Mumbai-based industrialist Akshaypat Singhania is reportedly allocating $14.01 Mn (INR 100 Cr) for supporting early stage startups which are operating in the media and entertainment, lifestyle, food and beverages healthcare and other segments.

The new fund will invest in the range of $2-4 Mn in early stage startups looking to raise seed to Series A round of funding.

“This is entirely proprietary capital. I don’t have any plans to raise funds from external investors,” Singhania told ET.

He also added that the period of the investments will depend on the maturity of the business and also the stage he is entering in. Approximately, he is planning to invest over a five-to-seven year time period.

According to the report, he has already made investments in a quick service restaurant chain and a lifestyle venture. The names of the startups and details of the funding are yet to be disclosed. He is also expecting to close an investment in oral healthcare sector.

Singhania who currently serves as the chairman and managing director of his family business JK International, is one of the latest in the line of traditional corporates who are setting up funds to dabble in India’s startup ecosystem.  

“I do not intend to only invest and wait for investments to appreciate, but also use my own experience to help the business grow larger to build a professional team, implement better processes, strengthen the use of technology and to infuse transparency in the system so that the business can strive ceaselessly for growth and efficiency,” Singhania said in a statement.

The trend first gained limelight when Infosys cofounder, Narayana Murthy, sold part of his stake in the company to set up a venture fund, Catamaran Ventures in 2010.

Earlier this year, former Tata Group Chairman, Cyrus Pallonji Mistry announced the formation of his own private equity venture firm called Mistry Ventures LLP.

Veteran industrialists like Ratan Tata also has his own fund named Tata Capital Innovations Fund, managed by Tata Capital, a subsidiary of Tata Sons Limited.

Also after the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica fiasco, Mahindra Group Chairman, Anand Mahindra said that he would like to invest seed capital in a homegrown social networking platform.

Meanwhile media baron Ronnie Screwvala is reportedly using money from selling his stake in UTV Software Communications to fund startups through Unilazer Ventures, which was founded in 2012.

The post JK International Chairman Akshaypat Singhania To Invest $14 Mn In Startups appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Sonia Dhawan’s lawyer Satish Kumar has now appealed in the district court, Gautam Buddha nagar for bail for his client in the Paytm extortion case. The application was filed after the Surajpur district court, Greater Noida (UP) special judge rejected the bail application of Dhawan’s husband, Roopak Jain, on November 14.

Speaking to Inc42, advocate Satish Kumar clarified, “The application has been filed on the ground that no extortion amount has been demanded by Sonia Dhawan. Not a single rupee of the said extortion amount of INR 67K and INR 200K has been deposited or transferred to her account.”

He added, “There is no ground that could establish Sonia’s connection with the extortion case. The fourth accused, Rohit Chomal, who has reportedly claimed her involvement, is still absconding.”

Sonia Dhawan’s case, which was initially being handled by advocate Prashant Tripathi, is now with advocate Satish Kumar, Roopak Jain’s lawyer.

After an FIR filed by Noida police on October 22, Paytm vice-president, communications, Sonia Dhawan, her husband Roopak Jain, along with another Paytm employee, Devendra Kumar, were earlier sent on police remand for 14 days by the chief judicial magistrate (CJM), Gautam Buddha Nagar, (Noida). The trio was arrested on October 22 for their alleged involvement in an extortion attempt targeted at Paytm chief Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

Since then, there have been several twists and turns in the case. To start with, there were loopholes in the FIR filed on the basis of a complaint by Sharma’s brother Ajay Shekhar Sharma — the extortion amount was written as INR 20 Cr in numeral and INR 10 Cr in words. Manoj Pant, the investigative officer in the case, later confirmed to Inc42 that the actual amount was INR 10 Cr.

The police have so far claimed that the third accused in the case — Devendra Kumar — has conceded the involvement of the trio in the extortion case. The fourth accused, Rohit Chomal, who had supposedly revealed the entire plan (as written in the FIR) is still on the run.

There were also rumours that the advocate, as well as Dhawan and Jain’s family and friends were not being allowed to meet the duo, who are currently being held at Kasna Jail, Greater Noida. However, speaking to Inc42, Kumar clarified, “That’s not the case. They (Sonia Dhawan and Roopak Jain) are not terrorists. As per the rules, anyone can meet Sonia Dhawan and Roopak Jain.”

Maintaining that the bail application was completely based on facts, Kumar also debunked rumours that the bail application was filed on grounds of Dhawan’s failing health.

On November 14, despite Jain having claimed his innocence via a video conference at Surajpur district court, the court rejected his bail plea based on the basis of police claims and documents submitted to the court.

If Dhawan’s bail application gets rejected in the November 23 hearing, her family plans to appeal at the Allahabad High Court.

The post Paytm Extortion Case: Bail Plea For Sonia Dhawan, Hearing On November 23 appeared first on Inc42 Media.

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” — Steve Jobs.

This is true of all things — individuals, companies, countries. Innovation leads, the world follows. With the rise and rise of the Indian startup ecosystem, innovation in India is at its peak —45,444 patent applications were filed in 2016-17 alone.

But not all innovation is impactful, or relevant, or even useful. In an attempt to filter the wheat from the chaff, Inc42 has put together the 42Next — a list of the 42 most innovative startups causing an impact in the Indian startup ecosystem. The 42Next is a part of Inc42’s flagship annual report, ‘The State Of Indian Startup Ecosystem 2018’, unveiled during The Ecosystem Summit held on November 16 in Delhi amid the who’s who of the startup community.

The 42Next list was prepared after evaluating thousands of entries on criteria such as competition, innovation, revenues, traction, leadership, team, build up, and growth rate, among others. To arrive at the list, Inc42 filtered the essence of its years of understanding on the Indian startup ecosystem and supplemented it with inputs from both the Inc42 Editorial and Inc42 DataLabs teams, conducting an in-depth review to recognise the 42 most innovative startups in India.

These 42 startups have developed their own patented technologies and are solving pressing problems in areas such as healthtech, fintech, deeptech, enterprisetech, consumer services, edtech, media & entertainment, agritech, logistics, transport tech, and entertainment tech.

Unveiling of the ’42Next’ during Inc42’s The Ecosystem Summit

42Next is part of Inc42’s effort to recognise startups that are creating ripples in their respective fields of work and contributing to India’s trillion-dollar digital technology. These startups have shown extraordinary resourcefulness to overcome challenges on their way to success.

42Next by Inc42 — India’s Most Innovative Startups

Active.ai

Launched in: 2016
Founders: Ravi Shankar, Parikshit Paspulati, Shankar Narayanan
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Fintech
Total funding: $11.7 Mn
Key investors: Vertex Ventures, Dream Incubator, Kalaari Capital, CreditEase, IDG Ventures India and more

Active.ai provides a tech platform for banks, wealth managers, and financial services companies to help them engage with customers. It provides an AI-powered virtual assistant to its users to cater to their emergent banking needs.

Altizon

Launched in: 2013
Founders: Vinay Nathan, Yogesh Kulkarni, Ranjit Nair
Location: Pune
Sector: Hardware & IoT
Total funding: $5.75 Mn
Key investors: Lumis Partners, The Hive, Persistent Systems, Wipro Ventures, Infuse Ventures, and more

Ather Energy

Launched in: 2013
Founders: Tarun Mehta, Swapnil Jain
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Deeptech
Total funding: $65.3 Mn
Key investors: Hero MotoCorp, Tiger Global Management and more

Ather Energy is a maker of two-wheeler electric vehicles. In 2018, the startup launched its flagship electric scooter, Ather 450; and another ebike, Ather 340, which is set to hit Indian roads. It also launched Ather Grid, a public and private EV charging solution.

Belong

Launched in: 2014
Founders: Vijay Sharma, Sudheendra Chilappagari, Saiteja Veera, Rishabh Kaul
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Enterprise services
Total funding: $15 Mn
Key investors: Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners India, Blume Ventures, InnoVen Capital and more

The startup relies on big data to aggregate the right candidates for companies from hundreds of public and social sources. It is a platform-based solution that connects employers to a verified network of independent talent experts for start-to-finish hiring support.

CASHe

Launched in: 2016
Founders: V Raman Kumar
Location: Mumbai
Sector: Fintech
Total funding: $3.8 Mn
Key investors: Long Blockchain, IFMR Capital, Florintree, Mathew Cyriac, Potlapally Goutami

CASHe has developed a patented credit scoring system, called social loan quotient (SLQ), to provide short-term, unsecured loans to salaried and self-employed individuals. The SLQ calculates the customer’s credit score from a number of data points obtained from his/her smartphone that gives insights into his/her willingness and ability to repay the loan.

ClearTax

Launched in: 2011
Founders: Archit Gupta, Raja Ram Gupta, Srivatsan Chari, Ankit Solanki
Location: Delhi
Sector: Fintech
Total funding: $65.4 Mn
Key investors: SAIF Partners, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, PayPal, Paytm, Y Combinator, Maiden Lane, FundersClub, Peter Thiel, Naval Ravikant, Max Levchin

ClearTax helps individuals and businesses with tax compliance and mutual fund investments along with tax preparation, e-filing, accounting, and investment planning solutions. The platform has helped customers file more than 20 Lakh tax returns.

