalists, corporate executives, and industry leaders. The top three startups from the immersion program will also receive USD 100K strategic funding each from FalconX.

MSR, CEO of T-Hub said, “The partnership with FalconX is a critical step towards realising T-Hub's focus on helping entrepreneurs scale their businesses globally. This immersion program put together by experienced world-class entrepreneurs would add immense value to the startup ecosystem. The program will open doors for Indian startups to a global network of mentors and investors.”

Murali Chirala, CEO of FalconX Inc said, “The Indian startup ecosystem is rapidly evolving into the world's most vibrant force of innovation and disruption in all technology dimensions. T-Hub, in Telangana, is a premium and fast-growing innovation ecosystem enabler providing entrepreneurs with the needed mentorship, access to capital and customers. Our partnership with T-Hub is critical in helping achieve the objective of attracting startups with global aspirations to move to Silicon Valley where FalconX will shape them to find market fit and success.

The selected startups will gain access to numerous funding opportunities, one-on-one curated deal flow sessions and multiple face-to-face networking opportunities with trusted advisors and potential partners from T-Hub and FalconX. They can test, evaluate, and scale their products and solutions for the global markets. It is an offline program being organised in the Silicon Valley for Indian startups, which will commence in July 2022. Interested startups can apply for the program here.

The immersion program is interlaced with practical workshops and empowering Masterclass sessions by BV Jagadeesh, a successful serial entrepreneur, investor, and technology evangelist. It will provide step-by-step methodologies for rapidly scaling and monetising the business to achieve product-market fit.

BV Jagadeesh, Co-founder of FalconX said, “The FalconX Global Immersion Program would be hugely beneficial to startups from India who are planning to go global. The best way for such companies is to link with Silicon Valley in California using FalconX expertise as a springboard to accelerate their growth in international markets”.

Murali Chirala co-founded FalconX along with veteran technology entrepreneurs and investors BV Jagadeesh, Raju Reddy, Ashish Gupta, Pradeep Aswani, Praveen Akkiraju, Krishna Yarlagadda, Anurag Jain, Raju Indukuri and JP Vejendla. They have invested in more than 200 startups whose market cap recently exceeded USD 70 billion.

T-Hub had previously partnered with FalconX in 2019 for the ‘Trestle’ program that provided growth-stage startups with opportunities to assess product fitment and readiness for new markets across the globe. T-Hub organised three workshops called "Masterclass for Entrepreneurs" by BV Jagadeesh. These were five-week-long workshops organised over the last two years with more than 130 founders from India, the US and other countries participating. The Masterclass helped entrepreneurs learn how to avoid common pitfalls of hiring, conduct initial customer outreach, and achieve product-market fit.

T-Hub (Technology Hub) is an innovation hub and ecosystem enabler. Based out of Hyderabad, India, T-Hub leads India’s pioneering innovation ecosystem. With a mission of enabling and empowering an ecosystem hungry for innovation, T-Hub is creating an impact for startups, corporations, and other innovation ecosystem stakeholders. Incorporated in 2015, it has provided over 1800 national and international startups with access to better technology, talent, mentors, customers, corporates, investors, and government agencies. It has elevated innovation for leading national and global corporations, transforming their business models for the better. Working in collaboration with innovation partners and enablers in Telangana, India and worldwide, T-Hub is building a future-ready innovation ecosystem.

FalconX Inc is a Silicon Valley technology accelerator shaping global startups for success through mentorship, investment, access to VCs, and customer introductions. Ten successful Indian serial entrepreneurs developed a platform of strategic and tactical support systems to help entrepreneurs succeed. FalconX has built an extensive engagement with corporate executives, business houses, and Investors in Silicon Valley, Texas, and India through which we facilitate unmatched leverage of opportunity for entrepreneurs.

FalconX powers novel ideas, new-generation products, and futuristic business models to nurture a culture of innovation. It empowers B2B startups through reliable market connections, timely finance, mentorship sessions and a favourable work environment so that they thrive in future.

Silicon Valley-based EdTech Firm ELSA Announces the Availability of Its Proprietary AI-enabled API

Leading English Language Proficiency App ELSA Releases Availability of Speech Recognition and Feedback Engine API

Democratizes Access to English Speaking & Training, Announces Partnerships with Edtech Institutions

ELSA, a company that uses speech recognition technology and artificial intelligence to help language learners improve their spoken English, today announces the availability of its proprietary AI-enabled API. This API technology integrates into any language learning solution to develop an English-speaking feature with automated speech recognition and interactive teaching. ELSA’s AI technology was built for the ELSA Speak App, which boasts 25+ million customers worldwide. With the release of its API, ELSA is democratizing the access to quality learning for users around the globe with new edtech partnerships with CNA Go in Brazil, Edulinx in Japan and Sahi.ai and UOLO in India to name a few.

ELSA (English Language Speech Assistant) is an AI-powered app that helps learners speak English more fluently. One of the differentiating attributes of its API is a focus on pronunciation, which can recognize non-native speech with +95% accuracy and design a pathway to native pronunciation. 

ELSA’s API provides detailed feedback for both scripted and unscripted speech with word stress, pronunciation, fluency, intonation of the audio input, grammar and vocabulary analysis. The learner also receives an estimated IELTS score/ CEFR level based on their speaking proficiency. Learners receive customized & interactive practice with the AI on any topic, offering a natural learning setting where any learner can benefit. Speech features are among the most engaging to learners; as shown through ELSA’s average session length of 23 minutes, in the top 10% of all learning apps.

Speaking on the announcement Vaibhav Anand, India Country Manager said, “Our proprietary voice recognition makes ELSA unique in terms of training based on voice recognition. In India itself, ELSA offers Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi, Telugu and Tamil as an option under ‘mother tongue’ to non-native English speakers. As a global brand, our endeavour is to build an ecosystem of learning where individuals can master spoken English and become confident with ELSA.”

“As English communication quickly evolves into a requirement for the modern skillset, it’s essential that edtech and learning companies include this competency in their curriculum. Students want digitized training and quality learning at their fingertips anytime, anywhere and the release of our API makes it available to a broader audience,” said Ms. Vu Van, Co-Founder and CEO of ELSA.

Accuracy of ELSA’s AI is highest in the market because ELSA possesses the largest audio dataset of non-native speakers, and its AI can adapt depending on the speaker’s mother tongue. The ELSA app has aggregated 25m+ users across 120+ countries and retains a 4.8 / 5 rating by 50,000+ users on the Apple App Store & Android Play Store. In 2022, it plans further expansion in Vietnam, Latin America, India, and Japan after a prosperous 2020 with a 300% increase in its revenue. ELSA plans to collaborate with more edtech companies to further enable language learning around the world.

In addition, ELSA is a strategic partner to Sahi.ai, an Indian staffing platform, to help its gig workforce enhance their English skills for better opportunities and wages. ELSA has also partnered with CNA Go, the largest English center chain in Brazil, and Edulinx, a leading TOEIC and corporate English education company in Japan, to enhance their digital platforms with speaking features.

According to research, teaching through combined senses (ie. auditory + visuals) fosters better long-term memory formation and better learning outcomes, especially in children. Leveraging on this understanding, POPS Kids, an interactive educational platform for Vietnamese children, integrated ELSA voice recognition technology into their English pronunciation practices. While watching cartoons, the young users can learn native pronunciation and interact with a fun AI tutor. Another edtech partner, UOLO, reported an engagement rate at 10-15x times of normal lessons when applying ELSA’s API in a gamifying renovation of its speaking module.

For more information and to obtain pricing for ELSA’s API, visit: https://business.elsaspeak.com/elsa-api

About ELSA

Founded in 2015 by Stanford alum Ms. Vu Van, and Dr. Xavier Anguera, a veteran in speech recognition and AI, ELSA is a Silicon Valley based company that uses proprietary speech recognition technology and artificial intelligence to help language learners improve their English pronunciation. The inspiration for ELSA, the 2016 SXSWEdu winner, came when Vu realized that pronunciation and accent often pose a hindrance for non-native employees in business. 

