DigitalOcean, provider of the cloud computing platform designed for developers, today released Block Storage, the number one product request from customers. Block Storage is a highly available and scalable SSD-based offering that will enable developers to easily attach extra disk space to DigitalOcean Droplets [cloud servers]. DigitalOcean’s Block Storage costs $0.10/GB per month and is based on provisioned capacity only, therefore there is no need for complicated formulas to determine the overall cost for transactions or IOPs limit.
DigitalOcean was founded in 2011 with the mission to simplify the complexities of infrastructure by offering one simple and robust platform for developers to easily launch and scale their applications. The company has taken a “developer first” mentality and is now evolving its platform to further support the business needs of the developer. DigitalOcean has become the second largest and fastest growing cloud computing platform in the total number of public facing apps and websites, according to Netcraft. More than 700,000 registered customers have launched more than 18 million Droplets combined on DigitalOcean, nearly doubling from 10 million six months ago.
Ben Uretsky, co-founder and CEO, DigitalOcean said
We set out on a mission to build a simple and robust cloud computing platform so that engineering teams can spend less time configuring and automating their infrastructure and more time focused on software development. By adding a highly performant Block Storage offering to our platform, developers can easily deploy and manage their SaaS applications and businesses as they scale. This is one step closer to building the next generation platform.
The Easiest Way for Developers to Attach & Scale Storage to Support Their Businesses
Block Storage is a complementary product to DigitalOcean’s Droplets, which provide compute power and local storage, by making them more expandable and flexible. By attaching Block Storage to DigitalOcean Droplets via the control panel or API, developers can achieve the following benefits:
High Availability: Block Storage stores data on hardware that is separated from the Droplet, replicating it multiple times across different racks and reducing the chances of data loss in the event of hardware failure.
Scalable and Flexible: Developers can easily scale and resize SSD-based Block Storage volumes from 1GB to 16TB and move it between Droplets. The ability to attach extra Block Storage to Droplets dramatically increases their flexibility, enabling developers to scale applications, databases, binary assets, shared and distributed filesystems and more.
Reliable and Secure: All the data is encrypted at rest and transmitted to the Droplets over isolated networks.
DigitalOcean is a cloud infrastructure provider focused on simplifying web infrastructure for software developers. The company is headquartered in New York City with data-centers throughout the world. For more information, please visit DigitalOcean
ITC Infotech, a global scale full service provider of technology solutions announced the second edition of its annual technology innovation & co-creation platform iTech 2016. The event will take place at the ITC Infotech campus in Bangalore on 16th and 17th of July, 2016.
Marking a first this year, iTech 2016 will introduce a new segment called Showcase, a unique platform designed to connect technology startups and their solutions directly to business users. As a part of ‘Showcase’, shortlisted startups will get the opportunity to interact with business leaders & technocrats, and demonstrate their solution to them. As a system integrator, ITC Infotech may partner and invest in helping startups further develop their solution, create a joint go-to-market and provide wider market access.
Another key feature this year is the 2-day hackathon on Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality [AR/VR], aimed at startups, professional developers and students. The hackathon will be a 30-hour prototype building contest that will address crowd-sourced business challenges from ITC businesses and ITC Infotech’s global customers. Participants for the AR/VR Hackathon, perceived to be the technology of the future, can present their ideas across any of the following challenge areas:
Manufacturing – Solutions to guide on the correct course of action, change plant & equipment maintenance process, while saving time and money, or enhance training material, quality control and related areas.
Consumer Goods – Create an immersive experience and transform the way consumers interact with products in store.
Retail – Enhance customer experience in online and offline shopping. Solutions to create virtual trial room or virtual fashion shows to present the new season and line.
Hospitality – Entries should present solutions designed to revolutionize the way guests experience the hotel property, its amenities, deals & offers and other information.
Education & Stationery Products – Entries should use AR/VR technologies to pique children’s interest in academic material, enhance learning with interactive puzzles and simplify understanding of ‘how things work’.
Banking, Financial Services & Insurance – Solutions to make processes easier and radically improve customer experience.