Cube

Launched in: 2018
Founders: Satyen Kothari
Location: Mumbai
Sector: Fintech
Total funding: Undisclosed
Key investors: Beenext, 500 Startups, and more

The startup has built an automated wealthtech app to help customers plan their finances. It works on a subscription-based model, connecting users with an investment adviser to help them do their financial planning.

Cure.fit

Launched in: 2016
Founders: Ankit Nagori, Mukesh Bansal
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Healthtech
Total funding: $170 Mn
Key investors: IDG Ventures India, Kalaari Capital, Accel Partners, Chiratae Ventures, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, Trifecta Capital and more

Cure.Fit is a health and fitness startup that integrates an online-to-offline (O2O) model to offer physical fitness, mental well-being, healthy food, and preventive diagnostics on a single app-based platform.

Dream11

Launched in: 2012
Founders: Harsh Jain and Bhavit Sheth
Location: Mumbai
Sector: Gaming
Total funding: $100 Mn
Key investors: Tencent, Kalaari Capital, Multiples Equity

Dream11 offers users app-based gaming experiences in sports such as cricket, football, kabaddi, etc. The fantasy sports platform enables users to create virtual teams comprising real-life players and lets them organise matches based on the players’ actual statistical performances.

Drivezy

Launched in: 2015
Founders: Ashwarya Pratap Singh, Hemant Kumar Sah, Vasant Verma, Abhishek Mahajan, Amit Sahu
Location: Mumbai
Sector: Transport
Total funding: $28 Mn
Key investors: Mahindra Finance, ICICI Bank, Y Combinator, White Unicorn Ventures, Kima Ventures and others

Sharing economy-focussed startup Drivezy (previously JustRide) offers self-drive rental cars, providing real-time data on the location and the vehicle’s performance parameters. The company has built a platform, called RentalCoins, which accepts Bitcoin payments.

Dunzo

Launched in: 2015
Founders: Ankur Aggarwal, Dalvir Suri, Mukund Jha, Kabeer Biswas
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Logistics
Total funding: $14.8 Mn
Key investors: Aspada Investments, Blume Ventures, Google, Rajan Anandan and more

Chat-based hyperlocal services app Dunzo enables users to create to-do lists and collaborate with partners (vendors) to get them done. It leverages AI to provide vendors for shipping of packages, buying products, repairing stuff, and home services.

Flutura

Launched in: 2012
Founders: Krishnan Raman, Derick Jose, Srikanth Muralidhara
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Hardware & IoT
Total funding: $10 Mn
Key investors: Hitachi, Vertex Ventures, Lumis Partners, The Hive, Pi Ventures and more

Flutura is a big data analytics solutions provider with a vision to transform operational outcomes by monetising machine data. Flutura’s flagship software platform, Cerebra, provides diagnostics and prognostics through AI and ML, to unlock new business value for engineering and energy customers across the globe.

Furlenco

Launched in: 2011
Founders: Ajith Mohan Karimpana
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Consumer services
Total funding: $27.3 Mn
Investors: Signet Chemical Corporation, Trifecta Capital, Hetero Group, Lightbox Ventures, HDFC Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank, IntelleGrow and more

Apart from furniture rentals, Furlenco provides a host of benefits such as swapping of furniture, relocation across cities, pausing of subscriptions, and deep cleaning services as a part of its subscription. The startup designs and manufactures its own furniture with the help of in-house designers.

Graphic India

Launched in: 2012
Founders: Devarajan, Gotham Chopra, Suresh Seetharaman
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Entertainment tech
Total funding: $10.3 Mn
Key investors: SAIF Partners, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, PayPal, Paytm, Y Combinator, Maiden Lane, FundersClub, Peter Thiel, Naval Ravikant, Max Levchin

Graphic India specialises in developing comic superheroes. The startup is producing 200 episodes of animation across TV and digital platforms, and has partnered with Disney, Amazon Prime Video, Cartoon Network, Rovio, Viacom18, etc. Its popular comics include Shadow Tiger, Devi, The Mighty Yeti, Chakra The Invincible, Astra Force, The Lost Legends, and Ramayan 3392 AD.

CarIQ

Launched in: 2012
Founders: Sagar Apte, R Rajendrakumar, Deepak Thomas, K. Vinu, Hrishikesh Nene
Location: Pune
Sector: Automobile maintenance
Total funding: $843K
Key investors: One97 Mobility Fund, Persistent Systems, Pose Ventures, Snow Leopard Ventures, Venture Factory, JioGenNext and more

CarIQ connects car owners with the service providers. It is helpful in accessing the car status and detecting any care required in real time. It is helpful in locating nearby workshops and mechanics. It also provides information on insurance renewals, workshop tie-ups, service integrations, and roadside assistance, etc.

IndiaLends

Launched in: 2015
Founders: Gaurav Chopra, Mayank Kachhwaha
Location: Delhi
Sector: Fintech
Total funding: $16 Mn
Key investors: ACPI, DSG Consumer Partners, American Express Ventures and more

Consumer lending startup IndiaLends has built a credit scoring and analytics platform that connects borrowers with financial institutions that match their credit profiles. It also provides data analytics and risk scoring services to financial institutions as well as access financial education to consumers.

ION Energy

Launched in: 2017
Founders: Akhil Aryan, Alexandre Collet
Location: Mumbai
Sector: Deeptech
Total funding: Undisclosed
Key investors: Astarc Ventures, Aakrit Vaish

ION Energy manufactures high-performing batteries for electric vehicles. It designs and engineers lithium-ion battery technologies bundled with proprietary software and a cloud analytics platform to improve battery performance.

Licious

Launched in: 2015
Founders: Abhay Hanjura, Vivek Gupta
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Consumers services
Total funding: $39 Mn
Key investors: Bertelsmann India Investments, Vertex Ventures, Mayfield, 3one4 Capital, Sistema, InnoVen Capital and more

Technology-powered meat, fish, and seafood products delivery startup Licious is built on the farm-to-fork business model. It owns the entire backend cold chain, which enables it to control and maintain the quality and freshness of the products from the time of procurement, through processing and storage, till it reaches the customer.

Meesho

Launched in: 2015
Founders: Vidit Aatrey, Sanjeev Barnwal
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Enterprise application
Total funding: $15.4 Mn
Key investors: Sequoia Capital, SAIF Partners, Y Combinator, Venture Highway, Investopad and others.

Meesho is an online social platform for sellers to sell products across fashion, lifestyle, and other categories. It also provides logistics and payments tools to sellers along with helping them launch, build, and promote online businesses using social media channels.

MoneyTap

Launched in: 2016
Founders: Bala Parthasarathy, Anuj Kacker, Kunal Varma
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Fintech
Total funding: $12.3 Mn
Key investors: Sequoia Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Prime Venture Partners, Eight Innovate

Consumer lending startup MoneyTap provides flexible loans to salaried individuals and self-employed professionals earning more than $270 (INR 20,000) per month. MoneyTap claims to evaluate the user’s eligibility in less than four minutes and provides a real-time decision on the application along with the amount the borrower is eligible for.

myGate

Launched in: 2016
Founders: Vijay Arisetty, Abhishek Kumar, Shreyans Daga, Vivaik Bhardwaj
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Enterprise application
Total funding: $11.6 Mn
Key investors: Prime Venture Partners and more

myGate offers a comprehensive solution for gated communities to manage operations at entry and exit gates; and enables them to optimise security guards, making them more effective. The startup takes the responsibility of training the guards — any time and any number of times as needed — through the life of the contract.

Ninjacart

Launched in: 2015
Founders: Thirukumaran Nagarajan, Vasudevan Chinnathambi, Kartheeswaran K K, Ashutosh Vikram, Sharath Loganathan.
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Agritech
Total funding: $14.3 Mn
Key investors: Accel Partners, Mistletoe, Qualcomm Ventures, Trifecta Capital, Nandan Nilekani and more

B2B agri-marketing platform Ninjacart connects farmers with businesses, picks up produce from farmers’ fields and delivers it to the doorsteps of 3000+ businesses in 12 hours. The startup claims to process more than 200 tonnes of fruits and vegetables daily and has operations in Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad.

Niramai

Launched in: 2016
Founders: Geetha Manjunath, Nidhi Mathur
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Healthtech
Total funding: $983K
Investors: Pi Ventures, Ankur Capital, Axilor Ventures, 500 Startups, Kris Gopalakrishnan, Binny Bansal, Srinath Batni

Niramai uses big data, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to detect breast cancer at an early stage, which is useful for preventive health checkups.

Clip

Launched in: 2017
Founder: Ashish Gupta, Nav Agrawal, Swapnil Upadhyay
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Digital media video startup
Total funding: $7.3 Mn
Key investors: Matrix Partners India, Shunwei Capital, India Quotient

Mobile-based Clip allows users to browse India-based video contents of bollywood, cricket, music, dance, devotional etc. The users can also follow each other, create their own video, find content and share them across other social media.

Playment

Launched in: 2015
Founders: Siddharth Mall, Akshay Lal, Ajinkya Malasane
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Fintech
Total funding: $2.42 Mn
Key investors: Y Combinator, Sparkland Capital, Google, SAIF Partners and more

An AI-driven mobile platform, Playment helps organisations divide big work projects into micro tasks. Users need to share data with the startup’s human intelligence (HI) team, which then provides a dedicated project manager that prepares task instructions, workforce training modules, and sets up workflows to ensure that contract level SLAs are delivered consistently.

