GoDaddy Inc., the world’s largest cloud platform dedicated to small, independent ventures, today announced its lead sponsorship for the upcoming CloudFest Conference, the largest domain name conference, being held in Mumbai on May 23, 2018. The sponsorship reinforces GoDaddy’s ongoing commitment to support the growth of its partners – web professionals and local re-sellers in India – by providing them with the right online tools, platform and solutions to manage their businesses.
The event will feature two sessions from GoDaddy leaders, including Chief Product Officer Steven Aldrich and Nikhil Arora, Managing Director and Vice President, GoDaddy India. Steven will present an opening keynote on how independent ventures drive global employment and ways in which GoDaddy can help support them with their online presence. This will be followed by Nikhil’s knowledge session titled Fall in love with your customer’s problem in discussions with GoDaddy customers.
Nikhil Arora, Managing Director and Vice President – GoDaddy India, said
Our association with CloudFest is very important to GoDaddy, enabling us to enhance our engagement with our partner community across India. It is the perfect place for us to showcase our new products and platform improvements with attendees, all of whom contribute to helping entrepreneurs, small business owners and individuals grow their ventures online. We look forward to meeting and working closely with them as we look to scale our business in Tier 2 cities with joint programs and campaigns, continuing to support the country’s growing Internet ecosystem.
At the conference, GoDaddy will launch its latest Virtual Private Server product, a fast, scalable and secure hosting solution, perfect for rapidly growing web applications. VPS hosting gives web pros more control over their hosting solutions, allowing them to get online quickly and to better serve their customers.
GoDaddy will also have a booth showcasing products and conducting live demos by experts to help educate partners and customers about its innovative tools and services. GoDaddy will also announce key new additions to its existing partner platforms [Pro & Reseller platforms], helping them better interact with, and service clients.
India continues to be a hotbed for startups especially with the Government’s relentless focus to provide a congenial environment for them to conduct business. Initiatives like the India Stack [UPI, eKYC] by the National Payments Corporation of India, the launch of the Startup India initiative, etc. are acting as catalysts that are fuelling the growth of the startup eco-system in India.
Rising internet & smart-phone penetration, access to Digital Media/Content, etc. have opened up new avenues for tech startups where they can release products that can cater to the urban as well as the rural markets. Emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Chat bots, Block chain, Machine Learning, etc. are not only used as a medium for technology disruption by startups but are also embraced by large-sized corporations, financial institutions, etc. in order to stay ahead of the technology curve.
Talking about Financial institutions, they are using these technologies to improve their customer service/providing better personalized service/providing additional financial services, etc. Fin-tech has been one of the hottest sectors from entrepreneur as well as investor’s perspective in 2017, something that has also caught the attention of other financial institutions. Mainstream financial institutions are becoming more agile in accepting change and are inking partnerships with these players since it is a win-win situation for both the parties.
Axis Bank, India’s third largest private sector bank has been the torch bearer in driving change where it launched Thought Factory, a startup incubator/Innovation lab in 2016 where it nurtured startups that are working on interesting ideas and experiment with emerging technologies for building breakthrough banking products and solutions. Six startups namely Perpule, Fintech Labs, S2Pay, Pally, Paymatrix, GIEOM were the first graduates from the Thought Factory in 2016.
But as it is widely known, startups cannot be built in exile and hence, ‘productive networking’ is also an important aspect of building as well as scaling a startup. Axis Bank took professional networking a notch above by launching one of its kind exclusive networking property called Axis Start-up Social, to support the burgeoning startup eco-system. Axis Start-up Social went live on 15th December in Bengaluru and the exclusive event happened at WeWork co-working space in Brigade Road. It was attended by entrepreneurs, Axis Bank team, startup enthusiasts, incubatees at WeWork and others who are connected to the startup eco-system.
The primary objective of this platform was to provide an opportunity for startups to network and share knowledge. Significantly, this initiative firmly underlines Axis Bank’s unflinching commitment towards providing multiple opportunities for startups in India to thrive and scale to the next-level-of-growth. The major highlight of the event was informal sessions by Vivek Gupta, CEO of Licious and Amit Rohatgi, Founder and CEO of Divrt. They did not have any ppt and the talk was not like a normal gyaan session. Vivek Gupta of Licious has donned the hats of an investor in Helion Ventures as well as an entrepreneur. Hence, his talk was more of a double-edged sword where he shared valuable insights from his investor and entrepreneurial journeys. He spoke about scaling, food tech, maintaining a customer-focused approach and much more. Some of the tips that he shared from his topsy-turvy entrepreneurial journey are below:
Customers don’t buy products online, they buy experience.