Agriculture – Create a thriving ecosystem with intelligent pest management & control solutions. Guide farmers and farm workers in planning usage of fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation schedules for different crops and crop cycles.
Technology today is aiding transformational shifts in the ways business, governments, and societies function. Inventive technological thinking, married to agile decision making is critical to respond swiftly to the needs of business and society. With iTech 2016, we are bringing a unique opportunity to bright young technologists to showcase their design thinking and technology ideas, while interacting closely with the vibrant ecosystem of entrepreneurs and business leaders of the future.
With the immense success of IoT Hackathon at iTech 2015, ITC Infotech is geared up to offer best-in-class experience through iTech 2016, which will in turn allow participants to race against time and showcase path-breaking solutions which are market ready. The winners, first runners up and second runners up will be awarded a cash prize of INR. 3,00,000, INR. 2,00,000 and INR. 1, 00,000 respectively.
About iTech 2016
iTech, an ITC Infotech initiative, is an annual technology innovation platform. The platform will focus on leveraging emerging and disruptive technologies to create business-ready solutions, for addressing some of the most challenging problems faced by the industry. For more information, please visit http://www.itcinfotech.com/iTech
Being a Mumbaikar, I really love local food especially Vada Pav but when I moved to Bengaluru; I missed it a lot 🙂 In Bengaluru, I found love in Idli Dosa, 99 Dosas etc. The best thing about India is that each city has it’s own uniqueness especially Local food. If you are a visitor to any city, you would have definitely wished to have “Famous Dishes” from local food joint 🙂 If you have any friend in that city, (s)he can guide you but if you are on your own, you have no option left – But to explore !!!
This is the gap ‘”Exploring local Food across India” that Bengaluru based startup – TalkingStreet is trying to address. It is part of the NASSCOM 10,000 Startups & is based out of the NASSCOM warehouse. Today, we have a chat with Maheima Kapur [Founder & CEO of TalkingStreet] about her entrepreneurial journey, Marketing, NASSCOM 10K startups etc. So, let’s get going with the Q&A…
[PS : I in the article refers to Maheima Kapur]
Can you give a small background about yourself, your start-up and it’s founders ?
Local / Street Food is an important aspect of the culture of a city. It is something that interests many people. Travelers, local residents, foodies are all excited at the idea of sampling local food across the city, provided they are pointed to it by someone they trust. However, discovering popular street-side eateries and vendors is impossible without a local guide.
Talking Street is the local foodie friend that all traveling foodies wish they had in a city. The platform curates & showcases the best of popular, local eateries, so that foodies can hyper-locally discover delicious local food around where they are. This includes very popular eateries in cities as well as street food hangouts recommended by foodie contributors.
It offers self-guided food tours and organizes food events to bring popular food, stall owners and foodies together. An example is below
Talking Street is a sole founder startup. I have around 9 years of work experience across different FMCG organizations. I am a Physics graduate from Sri Satya Sai University and an MBA from IIM Bangalore. My core area of expertise and interest is consumer insights and marketing mix development.
The core team @ Talking Street consists of Naganand Doraswamy and Siddharth Mathur, apart from me. Naganand Doraswamy is a mentor to the startup. He has around 25 years of experience and is president of TiE Bangalore. He is Co-founder and EVP of SPAN.
Siddharth is the Technical Advisor to Talking Street. He is the founder of Fastah, an app with a mission to make mobile internet more fun and enjoyable.
Talking Street is a lean startup. We work largely with consultants and interns. Here are some more details about the team that has made this startup a reality https://talkingstreet.in/meet-the-team/
How different is Talking Street different from other food-tech companies like Zomato etc. ?
At Talking Street our attempt is to help travelers experience the food culture of different cities by helping them eat at the most popular local eateries. So we take the help of foodies to map and share the most famous local eateries across cities. (It’s not just street food but popular eateries, which are often a mix of small eateries, iconic outlets as well as street food stalls).