Playsimple

Launched in: 2014
Founders: Siddharth Jain, Suraj Nalin, Preeti Reddy, Siddhanth Jain
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Gaming
Total funding: $4.5 Mn
Key investors: SAIF Partners, IDG Ventures India, Google, Yezdi Lashkari

PlaySimple provides simple, fun and social mobile-based games across categories such as trivia, puzzles, and word games. Each game has an average session time of 15 minutes.

Quizizz

Launched in: 2015
Founders: Ankit Gupta, Deepak Joy Cheenath
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Edtech
Total funding: $3 Mn
Key investors: Nexus Venture Partners, Prime Venture Partners, Powerhouse Ventures

Quizizz  is an e-learning platform for teachers, students and parents to connect and engage with each other to conduct quick assessment across STEM subjects using gamification technique, having features such as points, customisable memes, leaderboard etc.

Razorpay

Launched in: 2014
Founders: Shashank Kumar, Harshil Mathur
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Fintech
Total funding: $31.5 Mn
Key investors: Tiger Global Management, Y Combinator, Matrix Partners India, Mastercard, GMO Venture Partners, Soma Capital, Kunal Bahl, Rohit Bansal, Punit Soni, Abhay Singhal, Naveen Tewari, Kunal Shah, Sandeep Tandon, Justin Kan, Jeff Huber, Bill Gajda

Digital payments startup Razorpay offers payment gateway solutions along with a product suite to help merchants manage the entire payments cycle. It plans to enter the enterprise online lending space with by expanding its existing B2B services to provide an end-to-end financial management solution.

Rubique

Launched in: 2014
Founders: Manav Jeet
Location: Mumbai
Sector: Fintech
Total funding: $6.55 Mn
Key investors: Emery Capital, Kalaari Capital, BlackSoil, Recruit Group, Trifecta Capital, YourNest, Globevestor

AI- and ML-focussed online lending startup Rubique has developed a proprietary algorithm for banks and other financial institutions to process loan and credit card products. The startup has also received approvals to launch its lending solution in the insurance and mutual funds categories.

ShareChat

Launched in: 2015
Founders: Farid Ahsan, Bhanu Singh, Ankush Sachdeva
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Social
Total funding: $124 Mn
Key investors: Morningside Ventures, Shunwei Capital, Xiaomi, Lightspeed Venture Partners, SAIF Partners and more

Much like other social networking platforms, ShareChat enables users to create, discover, and share content with each other in 10 Indian languages. The app allows users to share videos, jokes, GIFs, audio songs and funny images. The users can also follow each other, create and find content in their language of preference and share them across other social media.

ShopX

Launched in: 2015
Founders: Amit Sharma, Apoorva Jois
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Enterprise application
Total funding: $53.6 Mn
Key investors: Fung Group, Nandan Nilekani

ShopX is a technology-led startup that enables retailers in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities to offer their products and services to customers by listing them on its platform along with daily deals.

SigTuple

Launched in: 2015
Founders: Tathagato Rai Dastidar, Rohit Kumar Pandey, Apurv Anand
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Healthtech
Total funding: $25.5 Mn
Key investors: Accel Partners, IDG Ventures India, Endiya Partners, Pi Ventures, Axilor Ventures and more.

SigTuple aims to create a data-driven, ML, and cloud-based solution for detection of abnormalities and trends in medical data for the purpose of disease diagnosis. Its continuous learning AI-powered platform, Manthana, enables SigTuple to ingest visual medical data from various devices to detect diseases.

Smartivity Labs

Launched in: 2015
Founders: Apoorv Gupta, Ashwini Kumar, Rajat Jain, Tushar Amin
Location: Delhi
Sector: Edutech
Total funding: $3.13 Mn
Key investors: S Chand and Company, AdvantEdge, Tandem Capital, CFG Offshore Holdings, Ashish Kacholia, Namita Bhandare, Samridh Poddar, Nilkanth Kulkarni, Saurabh Mittal, Kunal Khattar

Smartivity Labs provides activity-based, engagement-driven smart learning experiences and toys for children. It has built a patented AR-focussed tinkering kit along with robotics-based learning systems for children from 3-14 years of age. Besides India, the startup has distributors in Singapore, Australia, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Pakistan.

Squad

Launched in: 2014
Founders: Apurv Agrawal along with Kanika Jain, Vikas Gulati
Location: Delhi
Sector: Fintech
Total funding: $2.1 Mn
Key investors: Blume Ventures, 91springboard, Emergent Ventures, Abstract Ventures and more

Squad has an app that helps Internet companies execute small tasks via crowdsourced game players. Squad assigns these tasks as games to freelancers who play them in exchange for currency on mobile wallets. SquadVoice is seeing strong growth and its product has evolved in the right direction towards automating lead qualification for sales teams.

Tesseract

Launched in: 2015
Founders: Kshitij Marwah
Location: Delhi
Sector: Hardware & IoT
Total funding: NA
Key investors: NA

Tesseract has launched three hardware products — Methane, Holoboard, and Quark — in the augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) sectors. On the AR side, the company is focussed more on content consumption, while in VR, it concentrates on content capture.

ToneTag

Launched in: 2014
Founders: Kumar Abhishek, Vivek Singh
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Fintech
Total funding: $9.97 Mn
Key investors: Amazon, Mastercard, 3one4 Capital, Elevate Innovation Partners, Reliance Venture Asset Management, Mastercard & more

ToneTag uses sound waves to transmit data to enable payments when two devices — a mobile phone or a PoS device — are brought in close proximity of each other.

Unacademy

Launched in: 2015
Founders: Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini, Hemesh Singh, Sachin Gupta
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Edtech
Total funding: $39.4 Mn
Investors: Sequoia Capital, SAIF Partners, Nexus Venture Partners, Blume Ventures, WaterBridge Ventures, and more

Unacademy is an online learning platform that empowers educators to create courses on various subjects. It currently has more than 50,000 lessons online, 1.3 Mn registered users, and 4,000 educators. It also provides an online knowledge repository for multilingual education.

UrbanClap

Launched in: 2014
Founders: Abhiraj Bhal, Raghav Chandra, Varun Khaitan
Location: Delhi
Sector: Hyperlocal
Total funding: $59 Mn
Investors: Vy Capital, SAIF Partners, Accel Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Trifecta Capital, Ratan Tata and more

On-demand hyperlocal home services marketplace UrbanClap helps consumers find local home services in categories such as health and wellness to weddings, events, home and design, repair and maintenance, etc. UrbanClap recently launched its services in Dubai.

Vatsana Technologies

Launched in: 2014
Founders: Parveen Singhal, Vinay Singhal, Shashank Vaishnav
Location: Indore
Sector: Entertainment tech
Total funding: $342K
Investors: Inventus Law, Singapore Angel Network, and more

Vatsana Technologies-owned content marketing company Wittyfeed is a content marketing platform that provides latest news, photos, viral stories, and trending videos on entertainment, fashion, sports, politics and lifestyle. The content is available in Spain, the US, the UK, and India.

Yulu

Launched in: 2017
Founders: Amit Gupta, RK Misra, Naveen Dachuri, Hemant Gupta
Location: Bengaluru
Sector: Transport
Total funding: Undisclosed
Key investors: 3one4 Capital, Blume Ventures, Wavemaker Partners, Incubate Fund, Incubate Fund India, GrayCell Ventures, OperatorVC and more

IoT-focussed startup Yulu provides dockless bicycles sharing for the first mile, last mile, and short distance commute. Its bikes can be unlocked by scanning the QR code that is obtained after the user books the ride via the Yulu app.

The post 42Next By Inc42 — Meet India’s 42 Most Innovative Startups appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi said that it has opened more than 500 Mi Stores across villages in India by October 29. Manu Kumar Jain, the global vice president of Xiaomi and the managing director of Xiaomi India, shared the development in a social media post.

“Xiaomi is opening rural #MiStore with ‘New Retail’ concept across the country. These are exclusive stores that bring Xiaomi’s flagship experience to rural consumers,” he said.

Located across 14 states, the all new Mi Stores have an average size of 300 sq ft. and reflect the signature design of Xiaomi’s Mi home stores.

“Mi Stores display futuristic interiors with minimalist concept, offering customers the valuable opportunity to experience and purchase all Xiaomi products of India under one roof,” the company said.

Xioami India plans to open 5000 Mi Stores by the end of 2019 and is looking to generate more than 15,000 jobs. The new Mi Store outlets will serve as Xiaomi’s prime retail stores situated in several towns ranging from tier 3, 4, 5 and below.

In an earlier Facebook post on November 19, Jain claimed that this new business will forever change rural retail in India and will probably break many records.

The Mi Store project is being led by Sunil Baby, who has earlier led Xiaomi’s offline teams as a regional sales manager at Xiaomi India.

With these initiatives, the brand has rapidly expanded its offline presence in rural India. These stores can also be found in some of the most remote corners of the nation, showcasing the brand’s vast outreach.

For example, Xiaomi opened Mi Stores in Moreh which is 650 kms from Guwahati located on India-Burma border and just 100 meters away from Burma, and also in Aalo (Along) in Arunachal Pradesh which is the last town of India bordering China.

As part of Xiaomi’s extensive efforts to boost entrepreneurship in the rural sector, the company is encouraging Mi Fans from small towns and villages, and other local individuals to run and operate these stores.