ELSA has raised $27 million in capital and is backed by leading VCs like SIG, Gradient Ventures and Monks Hill Ventures. In 2021, ELSA was named in the Top 100 Artificial Intelligence Startups Redefining Industries by CBInsights. The company also has offices in Portugal, India, Japan, Indonesia, Brazil and Vietnam. 

For more information, visit: https://business.elsaspeak.com/elsa-api

Valley-based Baby Tech Firm Cradlewise Secures $7 Mn Funding to Help New Parents With Baby Sleep

CES Hero

Cradlewise, a Silicon Valley-based baby technology company that makes smart cribs for babies, has raised a series seed round of $7M led by new venture capital firm Footwork with significant participation from CRV and follow on from existing investors SOSV and Better Capital. Other notable investors participating include Katrina Lake (founder of Stitch Fix), Jeremy Cai (CEO of Italic) and Dilip Goswani (CTO of Molekule). Sachin Oswal (Co-founder Infibeam) and Sonny Vu (ex-CEO of Misfit Wearables) have participated in previous rounds of funding.

The company maintains offices in both the San Francisco Bay Area, California and Bangalore, India. The funds will be used to accelerate the company’s innovation and technology roadmap and grow their team in India with hires in engineering, software, product, and customer success.

Cradlewise makes smart cribs with a built-in baby monitor that uses AI to learn the baby’s sleep patterns and adapts to changing needs. It’s a crib, bassinet, and monitor - all integrated into one. It’s a baby’s sleep companion from birth to 24 months old. The self-learning crib spots the first signs of wakeup of the baby and starts rocking automatically along with soothing music to safeguard sleep.

Bharath Patil and Radhika 

Co-founders Radhika and Bharath Patil invented Cradlewise to solve the sleep challenges they faced when their first child was born. They are inventors and have created tech that drives drones, robots, and smartphones for companies like Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.

“We are so excited to be working with such well-regarded VC firms and angel investors who have a deep understanding of connected hardware and the consumer market,” said Radhika Patil, Co-Founder of Cradlewise. “We believe that Cradlewise is uniquely positioned in this competitive space as the only smart sleep product designed to impact an outcome and not just give notifications. We will continue to lead in this space by expanding the capabilities of the product in the areas of a baby’s health and safety.”

Nikhil Basu Trivedi, co-founder & General Partner at Footwork joins the board of this fast-growing startup in the $136+ Billion childcare market. "Cradlewise is the only baby product in the market that uses deep tech and AI to learn the baby's sleep patterns and growth trends. With software updates that build on this rich data, a characteristic of the very best-connected hardware companies such as Nest, Peloton, Tesla, and Tonal, Cradlewise is pioneering the connected nursery," said Nikhil.

“I’ve been fortunate to have watched this “Tesla of Cribs” come together from an idea to a TIME 100 product from the very early days. Radhika and Bharath are stellar entrepreneurs who are solving an incredibly important problem - using modern tech and AI to help babies sleep better & longer and help parents have a far more fulfilling time with their babies”, said Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital, an early backer of breakout companies started by Indian founders including Khatabook, Teachmint, Open & others.

Cradlewise currently ships directly via cradlewise.com. Plans are also underway to expand availability through other e-commerce websites in 2022.

About Cradlewise :

Cradlewise is a Silicon Valley as well as Bengaluru based baby technology startup. Their first product is a smart crib. Bharath and Radhika made this crib after their own experiences of sleepless nights with their first-born child. It is the world's first crib with an integrated contactless baby monitor that spots the first signs of wakeup of the baby and starts rocking along with soothing music to safeguard sleep. The crib learns from the baby’s sleep patterns and adapts to the changing needs - just like a mom! Cradlewise smart crib is one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2020. Cradlewise is all about sensing, learning and impacting sleep fitness for babies. They are redesigning the baby nursery and making it smart, intuitive and delightful.

Helia Raises $3 Mn From Silicon Valley Investors, Including Neo, Abstract Ventures and Kevin Hartz

Bangalore: November 26, 2020: Helia, a US based enterprise security startup by Indian origin co-founder, Ashwin Sreenivas, along with the company's US co-founders, Russell Kaplan and Daniel Berrios, today announces that it has raised USD 3 million. The funding round was led by some of the top venture capital firms and investors in Silicon Valley including Neo, Abstract Ventures and Kevin Hartz, the cofounder and chairman of Eventbrite.

Helia's SaaS platform enhances physical security within enterprises by autonomously reviewing security camera footage in real time. Rather than requiring large teams of human guards, Helia uses cutting edge deep learning to monitor cameras for security events, and alerts teams of breaches instantaneously, before they escalate into security incidents. Helia does this without requiring specialized cameras. Instead, it integrates with existing security cameras, processes their feeds on an enterprise's premises using Helia's deep learning stack, and centralizes results to the cloud where they can be viewed securely.

Helia has worked extensively with teams in India on product development, particularly in start-up hubs like Bangalore that are filled with deeply technical and entrepreneurial teams. Furthermore, Ashwin has deep connections to India, having spent the majority of his life in Cochin, Kerala. 

"We are honored to have this incredible group of investors backing our vision and helping Helia on its journey" said Ashwin Sreenivas, co-founder of Helia. There is growing demand within enterprises for security teams to change posture from reactive to proactive. Rather than simply addressing the consequences of a breach, Helia allows security teams to prevent the incident altogether.

ü Helia's AI autonomously monitors all existing security cameras, and alerts security teams of breaches in real time, allowing officers to respond before the breach can escalate.

ü Breach detection ensures that only authorized employees have access to spaces.

ü Enterprise risk reports quantify risk over time allowing security leaders to uncover access control vulnerabilities and allocate guard staffing optimally

For more information, please visit https://www.helia.ai/

About the Founders: Ashwin Sreenivas, a technology entrepreneur from Kerala, is one of three co-founders at Helia; prior, he was a deployment strategist at Palantir Technologies, and has graduated with degrees in computer science and AI from Stanford University (BS, MS). Russell Kaplan, co-founder, was formerly a senior machine learning scientist at Tesla, and also has degrees in AI from Stanford University (BS, MS). Daniel Berrios, co-founder, worked in the TMT investment banking group at Goldman Sachs, and has a degree in economics from Stanford University.

About Helia: Helia is structuring and understanding the world's video. Billions of hours of video are created every day, but almost none of it can be used to create value; Helia changes this by using AI to autonomously review video in real time. The company uses advanced computer vision to integrate with existing security cameras and access control systems to monitor for breaches. Security teams are then notified of incidents in real time, along with a video clip of the event, allowing for quick identification, triage, and response. 

Valley's Autonomous Vehicle Tech Firm Velodyne Lidar Announces 3-Year Sales Agreement with Baidu

Velodyne Lidar, Inc. (Nasdaq: VLDR) today announced a three-year sales agreement with Baidu for its Alpha Prime™ lidar sensors. The Alpha Prime sensors will be utilized for autonomous applications. Velodyne's low-cost, high-scale manufacturing delivers attractive pricing for Baidu and its Apollo partners

Baidu and Baidu’s Apollo program, an open-source autonomous vehicle software platform, selected the Alpha Prime for its range, resolution and field of view that collectively address the high-performance requirements for autonomous vehicles. Quality 3D lidar vision is a critical component for autonomous vehicles to accurately perceive the environment.

The Alpha Prime sensor produces millions of data points per second, enabling precise, reliable navigation in real time to detect objects, vehicles and people that might pose a collision threat. The Alpha Prime can help autonomous vehicles navigate roadways at various speeds, traveling in a range of road conditions such as rain, sleet and snow. This powerful lidar will enhance the vehicle capabilities.

Baidu has been a strategic investor in Velodyne since 2016. Baidu and Velodyne share a strong commitment to advancing autonomy and safety on roadways.

“In fulfilling our intelligent driving mission, Baidu works with innovation leaders like Velodyne to bring a safe, efficient autonomous driving experience to everyone,” said Yaoming Shen, Sr. Optical Engineer, Baidu.