It is very important for startups to Repeat Purchase Rate since that is an important metric for measuring customer satisfaction/customer stickiness. At Licious, they have 90% revenue from repeat customers.
Entrepreneurs should be customer obsessed and not idea obsessed since customer is the king.
Having number sensitivity at every function of the startup, be it IT, HR, Engineering, Finance, etc. is very important.
Startups should focus on creating long-term value.
Consumer businesses are now getting due attention from institutional investors; ID Fresh, Yoga Bar are some of the pioneers in this category.
The important thing that an entrepreneur needs to take care of scaling is ‘Stay focused in one area’ and learn from your own mistakes. Licious was initially operational only in Whitefield, Bengaluru and after five long months it started operations in Koramangala.
Cost of Customer Acquisition is another vital metric that entrepreneurs need to keep track of at every stage of their startup journey.
Vivek Gupta, CEO of Licious
Vivek’s insightful session was then followed by Amit Rohatgi’s talk where he focused on his past entrepreneurial failures, learning’s from them, nuances of building a hardware startup, cultural differences between India and Silicon Valley. Amit has varied experience in different countries across the world and one point that he stressed more about was ‘Startup Hiring‘. He expressed his growing concerns about the unimaginable salaries offered to engineers in a startup, something that can hamper the growth of the startup ecosystem. His talk ended on a positive note that things are bright for ‘product’ entrepreneurs in India and this is the right time to take the first step to realize the entrepreneurial dream.
Amit Rohtagi of Divrt
To make the session much more informal, fun and engaging, Vikram Poddar added a comedy flavor to the event. Vikram is an ex-investment professional and a flourishing Corporate Standup Comedian. He cracked some awesome jokes on investment banking, corporate life, funding & startups, complex relation between software developers & testers and much more. After the completion, all the pillars of the startup eco-system networked over F&B 🙂
Vikram Poddar, Corporate Standup Comedian
As mentioned earlier, Axis Bank is keeping no stone unturned to stay ‘updated’ with the latest technological trends, either via in-house product development or via M&A’s. Startup Banking Group of Axis Bank already caters to banking requirements of technology-based start-ups like Ola, Flipkart, Zomato etc. #AxisStartupSocial is an excellent platform that provides an opportunity for Start-ups to network and share knowledge over the cup of coffee and we look forward to more chapters of this interesting initiative by Axis Bank.
If you have attended the #AxisStartupSocial or require more information, please leave your experience/queries in the comments section.
Accenture, in partnership with Yahoo, announced the winners of the fourth season of Innovation Jockeys, The Hunt for India’s most Innovative Minds in a glitzy award ceremony held at Ritz Carlton, Bangalore.
This year’s contest focused on the concepts of disruptive technology innovations related to the themes of Cognitive Computing and Internet of Things & Digital Application Marketplace. It aimed to discover bright, young, home-grown innovators who could conceptualize ideas that would help businesses and governments create personalized customer or citizen experiences.
The participants hailing from under-graduate as well as post graduate courses submitted innovative ideas for using technology to transform India through a micro-site developed for the contest at InnovationJokeys. The winners were announced under the following categories: Grand Prize, Cognitive Computing & Internet of Things, Digital Application Marketplace and Jury Award.
The grand prize was awarded to Team Fuzz which comprised of Akash Kumar, Akash Kumar Singh, Amit Kumar Singh & Abhishek Kumar from IES College of Technology, Bhopal, for developing Seva, Connecting India Healthy India, an application aimed at digitizing healthcare services and offering a one-stop solution to tackle long queues and unnecessary delays in providing medical care. The app is programmed to provide quick service and help the patient reach their nearest hospital in order to ensure timely treatment in case of emergencies. As a part of the award, winners will fly to Silicon Valley to experience the frontline of technology at AccentureTechnology Labs. In addition to this, they also won a mentorship session with Nandini Vaidyanathan, CMD, CARMa Venture Services.
In the Cognitive Computing & Internet of Things category, Neeraj and Akshita Sachdeva who represented Team Eyeluminati from Manav Rachna International University, Faridabad were awarded the prize for Manovue, a wearable voice-controlled haptic device that aims to help the visually impaired by using natural language processing to provide voice-enabled guidance and vibrations.