India has grown as one of Xiaomi’s key markets since its entry into the country in 2014. Not only, it is deepening its presence in the market by introducing options such as Mi Credit and supporting the government moves such as Startup India and data localisation but is also putting on shelf products such as smartwatches, air purifiers, water purifiers, televisions among others.

Analysts claim that Xiaomi smartphones have a 30.4% share in the Indian market, which makes it the top selling brand by volume compared to other major players such as Samsung, Nokia, Oppo and others.

Further, the company had earlier announced that the Indian market contributed close to a third of its total global revenue of $18 Bn in 2017, via three of its top-five sales channels.

While it reported a near 152% jump in its yearly revenue from overseas operations in Q2 2018, earlier this week on Monday (November 19), Xiaomi claimed that it had made a profit in the third quarter, driven by robust sales in India and Europe.

The post Xiaomi Bets Big On Rural India: Opens 500+ Mi Stores, To Add 5K More By 2019 appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Engineer.ai, which uses Artificial Intelligence  to help small and mid-sized organisations build their own bespoke software (custom or tailor-made software), has raised a Series A investment of $29.5 Mn, led by Lakestar and Jungle Ventures. The funding round also saw participation from DeepCore — Softbank’s AI-focussed investment fund.

Founded by Sachin Dev Duggal and Saurabh Dhoot in 2012, Engineer.ai is a global company with split headquarters in Los Angeles and London, supported by offices in Delhi and Tokyo. The startup was formerly known as SD Squared and was rebranded to Engineer.ai. in June 2018.

With over $24M in gross revenue and customers that include BBC, Virgin Group and the San Francisco Giants, Engineer.ai uses AI to allow anybody to build a custom software for their company using a drag-and-drop project builder and a library of frequently used code.

The company is set to cross the $100 Mn revenue mark before the end of 2020.

Engineer.ai’s flagship product ‘Builder’ is an AI-powered software assembly line that breaks projects into small building blocks of re-usable features that are then customised by the programmers and IT professionals on the company’s platform.

“We created Engineer.ai so that everyone can build an idea without learning to code,” said
Sachin Dev Duggal, founder of Engineer.ai. “The capital comes at a time of rapid growth and will propel the platform into the mainstream, allowing Builder to open the door for entire categories of companies that could not consider it before,” he added.

The company provides a fully integrated service to its customers, from an extended warranty to the CloudOps marketplace, that provides access to everything the custom software might need (hosting, microservices, marketing, etc.).

“Software is the centre of every business today and the market has been waiting for a solution
that eliminates technical barriers to build software so that everyone can engage in the new
economy,” said Manu Gupta, Partner at Lakestar.

For now, Engineer.ai is focussing on the APAC region mainly India and is looking to expand to MENA, and South East Asia including China.

The post Jungle Ventures, Softbank’s DeepCore Invest $29.5 Mn In Software Marketplace Engineer.ai appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Chennai-headquartered Internet of Things (IoT) startup DeTect Technologies has raised $3.3 Mn in Series A funding from SAIF Partners, Bharath Innovation Fund, Axilor Ventures, BlueHill Capital Pvt Ltd, and a few angels from the Keiretsu Forum.

DeTect plans to use the fresh funds to expand internationally and supplement the core R&D focus of the company.

Talking to Inc42, cofounder Daniel Raj David said the company would also use the fresh capital to build manufacturing capability for mass producing its patented technology products — GUMPS and NOCTUA, a sensor and a drone respectively, used widely in the oil and gas industry.

David said that DeTect has a team of 80 and expects to increase it to 140-150 employees. The company has nearly 40 Indian clients and three global clients — from the US, the UK, Portugal, and Singapore.

“We are happy to have received support from SAIF Partners and additional support from our existing investors Bharath Innovation Fund, Axilor Ventures, BlueHill Capital, and angels from the Keiretsu Forum as it solidifies our resolve in revolutionising the industrial landscape,” David said.

He also emphasised that the growing partnership with SAIF would not only help the company with an expanded capital base but will also propel the company’s ambitions to cater to oil companies and refineries worldwide and take indigenous core technology built in India to the rest of the world.

Mridul Arora, Managing Director, SAIF Partners, said, “We are very excited to partner with the DeTect team as they bring a rare combination of deep domain expertise, global market opportunity and high entrepreneurial energy. Global oil and gas majors have flocked to DeTect to take advantage of DeTect’s asset monitoring and inspection solutions and we’re confident that the team will continue to expand its global footprint.”

Bharat Innovation Fund is an early stage deep tech fund affiliated with CIIE (The Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship). The fund supports globally competitive startups with cutting-edge technology across sectors like healthcare, enterprise tech, Fintech and sustainability.

Ashwin Raguraman, Founding Partner, Bharath Innovation fund said, “Having been closely involved with Detect for over a year, it is incredible to observe the pace at which Detects solution has grown, from a raw promising technology to a couple of full-fledged world-class products that are being consumed by the biggest corporations in the world. Detect is tackling a problem that others haven’t even come close to solving and it is fascinating to have been and continue to be a part of their evolutionary story.”

What Does DeTect Do?

DeTect was conceptualised in IIT Madras in 2013 by Tarun Mishra, Daniel Raj David, Harikrishnan AS, Karthik R, and professor Krishnan Balasubramanian. The co-founders came together in February 2016 to incorporate DeTect with a vision to become a global leader in asset integrity and monitoring solutions, in the space of risk analysis and remaining life estimation to target continuous and safe industry operations.
DeTect offers two products:

• GUMPS: A sensor to monitor pipeline thickness change in real time with the help of machine learning algorithms which helps increase the efficiency of the inspection process and operates at temperatures of up to 300 degree Celsius.
• NOCTUA: An industrial drone, tailor-made for process industry inspections, conducts automated visual and thermal inspection of industrial infrastructures and significantly reduces maintenance and inspection efforts including scaffoldings, etc.

David said these products are aimed at increasing the productivity of industries at large by increasing efficiency and reducing opportunities for human error.

Talking further about expansion plans, Daniel said that the company has been dealing with global partners from India, but Saudi Arabia and the UAE are much larger markets and can’t be handled remotely.  With companies like Reliance on its list of customers, the company has higher aims for global markets.

IoT: A Startup Ecosystem Enabler

The Internet of Things (IoT) has become one of the widest ecosystems today and is being used in industries such as energy management, healthcare, logistics, fintech, manufacturing, and agritech.

According to a report by the International Data Corporation, the global IoT market is set to hit $1.7 Tn by 2020.

In India, the IoT market is poised to touch $15 Bn by 2020, according to NASSCOM. The trade association also predicts that by 2020, India will account for nearly 5% of the global IoT market.

According to estimates, of the existing 971 IoT startups in India, 70% were set up after 2010. Bengaluru remains the hub as it is home to 51% of these startups, down by 4% from 55% in 2016. IoT startups are evenly distributed across segments such as healthcare, transport, agritech, services, and logistics.

IoT startups have been broadly divided into two categories: Industrial IoT and Consumer IoT. About 47% of the Indian IoT startups cater to consumers and building solutions such as wearables, connected vehicles, and connected appliances while 40% cater to enterprises.

Also, according to Zinnov, 120 IoT startups in India have received over $169 Mn funding since 2006 (till May 2017). Large investors that have created IoT-focused investment funds are Tiger Global Management, Blume Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures.

Some of the startups leveraging new-age technologies to enable ease in survey solutions include the Chennai-based submersible robotic inspection startup Planys Technologies; Pune-based Bharti Robotics, and more.

Over the last few years, the Indian government has been increasingly promoting new-age technologies including robotics, as was evident from the allocation of $480 Mn for new age technologies in the Union Budget 2018. With players like DeTect Technologies leveraging hardware IoT to address the loss of lives at work due to risky working conditions, and more with their products in oil and refinery industries, the company has two more products in the pipeline by 2020.

The post SAIF Partners, Axilor, Others Invest $3.3 Mn In IoT Startup DeTect Technologies appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Mumbai-based digital lending application InCred has reportedly raised $41.9 Mn (INR 300 Cr) in a funding round led by its founder Bhupinder Singh along with some other private equity investors such as Siddharth Parekh’s Paragon Partners.

According to reports, Singh has invested around $5.59 Mn (INR 40 Cr) while about $6.99 Mn (INR 50 Cr) came from Paragon Partners. The rest of the amount was raised from high net-worth individuals (HNIs).

The company will use the fresh funds to incubate new businesses and also to expand its lending business model, which currently caters to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the retail sector.

InCred was founded in 2016 by Bhupinder Singh with an aim to create a modern financial services group which uses technology to make the lending process easier.

The startup offers a simplified lending platform, offering various types of loans, including personal, home, education, SME, and two-wheeler loans.

According to reports, InCred raised a total of $75 Mn funding including an investment from individual investor Anshu Jain in 2016.

Existing investor Parekh Paragon Partners had invested around $3.49 Mn (INR 25 Cr) in the startup in March 2017.

At a time when the startup space is experiencing major developments, the Inc42 DataLabs Indian Tech Startup Funding report H1 2018 stated that the 46% of the total funding of $3 Bn in H1 2018 went to fintech and ecommerce alone.

InCred faces major competition from Lendingkart, OptaCredit, IndiaLends, Qbera, LoanTap, among many others.

[The development was reported by Livemint.]