“Velodyne greatly values our relationship with Baidu, a strategic business partner and investor, and we are deeply committed to our combined work in the Chinese market,” said Wei Weng, Executive Director of Asia, Velodyne Lidar. “They are a trailblazer of intelligent driving technology and deployment, and their accomplishments and influence span global markets. Alpha Prime provides safe, efficient navigation for autonomous vehicles.”

Velodyne’s Alpha Prime is a next generation lidar sensor that utilizes Velodyne’s patented 360-degree surround view perception technology to support autonomous mobility. A result of over ten years of lidar development and learning, the Alpha Prime supports autonomous operation across a broad range of road settings, including urban and highway environments. Velodyne has multiple manufacturing sources available, including in the United States, Japan and Thailand, to produce high-quality sensors at scale to address customer needs.

Velodyne Lidar (NASDAQ: VLDR) ushered in a new era of autonomous technology with the invention of real-time surround view lidar sensors. Velodyne is the first public pure-play lidar company and is known worldwide for its broad portfolio of breakthrough lidar technologies. Velodyne’s revolutionary sensor and software solutions provide flexibility, quality and performance to meet the needs of a wide range of industries, including autonomous vehicles, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), robotics, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), smart cities and security. Through continuous innovation, Velodyne strives to transform lives and communities by advancing safer mobility for all. For more information, visit www.velodynelidar.com.

Silicon Valley/India-based Aerial Robotics Startup FlytBase Raises Seed Funding

 FlytBase, Inc. - a startup based in Silicon Valley & India - recently closed its Series Seed round of venture financing, as it powers fully autonomous drone fleets for global businesses. The seed funding comes as the company gains traction for its commercial drone automation software, with a focus on high-value enterprise use-cases such as warehouse inventory management, wind turbine inspection, live remote drone operations, and public safety.

Nitin Gupta, CEO, FlytBase, explained: “We have been fortunate to have support from leading incubators and angel investors since our inception. With the most recent round, we now can rapidly build upon our unique competitive position in the global drone ecosystem. Our ability to combine intelligent software with off-the-shelf, cost-effective drones positions us well with enterprise customers, as they mature their drone adoption from PoCs and pilots to fully autonomous, multi-site drone operations. We are focused on developing cutting-edge autonomous systems that solve real-world problems for our customers, at scale”.

The Series Seed round is led by a US-based, early-stage seed fund, and brings not only venture capital, but also a wealth of professional experience and world-class B2B networks to the table. FlytBase holds a unique position in the global commercial drone ecosystem - its FlytOS & FlytCloud software offerings, built & enriched over the years, can enable intelligent automation of most major drone hardware platforms.



Sharvashish Das, Director of Engineering, added: “With an IoT architecture, intelligent plugins and open APIs, our technology platform brings a variety of capabilities to drones - ranging from indoor autonomous navigation and obstacle avoidance to precision landing and autonomous charging. This, in turn, is enabled by our team’s expertise in control theory, multi-sensor fusion, SLAM, machine vision, AI/ML, robotics and embedded systems”.

[caption id="attachment_139819" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Drone Security Surveillance[/caption]

FlytBase’s R&D lab is in Pune, India at the Bhau Institute, a leading engineering startup incubator. The FlytBase team has several decades of cumulative professional experience and holds degrees from IIT Bombay, IIT Kharagpur, Georgia Tech, COEP, University of Maryland - College Park, University of Minnesota - Minneapolis, and the University of Texas - Austin.

Dhiraj Dhule, Head of Strategic Projects, emphasized: “We’ve developed fully autonomous drone solutions for a wide variety of industries for customers in the US, Europe & Japan. Our team’s strengths in automation R&D, as well as scalable solution architecture, have resulted in bleeding-edge solutions for challenging use-cases such as wind turbine inspection where a drone has to precisely scan each turbine blade from each side, all on one battery charge while withstanding tough environmental conditions. This requires a mix of control systems, AI/ML, aerial navigation, path-planning and drone hardware optimization expertise”.

The commercial drone market continues to accelerate worldwide - with indoor applications likely to lead the way, while the security & privacy regulations for outdoor use of drones get developed by aviation authorities across the world. For example, IAG Cargo, part of the same group that owns British Airways, recently highlighted its use of fully autonomous drones for scanning inventory at its air cargo facility - an innovation in warehouse inventory management powered by FlytBase technology. FlytBase was also the global champion at NTT Data’s 2019 Open Innovation contest.

[caption id="attachment_139821" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Team[/caption]

 

FlytBase continues to rapidly expand its India team - with emphasis on experience and expertise in robotics, control systems, computer vision, machine learning, MEAN stack, Android development, and related technologies.

Silicon Valley-based Fintech Startup Vested gets Funded by IP Ventures

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) registered investment advisor, Vested has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Inflection Point (IP) Ventures. Founded in 2018 by Viram Shah, Darwin Arifin, Eric Huynh and Yinghan Lin, Vested is aimed at facilitating sustainable wealth formation by allowing local investors to go international. With a paperless Know-Your-Customer (KYC) process, fractional investing, streamlined fund transfers, commission-free investing, and advisory via pre-build portfolios, they have built a product compatible for Indian investors.

According to Vested, the funds raised via IP Ventures will be utilized in expanding the team and launching new products. Till now they have opened more than 7,000 brokerage accounts for investors all across India.

The founders of Vested come from four different countries and diverse career backgrounds. While Viram Shah is originally from India and has three-plus years of experience in investment banking at JP Morgan in India, Darwin Arifin is originally from Indonesia and has three-plus years of involvement in leading process development and project management at Sandia National Labs and Intel. Eric Huynh is originally from the US and has eight-plus years of practice in product and design. Yinghan Lin is originally from Singapore and has previously worked at Google.

“We are excited to be partnering with IPV via this fund-raise. Their network of CXOs is invaluable. It has already helped us acquire new customers as well as get connected to important business partners” says Viram Shah, CEO, Vested.

Vested offers pre-built portfolios called Vests that allow investors to invest beyond the FAANGs of the world. The fractional proficiency of the company allows investors to start investing as little as $1 in their favorite global companies. Vested has so far established partnerships with Indian banks to simplify the fund transfer process under the central bank’s LRS.

Speaking on his investment in the company, IP Ventures investor Dhaval Radia says “There is a huge market that is ready to be unlocked for Indian investors wanting to invest in US stocks, seamlessly, at their finger-tips. The platform provided by Vested is extremely simple and gets the job done. I expect a ton of sustainable growth for a platform like this, as the investors get more savvy and comfortable with investing in US.” 

“The thing that attracted me at first about Vested is the simplicity of its application. It shows the clarity of thought and customer-centricity, in all that they do. Then when I got to know the diversity and depth in the team behind it, I was convinced that it has all the right indicators for becoming a huge success,” Mr. Radia adds.

The investment advisor firm has bagged a prize of $20,000 at the UC Berkeley’s Launch Accelerator for its accomplishments. Whittling an international investing product localized for Indian investors, it has outstretched funds from investors across India, US, China, and Singapore.

With the partnership with the Broker-Dealer in the US, Vested has become as the only company to offer zero-commission US stock investing to Indian investors.

Over the past 5 years, $1.8 billion has been invested in international markets. This number is set to proliferate substantively as awareness about international investing increases and cost-effective and easy to use solutions become available to Indian investors.

Andre Agassi-backed EdTech Firm Debut in Flagship Apple Store in Mumbai

[blockquote footer="Andre Agassi"]You spend a few years learning to read and spend the rest of your life reading to learn”, according to major Square Panda supporter, and founder of 'Andre Agassi Foundation For Education[/blockquote]

Ashish Jhalani, Global CTO and MD (India), has this to say about Square Panda: “Square Panda's vision is to spread literacy in languages such as English to the masses. We combine years of neuroscience research, proven leading curriculum, engaging gamification, adaptive learning and multi-sensory play, all into one integrated experience for the young learners.”'

