Exotel, one of India’s leading cloud telephony companies, announced the launch of Exotel Labs with a vision to spur innovation in the voice space. Exotel Labs will have a team of researchers specializing in machine learning, data mining and signal processing. The team will algorithmically analyse calls to provide data on calls and connectivity. They have roped in the Founder of Crispify, Balaraman Lakshmanan, as a Research Software Development Engineer.

Balaraman Lakshmanan’s role includes solving major problems in the domains of voice and speech analysis, data mining and machine learning. In the next six months, Exotel Labs will look at aggressive hiring in the field of research and add 10 more people to the team. Labs also plans to collaborate with universities to encourage research in the above mentioned areas. Talks are on with some of the premier institutes in the country.

On the occasion, Siddharth Ramesh, Co-Founder and CTO, Exotel said

Voice communication is at the core of most businesses in India. We, as a country, love to talk. Exotel Labs is our research division which will focus on an innovative approach to solving problems in the voice space. Balaraman, our first hire, brings with him a lot of years of experience from his stint at Crispify and Aricent. We’re excited to see how Bala’s efforts can improve customer experience for the companies we work with.

Balaraman Lakshmanan, Research Software Development Engineer, Exotel said

The voice space in India has a massive potential for development and Exotel is the first to tap into this potential. It’s an intriguing problem that Exotel is looking to solve and I am excited to be a part of this. Being the first member of Exotel Labs, I hope to use my strong fundamentals in DSP as well as my entrepreneurial experience at Crispify to eventually crack the voice communication problems.

Balaraman started Crispify after discovering that he wanted to automate the video editing process. Crispify is an android app which removes low motion frames from the given video to make the output video crisper.

Western countries are far ahead of India in terms of intelligence in voice communication. Even basic speech technologies are still in the nascent stages here. Multiple languages and accents make India an interesting market for a researcher.

About Exotel

Exotel is the most reliable and scalable cloud telephony platform in India. Founded by Shivakumar Ganesan, Ishwar Sridharan and Siddharth Ramesh in 2011, it powers voice communication for over a 1000 businesses including brands like Ola, Uber, Flipkart etc. Voice & Data picked Exotel as the Editor’s Choice Emerging Company of the Year 2014. Nasscom’s Emerge Product conclave picked Exotel as one of the top 10 emerging startups in India. For more information, please refer Exotel

The month of March brings in a lot of anxiety and stress in the lives of students. This is especially true for 10th and 12th graders who are under lot of pressure since they would be appearing for their board exams. These years are very crucial for the students since it lays the foundation of their future.

Getting good grades in exams is one thing but choosing the right career path is another thing. Choosing the career of your choice becomes very important and that is primary reason why both parents & students are equally worried about choosing the right career.

In today’s fast-changing times, career choice is not restricted to mainstream as it used to be in good old days. There are lot of career options available (some conventional and some un-conventional). A child can choose stream of his/her own choice, be it medical, engineering, arts, visual media, graphic designing, hotel management etc. In fact with the rise of Digital Media, many kids also opt for becoming stand-up comedians, YouTube stars etc. I know many of them who are still in school and do gadget reviews on YouTube. With so many career choices available, your question would be which is the “most preferred” career option? Well, the answer is “Engineering” still tops the list!!

Opting for a career choice is one part whereas achieving/chasing that dream is another part of the game. Getting into the engineering college of your choice is still a very daunting task. The 12th grader needs to appear for the CET exam than (s)he gets to choose a college based on the CET score. The choice of college is the most crucial task. If a kid is staying in Mumbai, parents would always prefer that (s)he takes admission in engineering college based out of Mumbai. However, in current hyper-competitive environment it is important that kids also explore college(s) suitable for them outside the residing city!!!

When I wanted to choose an engineering college in Mumbai, I was clueless about which college is right for me since only information that I had was about courses offered by college, placement information etc. (remember this was way back in 2002 :)). Though I mentioned about 2002, the same scenario still exists in 2016. Kids and parents are equally clueless about which colleges to choose, fee structure, accommodation etc. A very good friend of mine who is from Nagpur has a son who wanted to pursue his career in engineering. Being the only child, my friend wanted his son to study in Nagpur.

Though there are so many resources (that give information about colleges, college reviews) available on the internet but major part of that information is scattered across multiple websites. Also, there is no guarantee whether the information mentioned on the website is legitimate. We tried to source information about engineering colleges in Nagpur by asking relatives, mutual friends etc. but it did not work beyond a certain point. When we hit the road-block, we decided to check back on the internet.