The post Fintech Startup InCred Raises $41.9 Mn From Its Founder, PE Investors appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Japanese conglomerate SoftBank has appointed Norwest Venture Partners (NVP)’ Sumer Juneja as its country head for India. The appointment comes after an over three-year search for an executive to lead investments for the Japanese bank, a report said, citing sources.

Juneja comes after nearly decade of experience at Norwest, where he made his first investment in Swiggy in 2015. He continues to serve as an observer on the Swiggy board. He also serves on the board of northeast-based snack maker Kishlay Foods.

Juneja has been actively involved in NVP’s investments in Quikr and the National Stock Exchange and has also served on the boards of Bharti Infratel, IRB Infrastructure Developers, and IL&FS Transportation Networks, among others.

An email query sent to SoftBank didn’t elicit any response till the time of publication. 

Prior to Norwest, Juneja worked with Goldman Sachs in London and Hong Kong as an investment banking analyst, driving several M&A processes such as financial analysis, due diligence, and public and private buy-side and sell-side transactions.

A Head For SoftBank’s $8 Bn Investments

India is one of SoftBank’s most attractive markets and it has already invested $8 Bn in the country. The Japanese conglomerate has been exploring more avenues for investments in ecommerce, logistics, and food technology as it plans to make several new bets in the country.

SoftBank launched Vision Fund in January 2017. Rajeev Misra, the chief executive officer of the Vision Fund had been elevated to the position of executive vice-president of the SoftBank board of directors.

According to media reports, Misra was among at least three senior executives who could succeed Son when he steps down. The SoftBank Group had also promoted Marcelo Claure, chief operating officer, and former Goldman Sachs senior executive Katsunori Sago as executive vice-presidents.

The saga for SoftBank’s controversies began with Nikesh Arora, who was president for SoftBank Global in 2015. Amid losses, failed mergers, change in investment bets and more after an investigation, Arora resigned from his position in 2016.

With Rajeev Misra climbing his way up the Group’s ladder, the Indian startup ecosystem was hoping that his elevation further improves the position of startups, which are drawing billions in investments from the Japanese conglomerate.

However, with the appointment of Sumer Juneja to oversee Indian investments, SoftBank joins the club of companies like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and more which have identified the need of India’s head for their growth and expansion in India.

[The development was reported by ET.]

The post Sumer Juneja To Head SoftBank’s Investments In India appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Gurugram-based ecommerce logistics company Delhivery may soon join the unicorn club with a fresh round of funding from Softbank; talks on the investment are reportedly in the final stage.

A media report cited sources familiar with the development as saying that SoftBank, through its Vision Fund, may invest an estimated $350 Mn as fresh capital in Delhivery. It will also make additional secondary transactions, estimated at $100 Mn, to further bump up its stake in the company.

With the announcement set for next month, SoftBank may emerge as the largest shareholder in Delhivery with a 32% stake. The startup is currently backed by some of the biggest foreign investors in the Indian startup ecosystem, such as the Carlyle Group, China’s Fosun International, and New York’s Tiger Global.

As part of the secondary deal, the company’s founders are expected to cash out and get new stock options at a strike price equal to 15% of the price per share in the latest round.

The startup claims to service about 600 cities and 8,500 pin codes in India. It has 12 fulfilment centres for B2C and B2B services and works with ecommerce companies such as Flipkart and Paytm.

In June, the logistics startup had decided to push back plans for a $350 Mn IPO, which it had been working on for more than 18 months.

SoftBank: The Carrier For Indian Soonicorns

SoftBank has been a veteran player in the Indian startup ecosystem and has seen the market mature and grow manifold while investing in some of India’s most famous unicorns from the time they were in a nascent stage.

During his visit to India in April 2018, SoftBank chief Masayoshi Son had reiterated his commitment to invest further in the Indian landscape. “With $7 Bn already invested, the investment figures are likely to supercede our commitments,” he said.

In 2018, SoftBank realised a gain of $1.3 Bn (¥ 146.7 Bn) from the sale of its shares in Flipkart. SoftBank, once a major shareholder in Flipkart, bought a 23.6% stake in the company for $2.5 Bn in August 2017 and was expected to realise a 60% return on the sale of its stake for $4 Bn.

The conglomerate is also speculated to be raising $4 Bn in debt for its $100 Bn Vision Fund with an aim to help finance its further acquisitions. It had earlier made a $238 Mn investment in PolicyBazaar marking its entry into the unicorn club and a $1 Bn investment in hotel aggregator OYO and ensuring its much-awaited entry into Unicorn club at a speculated valuation of $5Bn.

In a bid to foray into the Indian food delivery space, SoftBank Vision Fund is also exploring investment opportunities in either of the two foodtech unicorns Swiggy and Zomato.

With a majority stake in most of its investments in India, SoftBank as an investor is expected to encash its returns when a company gets acquired (as in case of Flipkart) or when a company goes public.  So, it won’t be an exaggeration to say that SoftBank is slowly routing topmost companies in the Indian startup ecosystem towards an exit, especially with Delhivery, which was already on its way to IPO.

[The development was reported by ET.]

The post SoftBank May Invest $450 Mn In Delhivery To Make It A Unicorn appeared first on Inc42 Media.

As data becomes more affordable than ever, along with mobile phones, India is experiencing a transformation in how it watches videos and listens to music.

Documenting this change in a report entitled ‘Entertainment Goes Online’, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) said that over the top (OTT)  content — video content delivered through the internet — is expected to reach a market size of $5 Bn (INR 35,730 Cr) by 2023.

The country’s shift from watching TV in a social, mostly familial, manner to highly personalised small screen consumption is being driven by access to affordable data, rural mobile phone penetration, rising affluence, and service adoption across demographic segments — including women and older generations, the report noted.

Currently, digital media accounts for about 16% of the media consumption in India. Relative to developed countries, the OTT content market in India is lagging. While there are various business models — subscription-based platforms (SVOD), advertising-based platforms (AVOD) and transaction-based platforms (TVOD) — the market is still at a nascent stage and holds a lot of promise, the report said.

Outlining some of the challenges, the BCG said that while there are more than 30 OTT apps in India, over 80% of the users stick to three apps or less, so breaking through the clutter becomes the biggest challenge.

Dispelling notions about subscriber fees acting as a barrier in content consumption, the report said that consumers are lapping up OTT content and, although India is a price-sensitive market, many consumers are willing to pay for value. Also, with the market being largely advertising-led, the report expects 40-50 Mn paying subscribers in India by 2023.

Rural India’s Role In OTT

It is estimated that by 2020, India will have more internet users than the population of the G7 countries combined; about 48% of these internet users are expected to be from rural areas. According to the report, this generation of consumers from Tier 3 and Tier 4 cities and villages will drive the OTT industry in the country.

Additionally, with the development of regional content by various players, the rural market is poised to become a significantly large opportunity.

The report noted that OTT players with regional content have the potential to tap into international markets too, where there is already a large diaspora that’s used to paying higher average fees for content.

However, stickiness to platforms is another big challenge — on an average, 50% of OTT apps installed are uninstalled in the first 7 days of installation. All major broadcasters have their own OTT app. Along with global players such as Netflix, Amazon, and telecom players, the OTT market is crowded with choices for the customer. Due to this, all platforms are struggling to retain customers.

The BCG report concluded: “The online video opportunity is for real, and it is here and now. For players, who are successful in riding this wave to gain scale in eyeballs and are able to monetise this opportunity, it will result in significant gains, adding directly to their businesses and bottom line. However, the competition for space on consumer’s smartphone is going to be an intense one and only a few shall emerge victoriously.”

The post Entertainment Goes Online: Video Over Internet To Be $5 Bn Market By 2023, Says BCG Report appeared first on Inc42 Media.

The government has started holding fortnightly meetings with social media companies such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Google ahead of the general election with a view to keep a check on the spread of misinformation.

According to reports, the Ministry of Home Affairs called officials from the social media companies to get an update on their appointment of grievance redressal officers for the country.

The development comes after an October meeting held by Union home secretary Rajiv Gauba, in which the companies were asked to appoint grievance officers in India by November 9. The companies were also asked to develop a mechanism to prevent the misuse of their platform.

While Google has requested for an extension of the deadline (to comply with the directive) till November 30, WhatsApp had already appointed Komal Lahiri as its grievance officer in India prior to the meeting. The company is also looking to hire an associate general counsel to take care of the regulatory and litigation matters.

According to reports, WhatsApp CEO Chris Daniels also said that the company is looking to appoint a head for the Indian unit.

WhatsApp’s parent company, Facebook, has also appointed Hotstar CEO Ajit Mohan, as the managing director and vice-president of Facebook India.

Further, US-based microblogging platform Twitter is looking for a country director to head its operations in India.

Responding to an email query, a Twitter spokesperson told Inc42 that discussions with the ministry over the matter are still going on.

Following the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal and a series of killings in India due to the spread of rumours over WhatsApp, the Indian government has been maintaining a strict stance and trying to figure out ways to curb the spread of misinformation on social platforms.

Earlier this month, Gauba pointed out that Twitter was  being “slow” in removing unlawful content that could be a potential threat to peace.

In order to gain the government’s trust, senior executives of these social media companies have undertaken several trips to the country in a bid to understand the government’s requirements and plug the loopholes.

WhatsApp has been especially trying to comply with the directives. Recently, it also committed $1 Mn to research so as to understand how the platform is being misused.

[The development was reported by ET.]