Square Panda spent more than a year on studying and researching the Indian early childhood education market preparing for an entry into the education space. We conducted user studies and pilot programs, before finally unveiling our multisensory game-based learning platform at the Apple Flagship Store. Entering a new phase of our exciting journey, this launch marks a huge step towards the evolution for our brand, that has personified fun and learning for early learners. The official launch date is 2nd August 2019, Friday 5 p.m. onwards, in the iStore at High Street Phoenix, Lower Parel, Mumbai.

📣 We've got HUGE news! Square Panda is now being sold at https://t.co/wpAO5byAvJ and #Apple stores! Have you seen our award-winning learning system in action? Head on out to your local store and spread the word! PS did you know all of our games are FREE to download? #AppleStore pic.twitter.com/I6Tp2sWpTu

— Square Panda (@squarepanda) July 18, 2019

For the parents and teachers who love to explore all-in-one unique learning games for their kids; Square Panda is your one-stop learning destination. Our neuroscience research-based phonics learning system comes equipped with award-winning educational games that are STEM.org approved.

Engaging a child's multiple senses for an optimal learning experience, our games adapt to every child's unique learning needs. Smart Letters add a kinesthetic element to the learning-through-play process. Our games develop phonological awareness, rhyming skills, vocabulary and pre-writing skills, and much more in a completely safe and ad-free environment.

We are teaching 70,000+ kids across 2000+ schools globally; this number also includes some major school districts in the USA. We are backed by major education and retail partners in China.

The compaany believes the product will bring a revolution in the Indian early childhood education.

Ola to Set up Tech Centre in U.S. Silicon Valley for Electric, Connected & Autonomous Mobility Solutions

Indian cab-hailing firm Ola is setting up a advance technology center in Silicon Valley of the U.S to develop technologies related to electric/ connected/ autonomous vehicles. The upcoming centre, which will be a first-of-its-kind in the US, will be in San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California of U.S. Notably, the much popular 'Silicon Valley' is in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area and houses Apple, Google, Facebook and Paypal, among others.

The development comes within few days after the report surfaced up saying that government of India is planning to mandate cab aggregators such Uber and Ola to convert 40% of their fleet of cars to electric by April 2026.

The technology center will reportedly be in Palo Alto in the Bay Area and Ola will be the second Indian consumer internet company to launch a technology center in Silicon Valley after Flipkart.

The center would look to on-board world-class talent who will collaborate with global teams in the various geographies where Ola operates. It would build technology solutions that can accelerate Ola’s ambitions across electric mobility and connected vehicles, as well as lead futuristic experiments like autonomous vehicles. Ola is looking to hire experts across artificial intelligence, machine learning, data sciences, engineering and product development.

Ola, which raised fresh capital for its electric Vehicle unit from Ratan Tata, in last month, is said to be hiring more than 150 engineers to work at the center who would also collaborate with Ola’s global team spread across India, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand to develop "next-generation technologies in mobility," Ola said in a statement. The new hires would be across areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning, data sciences, engineering, and product development.

The company will begin hiring this week for open positions. This includes hiring a senior data science professional.

Uber and Ola would have to begin switching their vehicles to electric as soon as next year in order to achieve 2.5 per cent electrification by 2021 and 10 per cent by 2023 before taking it to 40 per cent, Reuters quoted a source and records of government meetings around new rules for clean mobility.

[Top Image - Financial Times]

This Silicon Valley-based Startup Aims To Solve Indian Farmers' Age-old Problem Using Its Agricultural Intelligence Engine

Not so long back, over 50,000 farmers marched to Mumbai for their demands of a complete loan waiver, fair pay and transfer of adivasi land to farmers who have been tilling it for years. These farmers marched about 180 km in the blazing sun over the six days.

The reason of this age-old problem of farmers in India is the very fact that these farmers have loans which they haven't been able to pay back and a majority of them have been denied loans from formal financial institutions resulting in farmers taking money from loans sharks.

Estimates suggest 500 million smallholder farmers globally need financing of $450 billion approximately; yet only 3% of the need is met.

The Problem

[caption id="attachment_125054" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Image - Udghosh.in[/caption]

The fact that banks continue to shy away from giving loans to farmers is because, they don't have any data to make a decision to accept or reject a loan request.

The current scenario is that when a farmer approaches a bank for loan, he, among other papers, submits his survey ID, a bank employee is physically required to visit the land and submit a report regarding the loan request.

This "Agrarian crisis" is the rampant phenomenon of suicides among Indian farmers from 1990 to the present. It has been exacerbated by the inability to repay growing debt resulting from loans often taken from local moneylenders and micro-credit banks to pay for high priced high yield seeds marketed by MNCs and the non-implementation of minimum support prices (MSP) by state governments.

Between 1998 to 2018, this one of the most burning issue of India has resulted in the suicides of 300,000 farmers in the country, on record.

The Solution

A Silicon Valley-based startup Harvesting, with its predictive Machine Learning (ML) algorithms has created a product for financial institutions (banks, MFI, co-operative, commercial and development banks) which will provide them specific farm land data by putting in farmer's survey ID. It will give them a snapshot of the land, its yield capacity and types of crops that can be cultivated. Thus making it more efficient for banks to disburse loans to farmers.

Harvesting is essentially a FinTech startup headquartered in Silicon Valley, and now has 100% subsidiary & operations in India.

The startup is building Agriculture Intelligence Engine (AIE) which will help bring speed, accuracy and transparency in the world’s largest and oldest industry -- agriculture -- to drive financial inclusion for farmers around the world. AIE uses remote sensing satellite imagery from from NASA and EU Space Agency, on-ground data and other data sources, and then converts it into credit score for farmers and translates that into data insights with the help artificial intelligence (AI).

Such data insights are currently missing from the loan value chain in India, which in turn, has kept financial institutions from lending heavily to the farmers here. With the application of big data and AI, Harvesting aims to make the farm loan value chain more efficient in India.

Harvesting aims to work with financial institutions (FIs) like banks, co-operatives, development and commercial banks, micro-finance institutions to provide them accurate and specific data about farmlands in India.

Harvesting's technology enables agri-lenders to get a snapshot of his land, crop yield, time for sowing and harvesting at a touch of a button along with a credit score of the farmer by just providing Survey-ID of the farm. Such data insights are currently missing from the loan value chain in India, which in turn, has kept financial institutions from lending heavily to the farmers here. With the application of big data and AI, Harvesting aims to make the farm loan value chain more efficient in India.

Harvesting has developed 3 complementary products to help financial institutions finance smallholder farmers:

1. Credit Risk Scoring System


2. Farmlands Monitoring System


3. Land Records Monitoring System

Funds for the Cause

To date, Harvesting has raised an angel round last year and has received a grant from Catalyst Fund, an initiative supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and JPMorgan Chase & Co as a fiscally sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. The Company will be raising a large seed round this year.

The Founder

[caption id="attachment_125056" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Ruchit G Garg, Founder CEO, Harvesting Inc [/caption]

Harvesting is a brain child of a serial entrepreneur Ruchit Garg, who started the Company in 2016 . After selling previous company in 2015, Ruchit (who is based in Silicon Valley, California) had a choice of starting another tech company which would cater to ever growing consumer internet or start a technology driven for-profit business which can drive immense impact on the ground and make a world a better place for everyone. During a trip to India, Ruchit realized that most of the issues small farm holder farmers faces across the world is due to asymmetry between farms & anyone else in the agriculture value chain.

Ruchit believes that current technology can solve this massive information gap which not only will solve issues for small farmers, but have power to help reduce the food security for humanity. Being a technology entrepreneur, he decided to build 'Agriculture Intelligence Engine’ which leverages AI & Remote Sensing, to help connect finance with farmers making it easy for financial service providers (agri-lenders) to work with farmers.