The winning entry in the Digital Application Marketplace category belonged to Team Fivido. The members were Bhavesh from Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Technology and Abhijit, Gaurang who belong to the Delhi Technological University. They developed Navishoe: The Navigator on Feet, a shoe-based navigation system that relays data such as the user’s location as well as sends out distress messages without the need for a smartphone.
The Jury Award along with mentorship from Accenture was presented to Team Phoenix whose member Krithika from Amrita School of Engineering, Madurai developed the application Innovative divide & conquer for novel purpose. The application used machine-learning techniques to develop a cognitive system that attempts to grade short answers and aids candidates to learn faster.
The entries were rigorously evaluated by the panel of judges comprising the following:
Kalyan Veeramachaneni, Research Scientist, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Raghu Polisetty, Managing Director for Accenture Digital in the Delivery Centers for Technology in India
Jayant Swamy, Managing Director – Technology Platform, Accenture Delivery Centers for Technology in India
All category winners were awarded trophies and tech gadgets such as iPads and Pebble Smartwatch. The top five popular entries walked home with Amazon kindles. The entire awards ceremony was also live tweeted using #InnovationJockeys for all parents, college team mates and other contestants. For more information, please visit InnovationJockeys
The fastest growing enterprise communication and collaboration app Flock continued its trend of creating waves yet again at the recent Gartner Symposium held in Goa this week. Flock participated in the ITxpo as a Silver Sponsor of the event, and as usual was one of the primary show stealers at the event.
The Gartner Symposium IT expo is the world’s most important gathering of CIOs and senior IT executives with an agenda that is designed to provide the strategies, insights and tools needed to lead the next generation of IT and achieve business outcomes.
Gartner invites leaders and executives from some of the most reputable firms in the market for the event, and the turnout this year did not disappoint, with over 1100+ people attending. It was these global leaders that Flock presented itself to and received a highly positive response and rave reviews. Members of the Gartner team itself complemented and congratulated Flock on its tremendous job at engaging such influential people with their insight and product.
The features that generated most interest were its slick, clutter-free interface across platforms, rich, intuitive user experience and newer features such as Video Calling, Shared Group To-Do’s, Reminders and Integration with other apps. Flock’s tagline of ‘Get Work Done. Faster.’ and promise of increasing employee efficiency by a significant amount resonated with members of startups and big businesses alike and made for a convincing proposition.
The Gartner Symposium is an extremely prestigious platform, and our main focus is to let people at the event know how Flock is changing the way teams communicate and collaborate. Most teams in organizations struggle with using multiple distributed systems for different collaborative tasks. With Flock, companies can actually make people and teams more efficient, by helping them get work done faster. This is a space that is ripe for disruption and Flock is quickly breaking new ground. I am very happy with what we have achieved here today as a team.
About Flock
Flock is a free enterprise communication and collaboration service for enterprises that is designed to enable people to get work done faster. Flock simplifies communication within teams and enables quick communication across multiple platforms without the need for IT admin support. It is scalable to any number of users and has a simple, clutter-free and intuitive interface synced across multiple platforms. Flock is the perfect communication tool for fast moving teams and organizations. It is available for download for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac and Chrome from flock.co
The August Fest, India’s largest Startup Conference that Celebrates Arts & Entrepreneurship is coming up with the 2015 edition. The August Fest is on its way to building India’s First International Startup Conference apart from being one of the Largest Startup Conferences in Asia.
It is geared to host around 5000+ great minds from across India and few of them from Asia, Middle East, Europe and the U.S.A ! Along with the awesome participants, there would be 50+ Speakers, 50+ Incubators & 200+ Investors would be participating in the event.
The event will be held on 29th & 30th of August in Hyderabad [JRC Convention]
August Fest – Detailed Agenda
Action Packed Two Day Conference | Applications For Startup Demos/Arts Track Submissions open from July.
15 Boot Camps In 8 Countries Before August ! Dates Will Be Out Soon !
Startups Can Pitch In Respective Cities to Win a Wild Card Entry to Demo @The August Fest Stage !