Zomato is a listing platform, whereas as Talking Street is curated. We ensure that all the eateries on Talking Street are popular, hygienic and highly recommended by local foodies. Also, we don’t cover fine dine restaurants. To give you an example, there is a small eatery in Gandhinagar (in Bengaluru) who makes very good bhajji’s / pakoras (and is doing so for the last 20 years); you would probably not find it on Zomato but on Talking Street, eateries such as these are what we strive to list. Hence, Zomato offers a different value proposition as compared to Talking Street.
In out attempt to help users experience the food culture of a city, we like to cover eateries by including the stories of the people behind them. That adds hugely to the way people experience the food and understand the underlying cultural nuances.
Also, when we say that we are a curated platform, we do not list each & every local eatery on the platform. Only those outlets which meet our criteria are listed. The focus, is thus, on ensuring that our users have a superlative food experience whichever outlet they pick.
Is Talking Street bootstrapped, VC funded or Angel Funded ?
We are completely bootstrapped. We plan to go slow and build TalkingStreet organically 🙂 When time is right, we would definitely look out for funding but the current priority is on building the best experience for TalkingStreet users.
Talking Street is more about Local Food Exploration, so is it an aggregator of vendors who have fixed shop ?
We cover local eateries that make awesome food. We are aware that many of them do not have fixed locations but we track them. In case the vendor moves to a different location, we update his where-about on TalkingStreet.
You can refer this link to get more insights on how we choose the right vendors. Would like to share this video that gives more insights into the entire process.
Currently Talking Street is operational in how many cities in India ?
We have covered major part of Bengaluru. Though we are covering Mumbai, Kolkata, Jaipur etc., we are constantly adding joints to our respective city database. We are also open for suggestions of places from Foodies since they have the right taste buds and know-how about the food joint.
When someone suggests a place, we do not directly list them but our team checks on all the parameters like food, food quality etc. before listing them. We are also working on TalkingStreet mobile app that would be very useful in such scenarios.
How many vendors/joints have signed up with Talking Street & is there any sign-up fee for the vendor ?
We have more than 500+ joints present on TalkingStreet. There is no sign-up fee for the vendors. If the vendor makes awesome food that is loved by foodies, they definitely deserve a place on our platform.
Can you throw light on the revenue model of Talking Street [Free/Freemium etc] ?
Right now, we can skip this question 🙂
Any plan/tentative deadline to release the mobile app of Talking Street ?
We are working on the app and it should be there on the Store soon. Cannot comment on the deadline at this very moment 🙂
What are the major changes that you experienced when you became an entrepreneur ?
The need to manage and stretch time. There’s just never enough time in a day to get everything that needs to be done, completed.
The buck stops here. Everything stops at the founder. If something has to be done, I’ve got to do it. It’s especially stark with solo founders. In a bigger organization the responsibilities are divided.
There goes my work-life balance. I believed in a sharp work-life balance and avoided carrying work on my mind when I was away from my laptop. That changed significantly with entrepreneurship. I’ve often caught myself being totally wired into work over weekends, holidays, days-off. It’s not something I like and I’m working to change that.
Holidays have become work-actions – there’s always something to cover or research for Talking Street when I travel and while it’s fun for the most part of it, there are times when it’s like work following you even on a vacation 🙂
How much has NASSCOM 10K helped in accelerating your startup journey ?
NASSCOM 10,000 startups has been an amazing experience. Right from the very helpful startup kit that they give all the shortlisted companies, to the co-working space with all the startups who are ready to help at short notice. The NASSCOM team is super helpful at all times – they make huge efforts to connect the startups to relevant mentors, investors and experts. They also help the startups with media outreach and PR.
What are your key advice(s) to people who want to start-up ?
Be clear about why you want to startup. A startup is hard work and while it might look glamorous from the outside, it’s actually far less shiny once you’re in. It calls for a high degree of commitment and perseverance. So be sure of why you want to do it. You see your idea solving a huge pain for users, you want to make an impact with your product, create jobs, want to build a large organization, want to be independent – know your reasons and recall them ever so often on your journey. Your reasons will guide you on whether to apply for funding or whether you should bootstrap, on what you should build and how you should build it.
