by admin | May 25, 2021 | Entrepreneurship, Markets, Online Marketing, Social Media, Startup Financing, Technology, Women Entrepreneur, Your Business Plan
New Delhi : In a bid to support the next generation of innovative female entrepreneurs in India, Google on Wednesday joined hands with co-working community hub 91springboard.
Delhi-based 91springboard connects over 8,000 entrepreneurs across the country.
“With Google for Entrepreneurs building its presence in India, we now have an end-to-end mentoring and support programme helping entrepreneurs across all stages of their startups,” said Rajan Anandan, Vice President, southeast Asia and India, Google.
As part of the partnership, a Google Lounge was opened at 91springboard’s flagship hub in the Capital.
The Lounge is sponsored by “Google for Entrepreneurs” initiative which provides financial support and the best of Google’s resources to co-working spaces and community programmes across 135 countries.
There will be one training programme a month, led by 91springboard in tier 2 cities.
The trainings will focus on honing leadership skills, running design sprints, fostering tech-focused discussions, and will include one-on-one mentorship for female entrepreneurs.
91springboard will join Google for Entrepreneurs’ partner network, which has a global footprint of 50 partners and includes six campuses (Google owned and operated space for entrepreneurs).
“Together, we are committed to enabling women’s entrepreneurship and strengthening entrepreneurship throughout India, not just the big cities,” said Pranay Gupta, co-founder of 91springboard.
“The training programmes will focus on educating and upskilling female entrepreneurs over a period of two years, with 24 engagements planned across the country,” he added.
“We’re thrilled for Google for Entrepreneurs to partner with 91springboard to empower the next generation of female founders in India,” said Michael Kim, APAC Partnerships Manager for Google for Entrepreneurs.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Social Media, Technology, World
Washington : Six US senators have written to Google CEO Sundar Pichai asking about the tech giant’s reported plan to create a censored Chinese version of its search engine.
“What has changed since 2010 to make Google comfortable cooperating with the rigorous censorship regime in China?” asked the senators, including Florida Republican Marco Rubio, Fortune reported on Sunday.
According to the letter, Google’s project is “deeply troubling and risks making Google complicit in human rights abuses” in China.
Google in 2010 “refused to comply with Chinese government censorship requirements on ethical grounds, and essentially abandoned the market,” said the report.
Media reports surfaced last week that Google is planning a censored search engine for China.
According to The Information, the company is also developing a news-aggregation app for use in China that will comply with the country’s censorship laws.
Google was yet to officially confirm or deny the search engine project.
The senators asked whether the agreement was “connected in any way with (Google’s) efforts to enter the Chinese market via the custom search app”.
The letter also asked “which ‘blacklist’ of censored searches and websites” Google would use in a Chinese search product.
The state-owned China Securities Daily, however, last week refuted the report that Google is building a search engine for China.
China is home to 772 million Internet users — the biggest online community in the world.
Google, which has hundreds of people working in China, has launched its Artificial Intelligence (AI) lab in the country.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Business, Investing, Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, SMEs, Technology
San Francisco : Google has partnered Chinese technology company Lenovo to manufacture a new category of devices called “Smart Displays” which are interactive screens for smart home devices with Google Assistant.
“With the Google Assistant built in, the Lenovo Smart Display brings you the best of Google services, including Maps, YouTube, Calendar, Duo and Photos, in a visual and helpful way,” Chris Turkstra, Product Management Director, Google Assistant wrote in a blog post on Thursday.
With the interactive touch-and-voice combination, “Smart Display” would enable users to multitask and control their smart home devices with simple voice commands and touch gestures.
With “Smart Display,” Google is also offering three free months of YouTube Premium service for new subscribers.
“Your Assistant can even help you prepare a great meal on ‘Smart Displays’ with step-by-step hands-free guidance on screen. Of course, you can set timers and play music while you cook,” Turkstra added.
The “Lenovo Smart Display” is first being made available in the US in two display sizes– the 8-inch HD version for $199.99 and the 10-inch Full-HD version for $249.99.
“We’ll expand the Smart Display options with other partners, including JBL and LG. While there are over 1 million actions already available for the Assistant, we’re excited to see what developers will design for ‘Smart Displays’ too,” said Turkstra.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Social Media, Technology
New Delhi : To help billions of users manage their data and help them transfer that into and out of online services without privacy issues, four tech giants — Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter — on Friday announced to join the open source initiative called Data Transfer Project (DTP).