Best of The Best Startup Demos | Non Stop Film Screening
IoT/Makers Edition | Startup Expo
Intense Workshops | Interactive Sessions
50+ Speakers | 50+ Incubators | 200+ Investors
Live Music | Witty Skits | Stage Plays
Heritage Crawls | Unbelievable After Party
August Fest – Speaker Desk
There is an awesome line-up of speakers for the 2015 edition of August Fest [and still the team at August Fest are working to bring some more speakers on-board :)]
You can register for the event by Buying tickets from here If you are a startup founder, you can pitch your idea by registering for the Launch Pad. The August Fest Launch Pad is for Startups looking to Pitch on Stage ! Film Makers and Creative Folks looking forward to Showcase their works can submit entries too !
Raghavan Iyer, MD, Technology Delivery and Innovation Council lead for Accenture in India said
We’re looking for India’s next generation of innovators – young people with drive, passion and creativity who will make a difference in the way businesses and society function. In the previous three seasons, the program drew over 7,180 idea submissions from over 900 campuses and more than 125,300 newsletter sign-ups from students at more than 1,000 colleges across India. We have seen an encouraging response each year and are expecting more students to participate and showcase their solutions.
Unni Aravindakshan, VP – Production Engineering & Head, Yahoo Software Development India Pvt. Ltd said
Over the last three years, Innovation Jockeys has surfaced ideas that solve real-world problems and make a difference in our daily lives. We are happy to be part of the process that fosters this innovation. We are looking forward to how India’s bright young minds will innovate and push the envelope this year, as they take on new challenges.
Each member of the winning team will receive a trip to Accenture Technology Labs, San Francisco, a Lenovo tablet & an Apple iPhone 6. Winning entries for each category will also receive an Apple iPad and a Pebble Smart Watch. The five most popular ideas will win an Amazon Kindle.
To find out more and participate in Innovation Jockeys: The Hunt for India’s most Innovative Minds, log on to Innovation Jockeys. The deadline for submitting entries is September 20, 2015. The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on November 6, 2015 in Bangalore.
The SCPC aims to bring together the leading supply chain practitioners from across industries to showcase achievements and share best practices, while building a community which can influence policy making. This forum intends to foster an environment to propel India towards global supply chain leadership and make it a go-to place for supply chain excellence.
This widely attended supply chain forum has occurred successfully in Bangalore for the past two years and eight such editions have been hosted by companies/institutes such as Dell, Cisco, JDA, Honeywell, SAP Labs & IIM Bangalore.
We hosted the 5th edition of the SCPC which was manufacturing-centric. The theme for the 9th edition is ‘last mile delivery and returns management, which is retail-centric. The eminent speakers will discuss current opportunities and challenges. It is also a great networking opportunity for supply chain professionals.
JDA has a large client base in manufacturing, distribution, retail, category management and store operations. It is a privilege to provide a platform that helps supply chain professionals to actively collaborate, think collectively and act decisively. The SCPC helps promote understanding of the current market problems and the way they are currently being solved, as well as provides guidance on moving enterprises to the next level of supply chain maturity.
About JDA Software Group, Inc.
JDA isa the leading provider of end-to-end, integrated retail, omni-channel and supply chain planning and execution solutions for more than 4,000 customers worldwide. For more information, please visit JDA or JDA on SlideShare
3M India announced the launch of the second edition of the Young Innovators Challenge Awards 2015 in association with CII. The platform aims to support and encourage young technical innovators between the age of 18 – 30, across India to come up with inspiring and innovative ideas with a social relevance.
The various themes are:
Productivity – Innovations that improve output or affordability
Sustainability – Innovations that leave a positive ecological and environmental impact
Disruptive – Innovations that represent breakthrough technology or help create a totally new market or way to deliver the impact
Speaking on the occasion, Amit Laroya, Managing Director, 3M India said
Innovative thinking forms an integral part of the 3M culture. Through this initiative we believe we are taking this belief a notch higher. 3M is looking to promote and invest in young ideas and talent to develop not only socially responsible innovations but ideas which could be prototyped with the capability to address social good at large.
Speaking on the occasion, Kris Gopalakrishnan, Past President, CII and Chairman, India Innovation Summit & Co-Founder, Infosys said
3M-CII Young Innovators Challenge gives an opportunity for youth across India to showcase their innovations and get recognized. This recognition allows winners to get additional funding and scale up their innovations.
Why should you participate
The 10 best ideas will be invited for a pitch session on 23-24 July, based on which a reputed jury will choose 3 winning entries. The winners will then be felicitated at the 11th India Innovation Summit 2015, organized by CII in Bangalore on 6th ~ 7th August, where they will be given an opportunity to present their winning projects.