Prior to Harvesting, Ruchit was Founder & CEO of 9Slides, an online learning company for growing businesses, which was acquired by Limeade in 2015. Ruchit has worked for Microsoft at its Headquarter at Redmond, WA and Hyderabad for several years and contributed on many key projects such as XBOX Live, Windows 7, MSN Games etc. Ruchit is also chairman of Shobhit University Alumni Network, and mentor/advisor to several startups in India and USA.

Ruchit is also chairman of Shobhit University Alumni Network, and mentor/advisor to several startups in India and USA.

Plans for India

In April of this year, Harvesting rolled out its operations formally in India and recently on-boarded Sunil Srivasatva, a former Deputy Managing Director of Indias largest bank, State Bank of India, in the companys advisory board.

The Company will be building its team in Bangalore, and is in discussions with many major commercial and PSU banks who are active in agri-lending vertical.

The Road Ahead

Harvesting has recently partnered with World Bank’s CGAP (Consultative Group to Assist the Poor) to develop new credit scoring mechanism in Uganda to improve their access to loans. The company will support Pride, Uganda’s leading micro-finance institution. Harvesting is working on multiple such projects in different geographical locations including Brazil, Tanzania, Kenya, Turkey and India.

Silicon Valley and India will be the two major centers of operations for the Company. However, Harvesting is seeing interest from financial institutions in markets like Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Nepal and Myanmar and also consider opening a subsidiary in African continent to serve the continent

This Silicon Valley-based Startup Aims To Solve Indian Farmers' Age-old Problem Using Its Agricultural Intelligence Engine

Not so long back, over 50,000 farmers marched to Mumbai for their demands of a complete loan waiver, fair pay and transfer of adivasi land to farmers who have been tilling it for years. These farmers marched about 180 km in the blazing sun over the six days.

The reason of this age-old problem of farmers in India is the very fact that these farmers have loans which they haven't been able to pay back and a majority of them have been denied loans from formal financial institutions resulting in farmers taking money from loans sharks.

Estimates suggest 500 million smallholder farmers globally need financing of $450 billion approximately; yet only 3% of the need is met.

The Problem

[caption id="attachment_125054" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Image - Udghosh.in[/caption]

The fact that banks continue to shy away from giving loans to farmers is because, they don't have any data to make a decision to accept or reject a loan request.

The current scenario is that when a farmer approaches a bank for loan, he, among other papers, submits his survey ID, a bank employee is physically required to visit the land and submit a report regarding the loan request.

This "Agrarian crisis" is the rampant phenomenon of suicides among Indian farmers from 1990 to the present. It has been exacerbated by the inability to repay growing debt resulting from loans often taken from local moneylenders and micro-credit banks to pay for high priced high yield seeds marketed by MNCs and the non-implementation of minimum support prices (MSP) by state governments.

Between 1998 to 2018, this one of the most burning issue of India has resulted in the suicides of 300,000 farmers in the country, on record.

The Solution

A Silicon Valley-based startup Harvesting, with its predictive Machine Learning (ML) algorithms has created a product for financial institutions (banks, MFI, co-operative, commercial and development banks) which will provide them specific farm land data by putting in farmer's survey ID. It will give them a snapshot of the land, its yield capacity and types of crops that can be cultivated. Thus making it more efficient for banks to disburse loans to farmers.

Harvesting is essentially a FinTech startup headquartered in Silicon Valley, and now has 100% subsidiary & operations in India.

The startup is building Agriculture Intelligence Engine (AIE) which will help bring speed, accuracy and transparency in the world’s largest and oldest industry -- agriculture -- to drive financial inclusion for farmers around the world. AIE uses remote sensing satellite imagery from from NASA and EU Space Agency, on-ground data and other data sources, and then converts it into credit score for farmers and translates that into data insights with the help artificial intelligence (AI).

Such data insights are currently missing from the loan value chain in India, which in turn, has kept financial institutions from lending heavily to the farmers here. With the application of big data and AI, Harvesting aims to make the farm loan value chain more efficient in India.

Harvesting aims to work with financial institutions (FIs) like banks, co-operatives, development and commercial banks, micro-finance institutions to provide them accurate and specific data about farmlands in India.

Harvesting's technology enables agri-lenders to get a snapshot of his land, crop yield, time for sowing and harvesting at a touch of a button along with a credit score of the farmer by just providing Survey-ID of the farm. Such data insights are currently missing from the loan value chain in India, which in turn, has kept financial institutions from lending heavily to the farmers here. With the application of big data and AI, Harvesting aims to make the farm loan value chain more efficient in India.

Harvesting has developed 3 complementary products to help financial institutions finance smallholder farmers:

1. Credit Risk Scoring System


2. Farmlands Monitoring System


3. Land Records Monitoring System

Funds for the Cause

To date, Harvesting has raised an angel round last year and has received a grant from Catalyst Fund, an initiative supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and JPMorgan Chase & Co as a fiscally sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. The Company will be raising a large seed round this year.

The Founder

[caption id="attachment_125056" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Ruchit G Garg, Founder CEO, Harvesting Inc [/caption]

Harvesting is a brain child of a serial entrepreneur Ruchit Garg, who started the Company in 2016 . After selling previous company in 2015, Ruchit (who is based in Silicon Valley, California) had a choice of starting another tech company which would cater to ever growing consumer internet or start a technology driven for-profit business which can drive immense impact on the ground and make a world a better place for everyone. During a trip to India, Ruchit realized that most of the issues small farm holder farmers faces across the world is due to asymmetry between farms & anyone else in the agriculture value chain.

Ruchit believes that current technology can solve this massive information gap which not only will solve issues for small farmers, but have power to help reduce the food security for humanity. Being a technology entrepreneur, he decided to build 'Agriculture Intelligence Engine’ which leverages AI & Remote Sensing, to help connect finance with farmers making it easy for financial service providers (agri-lenders) to work with farmers.

Prior to Harvesting, Ruchit was Founder & CEO of 9Slides, an online learning company for growing businesses, which was acquired by Limeade in 2015. Ruchit has worked for Microsoft at its Headquarter at Redmond, WA and Hyderabad for several years and contributed on many key projects such as XBOX Live, Windows 7, MSN Games etc. Ruchit is also chairman of Shobhit University Alumni Network, and mentor/advisor to several startups in India and USA.

Ruchit is also chairman of Shobhit University Alumni Network, and mentor/advisor to several startups in India and USA.

Plans for India

In April of this year, Harvesting rolled out its operations formally in India and recently on-boarded Sunil Srivasatva, a former Deputy Managing Director of Indias largest bank, State Bank of India, in the companys advisory board.

The Company will be building its team in Bangalore, and is in discussions with many major commercial and PSU banks who are active in agri-lending vertical.

The Road Ahead

Harvesting has recently partnered with World Bank’s CGAP (Consultative Group to Assist the Poor) to develop new credit scoring mechanism in Uganda to improve their access to loans. The company will support Pride, Uganda’s leading micro-finance institution. Harvesting is working on multiple such projects in different geographical locations including Brazil, Tanzania, Kenya, Turkey and India.

Silicon Valley and India will be the two major centers of operations for the Company. However, Harvesting is seeing interest from financial institutions in markets like Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Nepal and Myanmar and also consider opening a subsidiary in African continent to serve the continent

Hyderabad, Not Bengaluru, Could Be Asia's Silicon Valley, Says BBC

World's oldest national broadcasting organisation BBC, has said that Hyderabad is fast overshadowing Bengaluru as a startup destination in India.

In a two minute video titled “A tale of two Indian tech cities” where the video started saying Hyderabad -- Asia’s Silicon Valley, then the video projects an ambulance and its services which were being looked after a startup called Stan Plus, which further explains why it like the city and why they chose Hyderabad over Bengaluru, which for years, has enjoyed a reputation as India's Silicon Valley.

StanPlus co-founder Antoine Poirson says transportation is a big issue in Bengaluru, which removes some of the ‘agile benefits of being a small competitor’.

Stating that gridlocked traffic and inadequate infrastructure are affecting quality of life is affecting the life in Bengaluru, Poirson compares it with Hyderabad and says, "Hyderabad is ‘very vibrant and dynamic. There is lots of government support. Ease of doing business is a fact, and bureaucracy has been reduced. There is a lot of support for startups."