To our surprise, we found a “Single point Solution” to our problem and the solution is CollegeDunia – extensive search engine for the students, parents, and education industry players who are looking out for information about higher education in India or abroad. For parents, CollegeDunia offers a filter page that can rank colleges based on criteria like Fees, Cut-off percentage etc. When I informed my friend about the site, he quickly latched on to the opportunity to check the site and he just took few minutes to decide that his search for the top engineering colleges in Nagpur would be finally fulfilled on CollegeDunia. The very fact that it is extensive listing portal with information of more than 10000 colleges in India with in-depth information about entrance exams , events , college festivals etc increased my friend’s confidence in the portal 🙂

We tried to shortlist certain colleges in Nagpur after having a brief discussion with his son. We were looking out for colleges with best rating (along with keeping a watchful eye on the fees). Some of the colleges that made it to our shortlist bucket were:

  1. Visvesaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur (Rating : 8.5/10)
  2. ITM College of Engineering, Nagpur (Rating : 6.6/10)
  3. Shri Ramdeobaba Kamla Nehru College of Engineering and Management, Nagpur (Rating : 6.1/10)
  4. Karmavir Dadasaheb Kannamwar College of Engineering, Nagpur (Rating : 5.2/10)
  5. St Vincent Pallotti College of Engineering and Technology, Nagpur (Rating : 5.2/10)

We were finally bit relaxed that we were able to shortlist the colleges but shortlisting colleges was job-half done. Out of the top 3 colleges, there was debate between the selecting either the first or second in our list. As kids, we always wanted that “quality education” is well-balanced with “extra-curricular activities” and the same thought also revolved in my friend’s son’s mind. There were frequent debates about the choices and after a brief period of two weeks we finally zeroed in on “Visvesaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur”.

With the shortlist done from our side, it was time to apply for admission in that college. With information obtained from CollegeDunia, his son was finally able to take first step in fulfilling his dream – “To become an engineer” !! It has been more than two years since his son secured admission in the college and now he is more of a (self appointed) evangelist 🙂 for CollegeDunia who wants that his friends/relatives who aspire to be engineers make “Wise & Smart career choices” by using the CollegeDunia platform!!!

We are all worried about the constantly sophisticating cyber-attacks. But have we ever wondered the language we use the most is the same language that spammers are using! Trend Micro Incorporated released its annual security roundup report which dissects the most significant security incidents from 2015. One of the top activities noted included English language emerging as the highest spam sending language in 2015 with 84.1%.

The question we have to ask is, ‘are we doing enough to protect ourselves from security threats? While we need to constantly update our systems to protect against new attacks, the first quarter of 2016 clearly showed we need to also watch out for older threats, and how no industry or system should feel exempt. After all who would have thought that language is also something to worry about from cyber threats perspective!

The research confirms attackers are now bolder, smarter and more daring in attack vectors, cyber-espionage efforts and cyber underground activity on a global basis.

The Trend Micro Smart Protection Network blocked over 52 billion threats in 2015, a 25% decrease from 2014. This decrease is consistent with the downward trend of system infections since 2012, caused by attackers who have become more selective of their targets as well as the shift in technologies they use.

About Trend Micro

Trend Micro Incorporated, a global leader in security software, strives to make the world safe for exchanging digital information. Trend Micro enables the smart protection of information, with innovative security technology that is simple to deploy and manage, and fits an evolving ecosystem. Their solutions are powered by cloud-based global threat intelligence, the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network infrastructure & are supported by more than 1,200 threat experts around the globe.  For more information, visit TrendMicro

AdLift, a leading global digital marketing agency and YouWeCan Ventures, a Yuvraj Singh initiative, launch a disruptive new platform – Yral [pronounced ‘viral’] – that seamlessly connects advertisers with celebrities by leveraging their social media network. Yral delivers the right audience and scalable reach to its advertisers by leveraging modern social media platforms.

Yral provides registered advertisers with the right set of information that enables them to identify and interact with brand advocates, helping advertisers reach customers throughout all stages of the purchase funnel.

Globally, advertiser-paid social media spend is slated to increase 26% in 2016 and will reach $29.91 Billion, representing 15% of all digital ad spending. In Asia-Pacific, Year-Over-Year growth is stronger – 30.6% with $9.6 Billion in social media ad spending. As more brands and businesses adopt paid social media advertising, yral provides the right tools to advertisers to help them scale their social media initiatives and enhance their reach. Celebrities and brand advocates provide that very reach.