Research your idea/concept before deciding taking the plunge. Make sure that there is a need and that someone will pay for what you are planning to build, at some point. Too often we startup without doing the necessary ground work to ascertain the need/use case for what we are creating. Doing the work required on understanding the user and his problem (for which you intend to solve) will help you understand whether that problem exists, whether it is important enough to solve and if yes, what is the route to solving it.
Enjoy the journey. Yes there’s a destination but it is going to be a tough, uphill climb getting there so there’s no point unless you are having fun along the way.
Importance & Role of mentor in any startup
Very important since a mentor is able to approach the business from a distance and thus sees things differently from the founder(s) who are right in the middle of it all. So (s)he brings an objective perspective to the business and growth. A mentor also brings deep knowledge of the ecosystem and thus is able to kick-start thought processes which aid decision making. My mentor gives me the space to chart a route that works for me while being very firm on the business deliverables. Conversations with him help me think clearly. He also holds me to the metrics that we lay down and it helps to have someone ask the tough questions, as he puts it.
Can you give some pointers on Scaling Up and Customer Acquisition ?
Businesses need to be very careful about scaling up. Technical products which scale easily without much physical infrastructure or manpower are different from businesses which require people and infrastructure to scale. Ensuring a delightful user experience has to be the key concern while taking scaling decisions.That means hiring the right people and making the required investments in process and infrastructure, both of which take time. Hence a 6 month, multi-city operation expansion can only lead to trouble, in my opinion.
There have been many examples of organizations needing to scale back or having to close down altogether in the last 6 months, because they scaled too fast in this mad rush to get more users. Getting more users cannot come at the cost of delivering a poor experience.
Some hiring tips for entrepreneurs [especially the core team] ?
Find people who have a high degree of commitment. It helps to have a team which doesn’t need supervision because they are as motivated as you are. For the core team, get people who share your values and vision, in addition to commitment. Teams break up and startups slow down or close because the core team does not see eye to eye. A deep trust and compatibility will always make journey interesting even in the tough patches.
Seed/Bootstrapped/VC funding ? Your thoughts on the same.
Bootstrap as far as you can go. Build an MVP and get to a stage of having a few paying customers. Then look for funding to scale faster. Funding at earlier stages comes at terms which need not be favourable and will bring unnecessary stress.
Any parting words from you for budding entrepreneurs ?
Do live research with users at every step so that you spend time on the right aspects of the business/product.
Be firm in your belief and plough on, the road will emerge. Keep your burn low so that your runway is long and you can sustain yourself even if the product takes time to blossom.
Entrepreneurship is like an accelerated road to self-discovery. It brings out traits that we often didn’t think we possess – both positive and negative. In my case it has helped me become more aware of my insecurities and failings
We hope that you enjoyed the Q&A since it had lot of learning for aspiring entrepreneurs. If you have any questions for Maehima or the TalkingStreet team, please leave them in the comments section. Do give TalkingStreet a spin and leave your feedback here or email it at hello@talkingstreet.in
Rainmaker Ventures, co-founded by Industrialist Sudhir Menon & Digital Marketer Atul Hegde, announced that it has invested $5 million in YAAP – a super speciality digital content company. Rainmaker Ventures with presence in India, USA, Brazil and Singapore is an early stage start-up fund of $50 million that was launched in December last year. Rainmaker Ventures identifies competent start-ups and not only invests seed-capital, but also, wholly mentors these establishments through the co-founders collective expertise of growing successful businesses in the past.
YAAP, focusses on the three digital content service lines of Design, Discovery and Distribution. In Content design the firm looks at branded content, digital show formats, syndication, brand and visual identity, in Content discovery it looks at influencer identification, outreach and empanelment and in Content distribution it looks at programmatic content placement, alliances and channel partnerships. The focus being creating and distributing engaging content for businesses to attract, retain and deliver customer satisfaction.