BBC News story on how Hyderabad is giving Bangalore a run for its money as a start-up destination in India.

- A tale of two Indian tech cities https://t.co/rUuxitMttp

— Min IT, Telangana (@MinIT_Telangana) February 16, 2018

Although Bengaluru may still have more deals and tech entrepreneurs, Hyderabad is narrowing that gap, says the BBC News video, produced by Pamela Parker and Medhavi Arora.

It also said Hyderabad has been recognized as Indias Best city In terms of quality of Living for the three years in a row 2015-2016-2017 and Bangalore was ranked third in 2017.

BBC further said that Hyderabad’s local government is going all out by funding tech incubators and academic partnerships. Later in the video T-Hub chief officer Srinivas Kollipara said “we have grown T-Hub with a plan in place,we have grown it in such a way that everything is integrated and building through hitting each other’s milestones, and its a fact that we had governments support,its been done in a programmatic manner and people here are willing to really help each other out and that’s the difference between us and Bangalore.”

With 70,000 square foot building called CatalysT, Hyderabad's T-Hub is currently India’s biggest startup incubator and recently claimed to become the biggest in the world, by mid of 2020.

Last month, a promising Hyderabad-based startup called Banyan Nation, got global limelight when it was shortlisted for prestigious awards at World Economic Forum. The startup was selected for its proprietary plastic cleaning technology that converts collected plastic waste into near virgin quality recycled granules called 'Better Plastic'.

Earlier, an another Hyderabad startup, H-Bots Robotics launched the world's first smart policing robot, which is fully 'Made in India', using all the components sourced from within the country.

Hyderabad, Not Bengaluru, Could Be Asia's Silicon Valley, Says BBC

World's oldest national broadcasting organisation BBC, has said that Hyderabad is fast overshadowing Bengaluru as a startup destination in India.

In a two minute video titled “A tale of two Indian tech cities” where the video started saying Hyderabad -- Asia’s Silicon Valley, then the video projects an ambulance and its services which were being looked after a startup called Stan Plus, which further explains why it like the city and why they chose Hyderabad over Bengaluru, which for years, has enjoyed a reputation as India's Silicon Valley.

StanPlus co-founder Antoine Poirson says transportation is a big issue in Bengaluru, which removes some of the ‘agile benefits of being a small competitor’.

Stating that gridlocked traffic and inadequate infrastructure are affecting quality of life is affecting the life in Bengaluru, Poirson compares it with Hyderabad and says, "Hyderabad is ‘very vibrant and dynamic. There is lots of government support. Ease of doing business is a fact, and bureaucracy has been reduced. There is a lot of support for startups."

BBC News story on how Hyderabad is giving Bangalore a run for its money as a start-up destination in India.

- A tale of two Indian tech cities https://t.co/rUuxitMttp

— Min IT, Telangana (@MinIT_Telangana) February 16, 2018

Although Bengaluru may still have more deals and tech entrepreneurs, Hyderabad is narrowing that gap, says the BBC News video, produced by Pamela Parker and Medhavi Arora.

It also said Hyderabad has been recognized as Indias Best city In terms of quality of Living for the three years in a row 2015-2016-2017 and Bangalore was ranked third in 2017.

BBC further said that Hyderabad’s local government is going all out by funding tech incubators and academic partnerships. Later in the video T-Hub chief officer Srinivas Kollipara said “we have grown T-Hub with a plan in place,we have grown it in such a way that everything is integrated and building through hitting each other’s milestones, and its a fact that we had governments support,its been done in a programmatic manner and people here are willing to really help each other out and that’s the difference between us and Bangalore.”

With 70,000 square foot building called CatalysT, Hyderabad's T-Hub is currently India’s biggest startup incubator and recently claimed to become the biggest in the world, by mid of 2020.

Last month, a promising Hyderabad-based startup called Banyan Nation, got global limelight when it was shortlisted for prestigious awards at World Economic Forum. The startup was selected for its proprietary plastic cleaning technology that converts collected plastic waste into near virgin quality recycled granules called 'Better Plastic'.

Earlier, an another Hyderabad startup, H-Bots Robotics launched the world's first smart policing robot, which is fully 'Made in India', using all the components sourced from within the country.

31 Student Startup Founders From 6 Indian States On Visit To Silicon Valley

Thirty-one student startup founders from six states are on a week-long visit to Silicon Valley at San Fransisco to pitch, network and learn from the best at the tech Mecca under a flagship #StartInCollege programme instituted by the Kochi's Startup Village Collective SV.CO in partnership with Facebook.

The students from various engineering colleges, who have built their startup products while enrolled in Startup Village's digital learning program, are on a week-long visit to showcase their prototypes, learn product development and skills, and get exposure to the world class startup ecosystem in Silicon Valley, according to a release here. SV.CO’s startup program for first-time founders is supported by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India,the U.S. Embassy in India and has multiple state partners giving support to their respective students.

The students are also scheduled to visit Stanford, Intel HQ, Facebook HQ, Google Launchpad, Slack HQ, Golden Gate, Muir Woods and lot more.

Startup industry leaders Paytm and Freshworks (earlier known as FreshDesk) are on board as partners providing scholarships and mentoring to students. In the U.S., the team, the largest single Indian student startup delegation to visit the Silicon Valley, were welcomed by the City Council of Menlo Park and housed at Menlo College. On Tuesday (June 20) the founders will visit the Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park where they will have a pitch session and get feedback from experts at the social media giant.

Related Reading - Get To Know 5 Promising Student Startups from Lucknow Chapter of iB Hubs Startup School

"At Facebook, we believe the student community has a central role to play in helping build a world class startup ecosystem in India. We are pleased to support the Start-in-college program that cultivates a sense of purpose amongst students and enables them to build meaningful projects from their college campus,” said Satyajeet Singh, Platform Partnerships, Facebook India. During their week-long stay till June 24, the students will visit other valley landmarks,including offices of Google, Intel, Silicon Valley Bank, Freshworks, Zendesk and Bootup Ventures; and attend startup workshops at the North Eastern University and Google Launchpad.

Leading entrepreneur turned venture capitalist Rajeev Madhavan will share with the students his insights on building two multi-hundred million dollar technology startups. Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM) is sponsoring 19 of the students as part of its international programme for startups. “If we are to build a world-class startup ecosystem in India, as is our goal, our entrepreneurs need to get first-hand experience of global best practices.

KSUM’s international programme is intended for promising young founders to have that experience and increase their level of confidence while in college itself so they get an early startup” said Dr Saji Gopinath, CEO, KSUM. The Startup Village Collective SV.CO, a first-of-its-kind digital platform with a mission is to build a world class learning platform for students to become startup professionals and explore their full potential in life. "The Silicon Valley visit is to give the students a world class global exposure very early in life so that they can be more confident, motivated and get the ability to dream bigger than ever before as they immerse in the startup culture in Silicon Valley” said Sanjay Vijayakumar, Chairman, Startup Village Collective.

[Top Image - Ajo John @Medium]

Silicon Valley Based Tech Entrepreneur Jyoti Bansal Invests In Leadsquared

Jyoti Bansal, a Silicon Valley-based tech entrepreneur has invested an undisclosed amount in Leadsquared, a sales execution and marketing automation platform.

Not only this, he is also in process of closing a second investment in FundsTiger, a SME lending fintech player. Company plans to utilise funds towards sales and marketing on the product.

Commenting on the development, Nilesh Patel, co-founder, Leadsquared said, “The funds raised will be deployed towards sales and marketing, as well as on the innovation front for our product. As of now 80% of our business is in India and 1520% of our business is outside India, having Jyoti's expert advice on board it will be easier to go deeper into the North American market too.

Founded in 2011, Leadsquared focuses on providing marketing automation and CRM software to businesses to help organise lead capture, sales management, analytics.