The post Social Media Companies To Have Fortnightly Meetings With Govt appeared first on Inc42 Media.

The European Union (EU) has expressed reservations about the draft Personal Data Protection bill 2018 that is currently being proposed by the Indian government.

The bill, which calls for data localisation, is being described as India’s very own General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — an EU framework of data protection norms that went live in May.

In an online submission to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Bruno Gencarelli, who serves as the head of the International Data Flows and Protection Unit at the European Commission (EC), listed seven detailed reservations about the draft bill. The submission, dated September 29, came a day before MeitY’s deadline for feedback submissions on the bill.

Gencarelli, who has played an important role in the roll out of the GDPR, expressed concern over the provisions in the draft Bill that leave it to the discretion of the central government or the Data Protection Authority (DPA) to decide on key matters rather than dealing with them in the Bill itself, which could create some uncertainties.

The other provision that drew detailed criticism from the EC is one that mandates every data fiduciary (a person, state, company, or any entity that decides why data should be processed and how it should be processed) ensure storage of at least one copy of a user’s personal data on a server or data centre located in India.

These data localisation requirements appear both unnecessary and potentially harmful as they would create unnecessary costs, difficulties, and uncertainties that could hamper business and investments. — Bruno Gencarelli, EC

He was referring to the costs for companies — in particular, foreign ones – for setting up additional processing/storage facilities in India.

“If implemented, this kind of provision would also likely hinder data transfers… contrary to what is sometimes suggested, India’s striving tech industry does not need this type of forced-localisation measures,” wrote Gencarelli.

Gencarelli also wrote if the draft bill in its current form were to be finalised, it would not only have far-reaching negative consequences for businesses but on politics as well.

Such measures might deter foreign investments in India and would also likely hinder data transfers and complicate the facilitation of commercial exchanges in the context of EU-India bilateral negotiations on a possible free trade agreement, Gencarelli added.

He offered an alternative solution to this provision and acknowledged that the EU too is preparing a legislation to enable law enforcement authorities to obtain (legitimate) access to electronic evidence, irrespective of whether it is stored in the EU or not.

The ideal solution might actually be a multilateral arrangement allowing for mutual access to data — Bruno Gencarelli, EC

Data Protection The Need Of The Hour

Governments across the world are drafting and implementing laws around the flow of data. Countries such as Japan, Korea, and New Zealand have already passed data protection laws based on the principle of data localisation. Meanwhile, in Latin America, Brazil passed its own law in August this year while Chile recently announced the setting up of an independent data protection authority; Argentina is currently reforming its privacy legislation.

After the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal, regulators around the world are looking for ways to be more proactive than reactive to the power of data. With very little precedent in terms of policy and laws, this has led to increased tensions between governments and tech companies.

In July end, a high-level panel headed by Justice B N Srikrishna submitted its recommendations and the draft Personal Data Protection Bill 2018 to IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. Since then, the Indian government has faced a backlash from members of the business community and associations such as the Internet and Mobile Association of India, NASSCOM, and ecommerce companies like Amazon and Walmart over the provisions of the draft Bill.

The post Indian Draft Data Protection Bill: Data Localisation Mandate Unnecessary & Harmful, Says EU appeared first on Inc42 Media.

The Indian government is reportedly considering  higher penalties on companies which fail to immediately report data breach incidents affecting Indian users.

According to reports ,the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), is working on introducing new rules under the IT Act, after a spate of data breach incidents reported by Google and Facebook which had affected Indian users.

Earlier this month, Google had to shut down its social network, Google+,  after the personal data of about 500K users was leaked.

Following the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal, which affected about 5.62 Lakh Indian users in April, the social media company reported another security breach, affecting as many as 50 Mn accounts worldwide in September.

At present, under the Information Technology Act, 2008, companies are liable for financial penalties if they fail to report a leak of user data to MeitY or other government cyber agencies.

However, citing unnamed sources, an ET report stated that the current penalties are too low.

The report added that most of the companies do not actively follow the law and also delay their response when letters are sent to them seeking information.

With a focus on on data protection norms and user privacy, government agencies have taken a firm stance with tech companies over data leaks. The Centre is also currently drafting a Data Protection Bill, which if passed in its current form, will require internet companies to store user data in data centres located in India.  

[The development was reported by ET]

The post Government Mulls Higher Penalties For Companies Not Reporting Data Breaches appeared first on Inc42 Media.

“To increase your venture capital or VC funding by 10%, tell the investors you run a platform, not a regular business. If you want to increase your VC funding by 20%, tell the investors that you are operating in the fintech space. But, if you really want the investors to empty their pockets, tell them that you are using blockchain.” – PM Narendra Modi

The prime minister’s lighthearted dig at the Singapore Fintech Festival last week was aimed at startup circles and its fondness for buzz words. However, the comment underlined the rising popularity of blockchain as one of the hottest new technologies that every one wants to be part of but few really understand.

Blockchain adoption in India is still at a nascent stage. But there is a lot of interest and work for proof of concept (PoC) in motion, both in government departments as well as private sectors. According to a recent study by UK consulting firm Dappros, India had 19,627 blockchain developers, as of October 2018, second only to US.

With the government’s continued support towards experimentation with blockchain technology across sectors, the technology is now not only being used by banks, regulators and consumers but also for social missions like health, education and microfinance, Modi said.

With that lets take a look at interesting developments in the Blockchain Ecosystem this week.  [November 14 – 20]

Important Developments In The Indian Blockchain Ecosystem

Blockchain Experts From Around The World To Meetup In Thiruvananthapuram

Come December 6, Kerala Blockchain Academy (KBA) is organising a three-day summit titled ‘BlockHash Live 2018’, bringing leading experts and thought leaders from around the world to share and discuss blockchain opportunities.

Some of the speakers attending the summit are Bob Tapscott from Canada-based Blockchain Research Institute, Bitnation founder Sussane Tarkowski from Switzerland, Reliance Jio Infocomm vice-president Dilip Krishnaswamy, and others. The event is aimed at exploring the disruptive potential of the blockchain technology. For registration, visit: blockhash.live.

SWIFT India, MonetaGoIn Partner For A Project To Prevent Banking Frauds

Indian banks along with global payments platform SWIFT and a US fintech company MonetaGoIn have started a pilot project to launch a blockchain platform to prevent fraudulent transactions and ensure transparency and security of real-time transactions in the banking sector.

If the collaborative project is integrated into the core banking system, it can prevent frauds such as the one allegedly perpetrated by Nirav Modi, experts say.

“SWIFT India is committed to provide significant value to the Indian financial community through digitisation of trade. MonetaGo’s expertise in providing fraud mitigation solutions to avoid double-financing and check the authenticity of e-way Bill gave us the confidence to partner with them,” Business Standard cited SWIFT India CEO Kiran Shetty as saying.

BNP Paribas India, HSBC Singapore Complete LC Transaction Using Blockchain

Retail banking company BNP Paribas India and HSBC Singapore have successfully completed a letter of credit (LC) transaction using blockchain. According to CFO Innovation, Rio Tinto was selling a bulk shipment of iron ore originating from Australia to China to Cargill. The transaction involved BNP Paribas issuing an LC over blockchain on behalf of Cargill to HSBC Singapore, which was representing Rio Tinto.

“At Cargill, we’re transforming our supply chains with digital technologies like blockchain in trade finance, commodity trade operations and traceable food programs to better serve our customers across the globe,” the report cited Cargill’s metal business managing director Lee Kirk as saying.

Blockchain Developments From Around The World

IBM, Columbia University To Launch Two Accelerator Programs For Blockchain Startups

Global tech giant IBM has partnered with Columbia University to launch two accelerator programs for startups and entrepreneurs, aimed at helping them build and scale blockchain innovations in their growth cycle. It is now accepting applications the two programmes.

The eight-week programme for both later-stage and early-stage startups will support 10 blockchain startups each to explore best practices for building a blockchain network with technical, academic and business mentors from IBM and Columbia.

IBM said in a statement:

Both programs will give companies access to technology and services valued at approximately $400K per company.

Microsoft BaaS Blockchain Implementation Chart: Report

Market foresight advisory firm ABI Research, ranked Microsoft’s blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform, in the top spot for its implementation offering wide range of platform services. IBM secured second position, coming ahead of other vendors such as Oracle, Amazon, Alibaba, Baidu, Cisco, SAP, HPE, Huawei, and Tencent.

ABI Research in a statement said:

“Each vendor was analyzed on innovation metrics such as market penetration, proof of concepts and pilots, and ecosystem support, and implementation metrics such as platform diversity, primary features, developer resources, and integration with their own solutions.”

[Stay tuned for the next edition of Blockchain This Week]

The post Blockchain This Week: Modi’s Blockchain Joke, Preventing Fraud, Buying Iron Ore, And More appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Acceding to government demands, messaging platform WhatsApp appointed B2B payments platform Ezetap’s chief executive, Abhijit Bose, as head of its Indian operations.

In August, the central government had said that WhatsApp can’t launch WhatsApp Pay till it sets up an office and recruits a team in India. At the time, the Supreme Court issued a notice to WhatsApp and the ministries of IT and finance asking for a detailed reply within four weeks on why a grievance officer has not been appointed in India.

The company began with the appointment of Komal Lahiri as the grievance officer for WhatsApp in India.