YAAP has a non CEO, Partner model where digital media professionals Nikhil Bapat & Manan Kapur have joined in as Partners in Mumbai & Gurgaon respectively. The company will use majority of the funds invested by Rainmaker Ventures for acquisitions in the Branding & Visual Identity space, Automated content distribution platforms & Content creation platforms. The funds would also be utilized for YAAP’s expansion plans in the Singapore & USA market where they plan to open offices by early next year.
YAAP is a perfect example of the nature of investments Rainmaker Ventures wants to lead. We will contribute both Capital & Mentorship to YAAP. We see YAAP become a leading player in the digital content ecosystem within the next 2 years. We have a fantastic model & the senior team in place and now will go out aggressively looking for the right acquisitions.
At YAAP we are trying to build a unique model both from our offerings & the company structure itself. We are happy to find a partner like Rainmaker Ventures that is so bullish of the Digital Content sector and are going beyond infusion of capital into the company, with active mentoring of the management team.
Atul Hegde, Co-Founder Rainmaker Ventures will be the Chief Mentor and join the YAAP board post this investment. This is the second investment made by Rainmaker Ventures, an early seed-fund that was launched in December last year. The fund is already in the process of investing in compelling businesses that are impactful in nature. Expansion will also be enabled with more senior professionals from varied sectors joining the company as full time mentors.
Going far beyond its expected growth, Zenify.in, an online home rental aggregator & management startup, has achieved over 1000 property listings under its category Zenify Homes. The glorious milestone has been achieved in just 4 months since the launch of this service, enabling the company to play a key role in standardizing the rental residential property market in Bengaluru.
Launched in February this year, Zenify Homes was introduced as a viable service to enable better management of residential buildings as well as ensuring maximum retention of tenants. It specifically caters its services to building owners/managers who may be encountering some difficulties in managing the premises or dealing with the residents.
We are extremely delighted to have achieved this milestone in such short span of time. With our management services gaining prominence in individual rental properties, we knew it was time to introduce a new category which can exclusively assist residential building owners to supervise their property effectively. We are happy to know that more and more building supervisors are now utilizing our services to improve the overall management of their property, and we hope to maintain this growth in the near future as well.
Elaborating further on this achievement, Shantakumar S. Harlapur, Manager – Sales, Zenify.in said
This milestone is very crucial for Zenify.in as it has helped us gain strong foothold in real estate market. With ‘Zenify Homes’, the company has been able to tap into a segment within this industry which was previously ignored. Poor management, maintenance, and/or lack of secondary services are just some of the reasons why most residential building lose potential tenants. However, with our comprehensive management services, most building owners have now been able to turn their properties into one of the most sought after among renters.
Under this category, Zenify.in takes full responsibility of managing a property. Some of its services include – Waste management, 24/7 security, Housekeeping, Bill payments, and other maintenance services as and when required.
About Zenify
Zenify is India’s only complete Home Aggregator and Rental Management Startup. Headquartered in Bengaluru, the technology driven startup, has simplified home rentals with technology. Through Zenify’s unique ZRP [Zenify Rental Price], Zenify brings in standardisation for home rentals. ZRP is a fixed rental price for each property that is available for rent, the price is fixed based on its localities and demands. For more information, please visit Zenify
With its vision to help make India a global hub of high-quality mobile developers, Google have launched the Android Skilling program in India that will aim to train two million mobile developers by unveiling a slew of initiatives to skill up, educate and certify millions of students and developers in Android Development.
Recognising the need to provide an in-person training course targeted at students in universities, Google announced the launch of a specially designed instructor led training program on Android Fundamentals. This will be made available across public and private universities and training institutes of the National Skill Development Corporation of India. The in-person training module integrated into the course curriculum will be introduced within this calendar year at no additional fee.
The Android Fundamentals course will also be available, free of charge on NPTEL [an initiative of the IITs and IISc] as part of its Online Mobile Computing course starting 18th July 2016. Additionally, Google has tied up with training partners like Edureka, Koenig, Manipal Global, Simplilearn, Udacity and UpGrad who will operate as Authorized Android Training Partners in India. Google will train their trainers & to update their Android course-ware to prepare students for the Android Certification and a career in Android development.