Earlier in January 2017, Jyoti had sold his performance management firm AppDynamics to Cisco for $3.7 billion. It was then reported that a portion of Bansal's 14% stake in AppDynamics would be invested in startups in India and the Silicon Valley, with a specific focus on B2B startups.

Silicon Valley Based Tech Entrepreneur Jyoti Bansal Invests In Leadsquared

Jyoti Bansal, a Silicon Valley-based tech entrepreneur has invested an undisclosed amount in Leadsquared, a sales execution and marketing automation platform.

Not only this, he is also in process of closing a second investment in FundsTiger, a SME lending fintech player. Company plans to utilise funds towards sales and marketing on the product.

Commenting on the development, Nilesh Patel, co-founder, Leadsquared said, “The funds raised will be deployed towards sales and marketing, as well as on the innovation front for our product. As of now 80% of our business is in India and 1520% of our business is outside India, having Jyoti's expert advice on board it will be easier to go deeper into the North American market too.

Founded in 2011, Leadsquared focuses on providing marketing automation and CRM software to businesses to help organise lead capture, sales management, analytics.

Earlier in January 2017, Jyoti had sold his performance management firm AppDynamics to Cisco for $3.7 billion. It was then reported that a portion of Bansal's 14% stake in AppDynamics would be invested in startups in India and the Silicon Valley, with a specific focus on B2B startups.

Bangalore Engineers are Lowest Paid among World’s Top 20 Startup Cities

Techies get lowest annual salary in India’s leading startup hub! Yes, you read it correctly, according to the Genome Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2017, Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India is one among the top 20 startup cities but techies are lowest paid with annual salary of about $8,600 in a year.  The total amount a techie gets in this city is nearly 13 times cheaper than a techie get yearly in Silicon Valley and four times cheaper than the average salary of an Asia-pacific engineer. Whereas, at the Silicon Valley, California, a software engineer gets about $1, 12,000 average salaries yearly.  Although, the city succeeds to secure its position in the list of top 20 startup hubs across the world, but its rank dropped from the 15 to 20. The other statistics revealed by this report are also impressive including 1,800-2,300 estimated number of active tech startups. The report has considered the parameters- funding, talent, performance, startup experience, and market reach for this ranking.

Startups Are Growing Rapidly

The city has plentiful success stories! Few of them are world known for securing the largest funding amount and inspiring other high-profile investors, foreign MNCs and angel investors for investing more here.  While the report also claims that startups are bursting on daily basis because it is easier to find the right technical staff at cheap cost here. The city also has the youngest tech workers among all other startup hubs and the flood of young talent is helping to drive the startup rush. However, startups face difficulties when to find quality talent and experienced talent.

In case if you want to take a glimpse of the startup ecosystem’s demographics, check out the image shared below, it is a screenshot taken from the Startup Genome Global Startup Ecosystem Report;

Comparison with Other Startup Hubs

Out of these top 20 startup, 9 are located in North America, 6 in Europe, and 5 are based in Asia. For more information, please find a screenshot of the 2017 Global Startup Ecosystem Report.



The report also mentioned about average annual salaries in Top 20 Global Startup Ecosystems.

1. USA: $112K


2. New York: $97 K


3. London: $52K


4. Beijing: $25k


5. Boston: $95K


6. Tel Aviv: $63K


7. Berlin: $55K


8. Shanghai: $22K


9. Los Angeles: $84K


10. Seattle: $100K


11. Paris: $46K


12. Singapore: $35K


13. Austin: $82K


14. Stockholm: $55K


15. Vancouver: $55K


16. Toronto-Waterloo: $56K


17. Sydney: $64K


18. Chicago: $76K


19. Amsterdam: $45K


20. Bengaluru: $8.6K

Moreover, the city has a bright future as the startup ecosystem is growing rapidly. However, this does not sounds good that the startup hub offers lower wages to talented staff but this trend is attracting more number of MNCs and many other big players. A number of startup accelerators are established by the big giants like Cisco, Microsoft and Qualcomm etc. to strengthen the startup scene. The companies like Uber and Amazon have established their offices in the city. All in all, everything indicates that Bangalore has a very bright future as more number of startups means more number of opportunities.

For detail, you can click here

[Top Image - Shutterstock]

A 20-Something Trio Led Incubator is Helping Indian Startups Get Silicon Valley Support

India’s startup ecosystem has been going through a rough patch. According to statistics available, the sector's funding has declined tragically from $7.6 billion in 2015 to $3.8 billion in 2016, with several major companies registering huge losses and seeing their valuations decline rapidly. Helping the Indian startups in such trying times is an incubator/accelerator started by three University of California, Berkeley students called Moonshot.

20-something Abhinav Kukreja, Anish Prabhu, and Aryaman Dalmia came together in the year 2016 and started Moonshot with a common goal of uplifting India’s startup ecosystem. The incubator is unique from several others currently operating in the market as it works towards connecting Indian startups with experts, funds, and talent from Silicon Valley.

Moonshot has a four-month long program that gives the selected startups a direct access to over 20 mentors in India and California, gives them exposure to various venture capitalists and angel investors and scores them talented interns.

The incubator's first batch of startups that was incubated last year included online B2B billing solutions portal Pumpcharge, marketplace ListUP, home appliance automation company Hombot, real estate and rental management service Azuro, student benefits platform Frapp, and small-business cash-flow management startup Numberz.

For its second batch of startups called as the Spring 2017 Batch, the incubator decided to go for startups working towards advancing science and technology, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and companies that have a positive social impact. The incubator filtered the 60 applicants it received for the same and arrived at its final four. The selected four are:

AIndra Systems

A Bengaluru-based startup, AIndra Systems uses computer vision and deep learning to create a scalable, cloud based solution to mobile facial recognition as well as tackling a wide array of problems in fields like enterprise healthcare and education.

FeltSo

The startup claims to be the world's leading social review analytics artificial intelligence engine that provides businesses with concrete, actionable insights from customer reviews through natural language processing, advanced deep learning and sentiment analysis.

The Climber

A youth-driven organization which aims to capture curious young minds and help them find their passion. Their current offerings include a community platform, mentorship, interactive sessions and much more.

Typeset

Bengaluru-based Typeset is a platform to craft world class research papers. Right from citing resources in a click to a beautiful editor and GUI to write equation, the platform is a must for every modern researcher.

The selected four will get access to Moonshot's world-class network of mentors which will help them grow their businesses and provide long-term guidance on vision and strategy.

The incubator's mentors range from serial entrepreneurs to senior lecturers at Harvard, and are experts in nearly every field and have experienced it all. They will be guiding the startups on every step of their journey and help them overcome any obstacle they face. While incubators like Y-Combinator often hold stakes in the startups they support, Moonshot’s mentors work pro bono.

As part of the four-month long program, the incubator will also match the selected startups with students from the most elite universities in the world for a 4 month pro-bono internship. The incubator is currently partnered with UC Berkeley, and is rapidly expanding to more top schools.

The incubator also helps the selected startups with pitching, due diligence and legalities, and match them with investors in the Silicon Valley that they think can prove to be best strategic partners for the startup.

At the end of accelerator program, Moonshot also hosts a demo day where all the founders put their revolutionary products on display to investors, and the general public.

What Does Trump Mean For Tech and Startups?

Last week saw America going through a historic election, which saw Donald Trump being elected as the 45th President of the United States. Since the result, there has been a sense of shock all around the world, with a vast majority of people not being able to comprehend what really happened. But now, the dust is finally starting to settle and people are slowly starting to accept the reality. Here, we evaluate, what Donald Trump as the President of the largest economy on Earth means for the Tech and the Startup sector.

Privacy and Encryption

So, this particular issue basically has Apple right in the centre. It all dates back to when the FBI while investigating shootings in San Bernardino had asked the tech giant to weaken the encryption on its famous iPhone so as to help them in investigations. However, Apple ended up refusing FBI's request stating that the personal privacy of its iPhone users should take precedent. While a majority of tech biggies seconded Apple's decision, Mr Trump wasn't impressed.

Speaking on the issue during his Campaign rally in February 2016, he said, "Boycott Apple until such time as they give that information."