According to reports by Statista from January 2016, the world’s most followed celebrities have a Twitter following averaging to 50 million followers; while Instagram celebrities attracting an average of 55 million followers. Facebook celebrities have acquired an average of 80 million followers. Through the power of viral publicity, a single post from an influencer can start a global conversation.

In addition, the frequency of posts can vary from one to 5 posts per day, further increasing the scope for effective monetization of resources to leverage brand visibility. In India, according to a report on the ‘Fastest-Growing Celebrities Profiles in India‘ by Socialbakers, celebrities have an average Twitter following of close to 18 million followers. On Facebook, the average number of celebrity followers is more than 19 million. These numbers themselves indicate the staggering scope of influencer reach on social media platforms, which is ascending by the day.

Yuvraj Singh, Founder of YouWeCan Ventures said

We want to transform the way celebrities engage with brands – making it a whole lot easier and faster for advertisers to efficiently connect with the right celebrities. Yral is our first foray in to the digital space – we’re excited to partner with AdLift in making this happen.

Prashant Puri, CEO & Co-Founder of AdLift said

Today, brands need to jump through multiple agencies to connect with the right brand evangelists – yral streamlines this process, leveraging celebrities’ immense fan following in doing so. Our partnership with Yuvraj Singh is a direct extension of our mission to create disruptive social discovery experiences, and we’re thrilled to leverage his extensive experience in working with global brands and increasing their share of voice.

Nishant Singhal, Founder & Chief Investment Officer of YouWeCan Ventures added

The total reach of the top 50 celebrities is close to 100M which is 33% of India’s Internet population. Digital marketing spends are estimated to reach $2B by 2019 and if only 5% is led by celebrities we estimate the market size to be $100M.

Yuvraj Singh recently launched YouWeNow in association with Yral, which is an entertainment platform featuring popular and trending videos within the Sports and Lifestyle vertical.  The content is closely curated by Yuvraj Singh and his team.

About YouWeCan Ventures

YouWeCan is a 50 CR seed fund that is created to empower young entrepreneurs on their journey to build brands and successful business ventures and improve the life standard of society. More information at their website.

About AdLift

AdLift is a leading global digital marketing firm founded in 2009, which focuses on delivering niche-marketing solutions that focus on ROI. They have served an impressive roster of clients ranging from small start-ups to marquee brands, including numerous Fortune 100 companies. In 2013, AdLift was named 8th fastest growing mid-size company by INC 500

The GenNext Hub, Mumbai based startup accelerator today announced the graduation of 11 technology startups from its accelerator program. The GenNext Hub is an initiative of Reliance Industries Limited powered by Microsoft Ventures to catalyze the startup ecosystem for a digital India. The event held in Reliance Corporate Park, Navi Mumbai, saw the startups showcase their businesses to more than 150 investors, influencers, corporate customers and leaders.

The GenNext Hub enables entrepreneurs to build their companies through an immersive, four-month-long program. The success of the program can be measured by the success of the startups, who have all witnessed significant amounts of traction during the course of the program – getting market validation, developing products, acquiring customers, pivoting business models, evaluating India go-to-market strategy, executing proof of concepts with RIL businesses, onboarding influential advisors and forging strategic industry partnerships.

GenNext Chairman & RIL Board Member Dr. Raghunath A. Mashelkar said

At GenNext Hub we are catalyzing a unique startup ecosystem, which rests on the tripod of talent, technology and trust. We spot and encourage ‘talent’, help them harness their ‘technology’ and back them up by putting total ‘trust’ in them. We are supporting several of our startups from the second batch with strategic partnerships that will help them scale-up rapidly.

Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft India, added

Microsoft provides the platform on which innovative companies are being built. Our technologies power nearly 4,000 startups in the country today and we will continue supporting the startup ecosystem through our various programs. We have seen some amazing innovation in the two batches that have graduated thus far from GenNext. Some of these have already made a mark in the ecosystem and have even become business partners for Reliance and Microsoft and we hope this trend will continue.

Startups from the second batch have received several recognitions during the course of the program, that include, Nasscom Emerge 50 2015, YourStory Tech30 2015 & The Economist’s Innovation Award 2015.

The startups that graduated from GenNext Hub’s second batch today are:

Algo Engines – Provides operational intelligence for wind turbines, met masts, solar plants and other Internet of Things [IoT’s].