Speaking at the launch, Caesar Sengupta, VP, Product Management at Google said
India is expected to have the largest developer population globally, overtaking the US, by 2018 with four million developers. But today only 25% of developers are building for mobile. We believe India is uniquely placed to innovate and shape the Internet experience of billions of users who are and will come online on the mobile platform. By building a world class curriculum and making it easily accessible to millions of students and developers in India, we want to contribute to the Skill India initiative and help make India the global leader in mobile app development.
Google also announced the launch of its globally recognised job-oriented Associate Android Developer Certification – a performance-based exam that will help successful candidates to get an entry-level Android Developer jobs in the Industry. After training, aspiring candidates can log on to the Google Developer training website and take the certification exam priced at INR 6,500.
Sharing more details about the program, Peter Lubbers, Head of Google Developer Training said
We introduced the Android Nanodegree program in India last year with Udacity and today, we have over 11,500 students in India enrolling every month in our Android courses. For university students we have now—for the first time—introduced a instructor led Android Fundamentals course to be incorporated into university curricula in India
We also realise that India has a huge base of developers seeking opportunities for employment. And for that, we are introducing a globally recognised, job-oriented Google Developer Certification. The certification sets a benchmark for the industry to evaluate developer capabilities and is mapped to an actual job already in the industry, as determined by job task analyses
In addition to partnering with Universities, NPTEL and industry training partners, Google will also open-source all Android Developer Fundamentals practicals and course-ware and make these available to everyone for free. All details of the program and courses can be found here.
LYF Smartphone+, the True 4G smartphone brand from Reliance Retail, has pushed the envelope of affordability in the Indian smartphone space by announcing a very aggressive price of Rs. 2999 on four of its Flame models – Flame 3, Flame 4, Flame 5 and Flame 6. This makes LYF India’s most affordable VoLTE smartphone & opens the doors to a digital life for millions of consumers, a move which resonates with the Prime Minister’s vision of a digitally-connected India.
Like all LYF devices, the Flame series too offers smartphones equipped with VoLTE – a technology that enables the device to provide advanced features such as faster call setup, high-definition [HD] voice and video calling, seamless switching between voice and video calls and multi-party conferencing on a 4G LTE network.
It is perhaps for the first time in the history of Indian smartphone industry that such advanced communication features have moved within the reach of the common feature phone user who has been using the phone for simple voice-based communication.
The dual-SIM slots, a characteristic feature of every Flame phone, allow users to simultaneously use a 4G SIM in either of the slots. Given that all LYF devices come with a free Jio preview offer, under which every user buying a LYF phone gets access to the entire range of Jio services, Flame series provides an ideal and highly affordable platform for users to migrate from older networks such as 2G or 3G to the more advanced 4G ecosystem. In addition to this, Flame series also offer smart aesthetic features and superior hardware technology.
With all the models being equipped with a primary camera and also a front camera, or a selfie-shooter, Flame series allows users to shoot images of all types with a range of photography features such as HDR, Panorama, Face detection, Smile shutter, Burst mode, Slow motion video, Metering, White balance, Anti-banding and ISO. These features are bound to impress the existing feature phone users, as they can now enjoy a superior photography experience and the freedom to share their memories with their near and dear ones.
All four models run on a Quad core 1.5 GHz processor which delivers a smooth and lag-free multi-tasking experience. The screens feature an Asahi Dragontrail Glass for heightened protection against dust and scratches which result from regular operation. The compact and ergonomic design of the phones also allows for easy and convenient handling. The interfaces have been customized to operate on 10 different Indian languages, so that language never comes in the way of enjoying an enhanced digital experience.
The Indian device ecosystem always featured a clear line of distinction between smartphone users and feature phone users with price acting as a major barrier. With the introduction of 4G smartphones at a price which rivals that of feature phones, LYF has made it easy for feature phone users to upgrade to smartphones.