He further echoed the same views during a February 2016 interview with Bloomberg, "I would come down so hard on [Apple chief executive Tim Cook] his head would be spinning all of the way back to Silicon Valley."

One thing is very clear, user privacy when using technology is something that will continuously rear its head during Mr Trump's Presidential term. Further, his views on the surveillance state will also be an issue of concern. Though we haven't heard any firm policy on it yet, but Mr Trump did talk about his intention to restore the Patriot Act, which would once again give the NSA the power to collect bulk data on American's phone records which was earlier taken away by the Congress. Though his boycott Apple pitch might have been in the heat of the moment, but it did clear his views and attitude towards privacy and encryption.

Foreign talent in Silicon Valley

Mr Trump's victory has cast a shadow on the future of the H1-B visa which is considered quite important in the US tech sector. American companies often bring talent from foreign land to fill their demand for skilled engineers and developers. Though the visa grants a temporary residency, but the tech companies can choose to sponsor their employees so as to make them remain in the US indefinitely.

During CNN Republican debate in March 2016, Mr Trump said, "I know the H-1B very well. And it's something that I, frankly, use, and I shouldn't be allowed to use it. We shouldn't have it. Very, very bad for workers. And second of all, I think it's very important to say, well, I'm a businessman and I have to do what I have to do. When it's sitting there waiting for you, but it's very bad. It's very bad for business in terms of — and it's very bad for our workers and it's unfair for our workers. And we should end it."

But since then Mr Trump seemed to have had change of mind (not heart, we're sure). According to him, the H1-B visa is being wrongly used to bring in cheaper labour to America, rather than skilled one.

So, basically, the conclusion here is, the President-elect is okay with highly-skilled immigration, particularly when it comes to immigrants coming to study at top US colleges. Under President Trump, we could see the H1-B visa

It seems he will either alter or completely abolish the H1-B visa and try to enforce an alternative that clamps down on the abuse he presumes is being inflicted by the current system.

America's preparations for Cyberwar

According to research firm Forrester, Mr Trump is most likely to face a cybercrisis within the first 100 days of assuming office.

So, while there have been long discussions on how the new President will handle the control of the nuclear codes, there have also been major concerns over how he is most likely to handle the massively growing cyber threat from the likes of Russia, China and several other stateless hacking groups.

Speaking on the matter during the Presidential debate in September, Mr Trump said, "It is a huge problem. I have a son - he's 10 years old. He has computers. He is so good with these computers. It's unbelievable. The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe, it's hardly doable. But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing. But that's true throughout our whole governmental society. We have so many things that we have to do better. And certainly cyber is one of them."

Many deemed this statement as an opinion of a tech-illiterate grandpa who did not understand how Internet functioned.

The Republican President-elect also failed to recognise FBI's lead in blaming Russia for hacking the Democratic National Convention - one of the several cyberattacks that played a major role in Trump winning the Presidential battle.

According to Trump's campaign website, his administration will do an "immediate review of all US cyber defences and vulnerabilities". He is also in the favour of developing the US's offensive capabilities so the country could retaliate against any cyberattack.

Amazon's Future at Stake

Jeff Bezos, the founder of e-commerce giant Amazon, shares a not so great relationship with Mr Trump. It was Bezos' owned Washington Post that didn't shy away from taking on Trump's campaign out in the open. It was the very newspaper that had first published the now infamous video of Mr Trump making untasteful remarks about women and bragging about sexual assault. Mr Trumps considers Amazon as a company that is anti-competitive and is avoiding tax.

Appearing in the Sean Hannity Show on Fox News in May 2016, he mentioned, "Amazon is getting away with murder tax-wise. [Bezos is] using the Washington Post for power so that the politicians in Washington don't tax Amazon like they should be taxed."

It did not stop at this. In various tweets, Mr Trump had accused Mr Bezos directly of making use of the Washington Post as a way to reduce Amazon's tax. However, it is important to note that the Washington Post isn't part of Amazon. It is a company that Mr Bezos owns privately, so what Trump is suggesting isn't possible logically.

Responding to Trump's accusations on Twitter, Mr Bezos started a #SendDonaldToSpace hashtag saying that he would be very happy to fund a rocket that would take Mr Trump on a one-way trip into space.

It is important to note that on the day of the results, Amazon's stock nosedived drastically in the anticipation of what the future holds for the company.

Net Neutrality

It has been quite some time that there have been long discussions about the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) wanting to control the internet traffic so as to provide internet fast-lane for major, data-intensive services like the Netflix. But, many consider this as against the very spirit of equality that the internet stands for.

From what can be evaluated from Trump's campaign, Net Neutrality is something which he understand very little about, and it is something he doesn't want to spend too much time on. It is for sure not on the list of his priorities for now.

The future of energy tech

Businesses built around renewable energy are considered as an important area of growth for the US. In fact, in order to provide the much needed push to the growth of the companies dealing with it, the past US governments had offered attractive subsidies so as to lure in the customers who could not afford renewable energy on their own.

But, according to the new President of the US, "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."

According to Mr Trump, coal is the area that requires the maximum support of the government as it has suffered huge losses because of the false climate change issue that made the government shift focus from coal to renewable energy. Mr Trump thinks that the whole climate change issue is a big hoax which shouldn't get as much attention as it is getting.

During his campaign, Mr Trump had promised to "unleash America's $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, plus hundreds of years in clean coal reserves." The money for it may in part come by doing away the current subsidies being offered by the government for various renewable energy efforts.

What about the Startup industry

Experts predict that the financial markets are most likely to face a lean time for sometime now. But, one needs to understand that there is no correlation whatsoever between the success of a startup and strong financial markets. Investors who understand this are most likely to act rationally and bear the rewards over the long term for their rational move.

As for the entrepreneurs, they will have to tread carefully for sometime till the picture becomes more clearer and not act irrationally. They need not to confuse the uncertain times with a lack of opportunity, but remain optimistic and rational. They also need to be aware of the macro environment they're operating in and act accordingly.

The only thing that can be done now is to wait and watch, and see how many of his Campaign promises/sayings Mr Trump actually stands on.

[Top Image- Shutterstock]

Bangalore Among 4 Fastest Growing Startup Cities In The World

All the Asian countries have a reason to rejoice. According to new data compiled by CB Insights, a research firm, four Asian cities which include Bangalore, Beijing, Shanghai and Tokyo have occupied the top four ranks in terms of the rate at which the VC deals are being made in them. This new accomplishment by the Asian cities validates the point that Asian cities are in fact the fastest growing technology startup hubs in the whole wide world.

The research firm compared tech deals made in the twelve month period ending last month with those in the previous twelve months. Cities which had twenty or more deals were only considered by the research firm.

Beijing saw a 165 percent growth, with the deals increasing by three times, while Tokyo saw a 126 percent growth. The number of deals increased by 81 percent in Shanghai, and Bangalore on the other hand saw a 66 percent rise in its deals.

India saw its three other cities also making the cut into the top 25 positions. Gurgaon, Mumbai and Delhi made it to the top 25 proving the fact that the startup ecosystem and activity is spreading with full force in the country. This accomplishment by the Indian cities also backed a recent study which stated India as the fastest growing startup ecosystem in the world. According to the study, around 800 startups sprout in the country on an annual basis.

The report by CB Insights gives more importance to the growth in the number of deals that the total amount of the investments, as it often gets distorted by a few mega deals. But even if we go by the dollar terms, four Indian cities still made it to the top 20, with Gurgaon sitting at number 5 and Delhi at number 6, all because of the humongous funds inflow by Softbank to taxi app Ola and ecommerce site Snapdeal.

Bangalore acquired the 11^th position on the funding growth list, while Beijing was 20^th, Shanghai 22^nd and Tokyo came in at 27^th position. The list was topped by St. Louis in Missouri, America and followed by Cincinnati, Munich and Los Altos.

With such great number of startups sprouting in the region, Asia can soon turn into the next Silicon Valley of the world.