In a statement by Ezetap, Abhijit Bose, cofounder and outgoing CEO said, “I’m very proud of what we have built at Ezetap. It has been an amazing professional and personal journey. I am leaving excited that Ezetap has unique capabilities and people that will fuel its continued growth, and that it will reach higher peaks in the coming years.”

Byas Nambisan has been appointed as interim CEO for Ezetap, replacing Bose.

WhatsApp CEO Chris Daniels, who was on a visit to India in August, reportedly held talks with Telangana IT minister K T Rama Rao (KTR) in Hyderabad to set up WhatsApp’s office in the city.

WhatsApp has over 200 Mn users in India but has been facing issues in the country primarily due to the delayed launch of its payments solution WhatsApp Pay and a government’s firm stance on spread of fake news on its platform.

The post WhatsApp India Hires Ezetap’s Abhijit Bose As India Head appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Singapore-headquartered digital payments startup InstaReM, has secured $45 Mn in Series C funding, announcing the first close at $20 Mn.

The latest round of funding was led by new investors, MDI Ventures (the VC arm of Indonesia’s Telkom) and Beacon Venture Capital (the VC arm of Thailand’s KASIKORNBANK).

Existing investors Vertex Ventures, GSR Ventures Rocket Internet, and SBI-FMO Fund also participated in the round.

InstaReM will use the funding to accelerate growth in existing markets and enter new markets in Japan and Indonesia, where the company is expected to receive licenses by the end of this year.

Also, the company plans to launch a new consumer and enterprise product in 2019.

Founded in 2014 by Prajit Nanu and Michael Bermingham, InstaReM offers international money transfers to individuals and businesses and currently operates in more than 55 countries. The firm has regulatory licenses and approvals in Singapore, Australia, India, Europe, United States, Hong Kong, Canada and Malaysia.

With the fresh funding, the company’s total capital till date has reached $63 Mn. The Series C round is expected to close by January 2019, in the run-up to the company’s planned initial public offering (IPO) in 2021.

Prajit Nanu, Mumbai-bred co-founder and CEO of InstaReM said, “In less than 4 years, we have become the payment backbone for emerging markets for banks and other global financial. We are still a young firm, but a hungry one, this new round of funding enables us to accelerate growth by launching new products.”

The company, which received clearance from the Reserve Bank of India in September, 2017,  recently launched its Indian cross-border outward remittance services in partnership with the DCB bank.

InstaReM serves larger institutional and corporate clients with a service called ‘MassPay’ – an international business payments platform with bulk and customised payments facility, multi-currency payments, and other time and cost-efficient payment features.

In 2018, InstaReM partnered with Ripple, an enterprise blockchain network, allowing them to establish new corridors from Brazil to Spain, Italy, Germany, France and Portugal.

Nicko Widjaja, CEO of MDI Ventures said, “We see that InstaReM has strong capability to enable cross-border payment and remittance between Indonesia and its international partners. As part of our thesis at MDI Ventures, we are keen to support InstaReM with their expansion in Indonesia and ASEAN through a strategic partnership with various Telkom business units around the region.”

The post InstaReM Secures $45 Mn In Series C Funding appeared first on Inc42 Media.

The US-based global retail giant Walmart has reportedly increased its share in recently acquired Indian ecommerce subsidiary Flipkart to 81.3%. Earlier in May this year, Walmart acquired 77% stake in Flipkart for $16 Bn, making it one of the biggest exits in the Indian ecommerce segment so far.

According to data revealed by Paper.vc, the other stakeholders in Flipkart now are: Tencent (5.37%), Tiger Global (4.77%), Binny Bansal (4.2%), Microsoft (1.53%), Accel (1.38%), Iconiq Capital (0.98%), Temasek (0.29%) and UBS (0.19%).

If compared with the equity stake these investors had in Flipkart earlier, we will find that all these investors have sold their stakes to Walmart either partly or in full.

As Inc42 reported earlier, at the time of the 77% stake sale,  stakeholders who sold their stake to Walmart were Tiger Global (16.99%), SoftBank (22.3%), Naspers (13.76%), Ebay (6.55%), Accel Partners (2.88%), Sachin Bansal (5.96%), Binny Bansal (1.63%), and others (6.93%).

Now that Walmart has the majority stake in Flipkart, it aims to bring in new investors to the board. Also, Flipkart is reportedly said to be in talks to raise more capital by selling its equity stake to investors such as Google, Microsoft and Intel.

However, analysts believe that since Walmart has now acquired over 80% stake in the company, not many existing investors will be inclined to let go of their stake in the near term.

For now, both Flipkart cofounders — Binny Bansal and Sachin Bansal (not related)– have exited the company.  While Sachin exited in May 2018 after the acquisition, Binny Bansal had to step down earlier this month (November) over allegations of “serious personal misconduct”.

However, since Binny still holds a 4.2% equity stake in Flipkart, he is being termed as the sole founder of the company in the filings with the registrar. He can hold the position of a director on the company’s board as long as he holds at least 3,532,977 ordinary shares in the company.

If the shareholding falls below the minimum threshold limit, then Walmart will have the right to replace him with an independent director.

Currently, the Indian ecommerce poster boy Flipkart is led by Kalyan Krishnamurthy, who was once appointed by Tiger Global management in January 2017 to save the company from sinking. Now he is Flipkart CEO, while Walmart has placed on board four of its own executives on key positions.

According to several media reports, it is further bringing more senior executives from Walmart Canada. This includes Emily McNeal who is the current Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) Head at the Walmart and will be joining Flipkart as senior vice president and group chief financial officer. Other senior executives like Walmart’s chief ethics & compliance officer Daniel De La Garza will join as vice president and chief ethics & compliance officer at Flipkart.

Further, Grant Coad who has been handling regulatory compliance at the Walmart Canada will join as general counsel and Dawn Ptak from Walmart China as vice president and group controller on the Flipkart team.

The Flipkart-Walmart acquisition deal will be remembered in the history of Indian startup ecosystem as one of the epic deals wherein foreign investors ended the decade-long journey of two Indian cofounders who laid the foundation of ecommerce in the country.

But, this deal has certainly left the existing first generation entrepreneurs to think and rethink if “a multi-billion dollar exit like this is worth after spending a decade in creating a market and setting up your venture from scratch?”

The post With 81.3% Equity Stake In Flipkart, Walmart May Bring New Investors On Board appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Agritech startup CropIn Technology Solutions recently raised $8 Mn (INR 58 Cr) in a Series B funding round led by Chiratae Ventures and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Bengaluru-based startup, which is currently active in 29 countries, has taken a less-explored path of bringing a data-driven approach to Indian agriculture through its platform.

Founder Krishna Kumar says the absence of modern technology in Indian agriculture is what motivated him to start CropIn. “This was a sector that actually needed technology — farmers are committing suicides, yields are low, nobody wants their children to get into farming. I wanted to do something about this as nobody else wanted to and there are so many challenges,” he said in an interview with Inc42.

CropIn’s flagship product, SmartFarm, works to connect all the players of the agricultural ecosystem — food companies, government agencies, and farmers.

“Agro companies such as Mccain and ITC have farm managers and agronomists, whose job is to ensure that the right practices are followed by farmers and ensure the best possible quality and yield. For this, they have to be connected with farmers so as to give updates on sowing, weather patterns, pests and diseases, and also to give advice on irrigation and seeds. This is where SmartFarm comes in,” Kumar said.

What Is Data-Driven Farming?

CropIn’s SmartFarm enables big companies to map out the supply chain as well as provide real-time updates to farmers who have smartphones and internet connectivity. In case the farmer has neither, SmartFarm sends these updates through SMS.

From crop planting to harvesting, SmartFarm monitors the field and weather and, based on that, sends an action plan to the farmer. For example, if there is a chance of frost in a particular geographical region, the app alerts all the potato farmers on CropIn’s platform and sends out an advisory on how to deal with it.

The platform also constantly monitors weather patterns and other parameters to predict crop health and potential yield. Not only does this bring clarity to the farmers and agro companies but can also be used by fintech companies to insure crops.

The company is currently working with the central government under the Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojna to insure crops and is active in a few districts in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh.

Cropin is also working with the Karnataka government to digitise farmer producer organisations and with the Bihar and Madhya Pradesh governments on the climate resiliency programme to help farmers fight climate change.

According to Kumar, however, this is just the beginning of data-driven farming in India.

Talking about ‘uberisation’ of Indian agriculture, Kumar said that once the agri-economy is digitalised, sharing of resources and smart regulation of the supply chain will be possible. Every farm will generate data that will decide its credibility and help insurance companies underwrite it. “So there will be a lot of possibilities for agritech opening up in the future,” said Kumar.

The post Seeded With New Funds, CropIn Aims To Modernise Indian Agriculture With Its ‘SmartFarm’ appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Japanese conglomerate SoftBank’s subsidiary SoftBank Investment Advisers, which invests through the SoftBank Vision Fund has announced its plans to open an office in Mumbai in a bid to strengthen its position in the Indian market.

According to the company, the new office will be led by Sumer Juneja who has been appointed as the country head for India recently.

Through the SoftBank Vision Fund, Japanese conglomerate is investing more than $93 Bn in the businesses and technologies that it believe will enable the next stage of the information revolution.