In the early stages at the moment, the Data Transfer Project will help users of one service to use their data to sign up for another service with encryption.
“Using your data from one service when you sign up for another still isn’t as easy as it should be. Today we’re excited to announce that we’re participating in the Data Transfer Project,” said Steve Satterfield, Privacy and Public Policy Director at Facebook in a statement.
The initiative comes at a time when data-sharing is making headlines — be it the massive Cambridge Analytica data scandal or third-party apps accessing users’ data at various platforms — amid countries announcing new data-protection laws like the European General Data Regulation Protection (GDPR).
Moving data between any two services can be complicated because every service is built differently and uses different types of data that may require unique privacy controls and settings.
“For example, you might use an app where you share photos publicly, a social networking app where you share updates with friends, and a fitness app for tracking your workouts,” said Satterfield.
“These are the kinds of issues the Data Transfer Project will tackle. The Project is in its early stages, and we hope more organisations and experts will get involved,” he added.
The Data Transfer Project uses services’ existing APIs and authorisation mechanisms to access data. It then uses service specific adapters to transfer that data into a common format, and then back into the new service’s API.
According to Google, the project will let users “transfer data directly from one service to another, without needing to download and re-upload it”.
The tech giants also released a white paper on this project.
“The future of portability will need to be more inclusive, flexible, and open. Our hope for this project is that it will enable a connection between any two public-facing product interfaces for importing and exporting data directly,” read the white paper.
According to Damien Kieran, Data Protection Officer at Twitter, right now, much of the online products and services we use do not interact with each other in a coherent and intuitive fashion.
“Information that is housed on one platform cannot be easily and securely transferred to other services. This is not a positive collective experience for the people who use our services and we are keen to work through some of the challenges as an industry,” Twitter said.
The Data Transfer Project was formed in 2017 to create an open-source, service-to-service data portability platform so that all individuals across the web could easily move their data between online service providers whenever they want.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Entrepreneurship, Markets, Social Media, Startup Basics, Technology
New Delhi : In a bid to nurture Indian startups working in the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), Google on Tuesday announced to open the India chapter of its global “Launchpad Accelerator” mentorship programme.
The three-month “Launchpad Accelerator” India programme has been designed to grow the AI/ML ecosystem by helping desi startups build scalable solutions for the country’s unique problems.
The programme, based out of Bengaluru, will provide a cohort of 8-10 Indian startups mentorship and support from the best of Google in AI/ML, Cloud, UX, Android, web, product strategy and marketing, along with up to $100K of Google Cloud credits, the company said in a statement.
“India has the appetite to build entrepreneurs of the future and we are proud to announce a focused programme for the next wave of Indian entrepreneurs, who are using new technologies to solve the country’s needs,” said Roy Glasberg, Global Launchpad Founder.
Over the years, Google has worked with some incredible startups across India who are using advanced technologies such as AI/ML to tackle everything from agri-tech to language web, healthcare and transportation.
“With the dedicated India-only Launchpad Accelerator programme, we will be able to build a bridge between startups and the industry ecosystem and support them to drive innovation in the India market,” Glasberg added.
Applications for the first class is open till July 31 and the first class will start in September 2018.
In an effort to mentor emerging start-ups, Google India hosted a four-day boot camp for the first 10 Indian startups as part of its ‘Solve for India’ programme.
The India-focused accelerator programme is building on Google’s “Solve for India” roadshow from last year.
Ten Indian startups were shortlisted from across India which underwent four days in one-on-one consults with experts from Google and mentors from the industry to solve critical product and growth challenges.
“We shortlisted 10 startups from 160 home-grown start-ups by travelling across 15 cities in India, and are now ready to scale this pilot as a dedicated programme for India,” Karthik Padmanabhan, Developer Relations Lead, Google India, said at that time.
The participants were the founders of startups including Nebulaa, Slang Labs, PregBuddy, LegalDesk, PaySack, Vokal, FarMart, Meesho, Pratilipi and M-Indicator.
“Launchpad” regional accelerators are tailored specifically to their local markets, helping startups build great products, Google said.
—IANS