National Association of Software and Services Companies [NASSCOM] launched India’s first Centre of Excellence – Internet of Things [CoE- IoT] at the NASSCOM Startups Warehouse in Bengaluru. The centre was inaugurated by Mr. Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister for Law, in the presence of Mr. Priyank Kharge, Minister for Information and Broadcast Technology, Govt. of Karnataka, along with Ms V Manjula, IAS, Principal Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Biotechnology, e-Governance & Science & Technology, Govt. of Karnataka, Mr. R Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM among others. The CoE will focus on leveraging IT strengths & creating a new age industry with the support of IoT based ideas.
Ms V Manjula, IAS, Principal Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Biotechnology, e-Governance and Science & Technology, Govt. of Karnataka said
We recognise the scope for growth and development in the IoT space and are very pleased on partnering with NASSCOM and the private sector to launch the CoE in Karnataka. We have always strived to create a conducive ecosystem for IT companies in the state, with this initiative we hope to give start-ups an opportunity to innovate in the field of IoT and take the IT sector into newer and greater heights.
Dr Ajay Kumar, IAS, Additional Secretary, DeitY said
IoT is one of the high growth potential areas in the IT sector. With the growing number of IoT based SMEs/Startups in the Indian market, it becomes imperative to create an enabling ecosystem to help evolve this space, empowering companies to build technologies that provide global solutions.
Paradigm shift from IT to IOT, together with smooth shift of data & utilities using different electronic hardware structured with analytics, is going to enable a smart integrated & networked world. Starting from streamlining Airlines operations, Smart Cities to Disaster Management, IoT can play a major role in this connected world. With the growing number of IoT based SME’s/Startups in the Indian market, it becomes imperative to create an enabling ecosystem to help evolve this space, empowering companies to build technologies that provide Indian and Global solutions. We are happy to partner with NASSCOM, which is bringing-in Industry to help democratise innovation, by creating Centre of Excellence [COE] for start-ups in PPP mode.
The CoE laboratory along with the NASSCOM 10,000 Startups Warehouse has the capacity to incubate up to 40 start ups and can accommodate around 10 emerging companies per shift for prototype/ design and usage of lab facilities. The CoE also provides a separate space for validation, verification and demonstration as well as concept labs for developing IoT solutions for application areas like Agriculture, Automobile, Telecom, Healthcare and Consumer IoT.
Expressing his thoughts on the launch of the CoE, Mr R Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM, stated
NASSCOM is pleased on launching the IoT Centre of Excellence, which takes forward our efforts towards establishing India as a global tech hub. This Centre of Excellence has been created to act as a catalyst for developing the IoT SME/Startup ecosystem of the country as well as an accelerator of IoT capabilities providing the concept and scale for industrial and societal needs. The CoE will also function as an enabler of Funding, Accelerating, Mentoring & Enterprise for the key emerging IoT startups who have been selected for incubation, after a rigorous process.
The digital revolution accelerated by intelligent devices along with a booming startup environment has presented the need for a Centre of Excellence with a complete focus on the Internet of Things. With a presence of over 120 IoT focused IT companies and an expected market opportunity of USD 15 billion by 2020, India is set to gain a prominent position in the global IoT market. An increase in the adoption of IoT based technology in areas of home, retail and industrial automation, health & fitness monitoring and connected vehicles as well as the advent and growth of Smart cities, has resulted in a greater need of better solutions that lead to the evolution of a lifestyle dominated by technology. NASSCOM is focusing on systemically expanding the technology ecosystem and the IoT CoE will play the role of collaboratively addressing challenges such as the lack of understanding that leads to low adoption levels and security issues faced by the industry.
Multiple IoT based firms will be selected from over 250 entries to be incubated at the CoE, through a roadshow held across Coimbatore, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Mumbai. The first five companies out of the total entries are Uncanny Vision, LightMetrics, ThingsCloud, SAAR Microsystems and Wireless Controls.
Centre of Excellence – Internet of Things [CoE- IoT] at the 