The SoftBank Vision fund which was launched 18 months back now hold a majority stake in a few of India’s topmost companies. This includes hospitality group OYO, digital payments provider Paytm, and insurance comparison site PolicyBazaar as well as Ola, Hike and Grofers. SoftBank also recently took a major exit from Flipkart after selling its 26.3% stake in the company to global retailer Walmart.

Several of the Vision Fund’s wider portfolio, such as Katerra and Nvidia already have a presence in India, and the new office will further support the portfolio to expand their operations into the region.

Munish Varma, Investment Partner, SoftBank Investment Advisors, said, “I’ve seen first-hand how Indian-born companies such as OYO can provide transformative solutions on a global scale. The appointment of Sumer to this new role, a well-established financial professional with experience investing in India, is good news for our existing portfolio companies, and also marks a step change in the Vision Fund’s participation in the Indian technology sector as a whole.”

Rajeev Misra, CEO of  SoftBank Investment Advisors believe that India represents an enormous addressable market comprising a young, tech-enabled population.

With 460 Mn internet users, India is the second largest online market globally and is now the fastest-growing ecommerce market in the world – which means it may hold huge potential for the Vision Fund’s wider ecosystem. Further, with increased penetration of smartphones, the launch of 4G networks and increasing consumer wealth, India is said to be the world’s fastest growing ecommerce market; with revenue expected to increase from $39 Bn in 2017 to $120 Bn in 2020.

Many Indian technology businesses are now expanding their horizons beyond India. For instance, with Vision Fund backing, OYO has launched in the UK, Indonesia and the Middle East in the past three months alone. “I am excited by many of the opportunities we see there and look forward to announcing further investments in the coming months,” Misra added.

According to reports, the Vision fund is now in talks with ecommerce logistics company Delhivery to invest $450 Mn via fresh capital and secondary transactions. Foodtech companies Swiggy and Zomato are also on the Japanese conglomerate’s list. SoftBank Vision Fund is also planning to raise $4 Bn to help finance more acquisitions.

The post SoftBank To Deepen India Investments, Opens New Office In Mumbai appeared first on Inc42 Media.

Sharad Sanghi, CEO of Netmagic Solutions, a cloud computing services provider,  is a great conversationalist. Apart from sharing interesting insights about the nascent cloud industry in India, Sanghi quips with jokes at regular intervals (sorry but we can’t share the jokes with you as all of them were off the record).

So much so that it’s easy to get carried away and forget that one is talking to an entrepreneur who has spun magic by building India’s leading homegrown cloud solutions provider — Netmagic. His startup, launched in 1998, was acquired in 2012 by Japan’s NTT Communications Corporation, a subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp, one of the largest telecom companies in the world.

The core of Netmagic’s offering comprises IT infrastructure hosting services; the company is increasingly expanding its cloud business, which Sanghi says has been doubling in terms of revenue over the past couple of years.

“All our services serve the end goal of providing machine-critical support to customers that host with us. So, if you look at it, we manage operating system databases, web servers, and provide security and disaster recovery services to our clients,” says Sanghi.

The company recently inaugurated its two hyper-scale data centres worth $144 Mn (INR 990 Cr) in Mumbai and Bengaluru with a total capacity of 13,600 sq m, which will scale up its data centre capacity by a whopping 70%.

Such heavy investments are usually a barometer of the future demand that the company expects and how well its business has been doing over the years.

But the demand foreseen tomorrow is showing today.

India’s public cloud services market is expected to reach $4.1 Bn by 2020 and the country is second only to China as the largest and fastest-growing cloud services market in the Asia-Pacific region.

“Growth is unprecedented, the new data centre in Mumbai has gotten completely booked within less than three months since launch. I am not saying it’s all occupied, but clients who take up large spaces (on the cloud) also take space for expansion and they give you a reservation fee for the potential expansion. We are already planning our next facility in Mumbai. The new Bengaluru data centre is also almost sold out,” says Sanghi.

Here are excerpts from Sharad Sanghi’s interview with Inc42.

Inc42: What is the core need that Netmagic solves?

Sharad Sanghi: We provide IT infrastructure hosting services, so we host customers, their machine-critical applications, and their websites in our data centres. We also run our own cloud hosting service in India and have now expanded that to include a multi-cloud hybrid platform where a client can choose the cloud he/she wants to use.

Inc42: What’s the secretsauce to the success of Netmagic?

Sharad Sanghi: We are pioneers in the area we operate in and there is a lot of faith and trust with us. Compared to some of the large telcos in our space, we are still a very nimble company and we now have the backing of NTT, which is a Fortune 500 company.

Some new players have come out but they don’t have the financial backing that we do, so that puts us in a unique spot. We have been constantly innovating. When we saw competition from the likes of Azure and AWS in India, we turned it into an opportunity for us to provide a platform that will enable customers to operate across multiple cloud platforms through a single pane of glass. In India, no one has launched a service like this.

These guys (global hyper-scalers) have a cookie-cutter model that they want to grow across the world and to provide in-depth services locally, they need a local partner. We have now partnered with all three cloud service providers — AWS, Azure, and Google — and will soon be partnering with Alibaba Cloud as well.

Inc42: You have said in the past that Mumbai is the top city in India when it comes to cloud demand. Why so?

Sharad Sanghi: Along with being the financial capital of the country, the reason why Mumbai is seeing a huge demand in cloud services is that it has the best power infrastructure in the country. Data centres are very power-intensive and companies such as Tata Power provide electricity round the clock. From what I understand, if you compare the uptime of power in Mumbai, it is better than even in New York. Last year, we had only 43 minutes of downtime in the entire year, which is not the case in any other city we operate in.

Mumbai also has an international cable landing station and, hence, connectivity with the rest of the world is better.

Inc42: You have invested $144 Mn in two centres — one in Bengaluru and the other in Mumbai — what will drive the demand for them?

Sharad Sanghi: If you look at Mumbai, the biggest demand we are seeing from is from the global hyper-scalers and we are also seeing a lot of demand due to the data localisation policy, wherein companies will have to save a copy of all customer data in India. Also, if your servers are in India, the roundtrip time for your customers to connect is faster.

We see a lot of demand for the cloud, especially because of migration from SAP to HANA — a lot of manufacturing companies are moving to HANA. We see a lot of demand after the Walmart-Flipkart deal, wherein there is a revival in the ecommerce space, more investments coming into that space, and more aggression in terms of marketing and sales. The advent of Reliance Jio has made high-quality broadband available, which has also helped a lot.

Inc42: Could you share some business metrics around your hybrid cloud offering?

Sharad Sanghi: Our overall cloud offering would be about 20% of the total revenue. It’s small, but not insignificant, and is growing at a good rate considering it was launched in 2011. Other business segments also growing fast. The cloud business is growing close to 100% a year and, overall, the company is growing between 30%-37%.

Inc42: Who are your competitors?

Sharad Sanghi: In the public cloud space, our main competitors are global hyper-scalers, but we co-partner with them as well. In data centre colocation, our main competitors are companies such as Tata STT, Sify, NxtraData from Airtel, and in managed services, companies like Wipro.

Inc42: What does your clientele currently look like?

Sharad Sanghi: Global hyper-scalers, IT services companies, manufacturing companies, media companies, we have a lot of ecommerce companies and have over 2,000 customers in all.

Inc42: According to a Gartner report, a majority of the IT spend in India will continue to be on traditional services. Do you think we are moving fast enough?

Sharad Sanghi: I am seeing rapid adoption of the cloud; even some of our banking customers are using the cloud, although not necessarily for core services but for customer-facing applications.

‘Fast enough’ is relative, but the kind of demand we see for cloud services now, especially with all the hyper-scalers here, is a lot more. We are seeing a healthy growth in the cloud. There are concerns about security for clients from the banking community, but with the maturity of the offerings and also with more sophisticated security infrastructure, a lot is improving for them.

There are two types of companies in our world — one is a cloud-native company and then you have your traditional enterprises like banking, manufacturing, etc. The traditional companies are the ones that usually go for the hybrid cloud offering.

Inc42: How is the Indian cloud market different from that of China?

Sharad Sanghi: Their (China’s) market is double the size of India, they are still growing at 70%. We are at about 50% but I think that will change very soon and we will close the gap. The demand is mainly because of gaming, video, and commerce, and Alibaba Cloud has played a big role there, also local language adoption is very high.

In India, the government is proactively supporting (growth of cloud services); also, with smart cities coming up, the opportunities will increase.

Inc42: What are your views on data localisation?

Sharad Sanghi: I don’t believe that the government should force anything on anyone. Having said that, there are obviously concerns about national security. If sensitive data is stored overseas and there is a data breach then there is little jurisdiction for the government to bring it under control.

In India, the government wants sensitive data located here and it’s justified to some extent, but we are fine if that policy wasn’t there. The intent is to not promote local data centres, the intent is to have some control of sensitive data. It is not something we have lobbied for.

Inc42: Just curious — have you looked at cryptocurrency and are you interested in mining it…you certainly have the infrastructure capabilities?

Sharad Sanghi: I would not dabble in cryptocurrency today, I like blockchain and am following news around the technology. We looked at Bitcoin mining about a year-and-a-half ago and the thinking at that time was that we have so much cloud infrastructure that could be utilised, but I think it’s not attractive and the margins today have anyway come down.

I would be very surprised if cryptocurrencies have a future in India.

(This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.)

The post Sharad Sanghi of Netmagic On Why The Mumbai Market Is On ‘Cloud’ 9 appeared first on Inc42 Media.