Creditseva – India’s first consumer credit analytics and online management tool to help build healthy credit profile for individuals.

Curefy – Mobile app that guarantees to instantly connect patients to doctors from best hospitals over the phone in under 1 minute.

Efficient Bazaar – A centralized procurement solution for the hospitality industry.

eLoan –  The leading Peer to Peer [P2P] lending platform from Israel entering India.

Fieldomobify –  Mobile and cloud based field force mobility solution to sales, service and delivery function for visualizing real time activities on the field.

FiTicket –  A new kind of fitness membership that provides access to the best gyms and fitness classes in the city.

Noroc Solutions – Enabling offline merchants to accept new age payments without the need for any additional hardware or an app and with minimal learning curve.

Pickcel – The hyper-local advertising platform that help businesses to accelerate their sales within the locality in an easy and affordable way.

Playfiks – An online sports eco-system that helps people to connect, network, schedule and engage in sports, fitness and a healthy lifestyle.

VDeliver – A technology powered, intra city, point-to-point logistics company.

During the four-month program, the startups were mentored on customer development, business models, operational planning, product roadmap, market traction, fund raising and pitching. The workshops cut across B2B and B2C businesses in diverse sectors such as sports, energy, hospitality, advertising, fitness, financial services, logistics, healthcare, payments and enterprise software.

Domain expertise was provided in intellectual property, product development, online promotions, advertising, PR, financial modeling, communication and pitching. Going forward, GenNext Hub will focus on helping companies scale-up with its ‘Scalearator’ model and evolve from a ‘Minimum Viable Product’ to a ‘Minimum Viable Company’. GenNext Hub is now accepting applications for third batch, which will start in April 2016. Visit GenNext Hub for more details.

About GenNext Hub
GenNext Hub is a Reliance Industries Ltd. sponsored Startup Program headquartered in Mumbai. GenNext Hub organizes workshops and mentoring sessions for startups in the areas of customer development, market traction, operations, product roadmap, fund raising and pitching. It also provides expertise in IP, legal, financial compliance, HR and specific sectoral expertise. GenNext Hub is uniquely positioned as a global program that helps startups think big and grow fast. For more information, please visit GenNext Hub

About Microsoft Ventures
Microsoft Ventures is a global initiative to help entrepreneurs build great companies. We work with startups at every stage of maturity to provide the tools, resources, and expertise they need to succeed. The initiative is broad-based, and includes a community program, accelerators, and a seed fund. Our approach helps startups scale their business, bring innovative services to market and reach new customers. For more information, please visit Microsoft Ventures

Mylan N.V announced that the company will host a health hackathon at its Global Center in Bengaluru on March 19-20, 2016. The event will focus on Better Health for a Better World. Participants in the hackathon will be creating innovative solutions for patients, payers, providers and other healthcare professionals. Mylan conducted a similar event last month at its Global Center near Pittsburgh.

Hackathon teams will build solutions to answer a variety of healthcare challenges, such as overcoming obstacles to HIV treatment in emerging markets, leveraging existing technology to increase Indians’ access to healthcare and accessing public data-sets and application programming interfaces to build insights about diseases.

Rajiv Malik, President at Mylan said

As a company committed to setting new standards in healthcare, we are excited to host hackathons that can help launch a new generation of solutions capable of delivering better health for a better world. In addition, we look forward to welcoming hackathon participants to our new Global Center in Bengaluru, which we opened in 2015 to help support Mylan’s extensive and growing presence in India. The country currently is home to nearly half of our workforce and more than half of our manufacturing facilities.

The hackathon is open to professionals and students attending engineering colleges and healthcare institutes. For more details, please visit the Mylan hackathon registration link

About Mylan

Mylan is a global pharmaceutical company committed to setting new standards in healthcare. Working together around the world to provide 7 billion people access to high quality medicine, they innovate to satisfy unmet needs; make reliability and service excellence a habit; do what’s right, not what’s easy; and impact the future through passionate global leadership. For more information, please visit Mylan

Knowlarity & Zoho announced the integration of SuperReceptionist, a virtual contact center solution and Zoho CRM, an advanced customer relationship management platform. Now, Knowlarity and Zoho users will be able to make calls using SuperReceptionist from within Zoho CRM.

This integration, available immediately, significantly reduces after-call work and minimizes average handling time for salespeople. Automated data entry also brings down human errors that occur while documenting customer information.

Prashanth H N, Director & Head of Product Management, Knowlarity Communications said

With this integration, call center agents will have all the customer information accessible in one place during the call, hence achieving more results in a day. Businesses will be able to deliver better customer experience as the conversations are more contextual and personalized.

Raju Vegesna, chief evangelist, Zoho added

At a time when India has become home to the third largest number of start-ups in the world, businesses need a way to not just acquire, but also retain customers in order to thrive. By integrating Zoho CRM and SuperReceptionist, we are helping businesses do both. Zoho CRM provides thousands of Indian start-ups with a rich repository of information and sales insights. Now, we also give these businesses a comprehensive view of their customer interactions, helping them make intelligent sales decisions.

Features of SuperReceptionist for Zoho CRM

  • Click-to-dial – Users can call leads and customers with a single click from within Zoho CRM. They no longer need to juggle multiple screens and have time to make more calls.
  • Screen pop-ups – Incoming calls appear as pop-ups in Zoho CRM, along with contact’s information. Salespeople are thus better prepared to handle calls. They can save first-time callers as leads/contacts in Zoho CRM, and add follow-up actions.
  • Automatic call logging – All the call activities and details get logged automatically inside Zoho CRM. Call analytics can be run anytime via reports in Zoho CRM.

Pricing and Availability

Zoho CRM integration is available for free in Premium and Enterprise editions of SuperReceptionist. All the editions of Zoho CRM have SuperReceptionist integration enabled for free. For more information on the integration, please visit SuperReceptionist for Zoho CRM.

About Knowlarity

Knowlarity is trusted by over 12,000 businesses across 65+ countries. It’s the leading provider of cloud communications in emerging markets and provides the most comprehensive communication tools including, IVR, fax and conferencing facilities for SMEs, enterprise customers and individuals.

The company makes cloud communications between businesses reliable and intelligent by providing a suite of hosted products that help businesses improve their productivity. Knowlarity is headquartered in Singapore and has offices in Gurgaon, Mumbai and Bangalore. For more information, please visit Knowlarity

About Zoho

Zoho is a comprehensive suite of online productivity, collaboration and business applications for businesses of all sizes. Over 13 million users rely on Zoho apps. Zoho’s productivity and collaboration applications include Email Hosting, Document Management, Office Suite, Project Management & more along-side a host of business applications ranging from CRM and Campaign Management to Customer Support, Accounting and more. These applications are offered directly via Zoho or through hundreds of partners in the Zoho Alliance Partner Program

MUrgency, a mobile app which connects people who need emergency response in real time saving precious lives and time has been chosen as the Startup of the Year 2016 at the prestigious Startup Grind 2016 Conference in Redwood City in Silicon Valley, USA. MUrgency was selected from amongst 1,100 startups that applied from 200 cities around the world. As winner, Startup Grind will work with MUrgency to plug into the Startup Grind network across the world.

Brain child of Indian social entrepreneur, Shaffi Mather, MUrgency is a mobile app which connects people who need emergency response in real time saving precious lives and time. MUrgency recently started operations in Punjab with initial focus in Chandigarh, Mohali, Panchkula.

The Startup Grind 2016 Programme will provide mentorship, connect to partners, pursue funding and help MUrgency reach new users. Powered by Google for Entrepreneurs, Startup Grind is a global startup community aggressively educating, inspiring and connecting entrepreneurs.

Shaffi Mather, founder and CEO of MUrgency said

The experience we have gained following the discussions from leaders in Silicon Valley has been our greatest take away from the Startup Grind program. In a few days, we have been approached by several partners and potential funders who want to work with us, expand our reach and build MUrgency as the leading emergency response brand across the world

Derek Andersen, founder & CEO of Startup Grind said

Of the 1,100 startups that applied, 50 were selected. These startups have great teams, traction, technology and massive markets. Our biggest goal is for each startup to go back home with a new and improved game plan that would not have happened without the help of the program and the mentors/resources that were made available to them.

About MUrgency – One Global Emergency Response Network

MUrgency was launched in 2015 with membership in Business Call to Action at the United Nations Development Program, in academic partnership with Stanford ChangeLabs, Harvard Asia Center and MIT Global Health, and as an initiative of the World Economic Forum’s Forum of Young Global Leaders Community. With one tap on the app, the nearest Doctor, Nurse or Paramedic comes to the rescue of a patient, within minutes. The emergency feature of the app has been launched in Feb, 2016, in Chandigarh, Panchkula, Mohali. For more information, please visit MUrgency.