by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, Entrepreneurship, News, Politics, Women Entrepreneur
New Delhi : Industry lobbies like the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) and the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) on Thursday announced tie-ups with NITI Aayog for the Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP) initiative.
The NITI Aayog’s WEC initiative aims to promote and support established as well as aspiring women entrepreneurs in India and create a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem where women do not face any gender-based barriers.
“Through a joint programme, Ficci and NITI Aayog shall provide hand-holding, mentorship, capacity building, scaling up and networking support to 100 technology led women enterprises over a period of five years,” Ficci said in a statement.
It added that Ficci and NITI Aayog will also undertake policy advocacy towards formulation of policies and schemes that foster women entrepreneurship by identifying the existing gaps.
“Ficci is fully committed to work with NITI Aayog towards strengthening the entrepreneurship ecosystem for women in particular,” said Nirankar Saxena, Deputy Secretary General, Ficci.
“The women entrepreneurship ecosystem across the world has immense potential but is faced with financial and social barriers. Our aim is to provide a level playing field to women entrepreneurs,” Saxena added.
In another move, IT body Nasscom said it has entered into a partnership with NITI Aayog to provide a continuous stimuli for innovation and growth among the women entrepreneurs in the country.
“Nasscom through its start-up warehouses in 10 states would make available space for 15 women entrepreneurs led start-up across locations on a nominal charges basis, providing top class infrastructure, high-end technology and field expertise, and curated programmes to augment the growth of these women entrepreneurs,” Nasscom said in a separate statement.
Debjani Ghosh, President-Designate, Nasscom said: “India is now on its next growth curve, led by disruptive technologies like data sciences and AI and women in our country have been leading the growth to the next level.”
“The vision behind this initiative is to consolidate and streamline efforts in this space by building state-of-the-art infrastructure to amplify the impact that Women entrepreneurs in India can indigenously create,” Ghosh added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Business, Large Enterprise, Markets, Technology

Cloud technology
By Nishant Arora,
New Delhi : The journey of Indian enterprises to Cloud, especially towards Hybrid and Public platforms, is gradually gaining momentum, but finding the right mix is what holds the key for them and Cloud players are now offering customised services to clients.
The Indian Cloud market is growing exponentially. According to the apex industry body Nasscom, the domestic cloud market is projected to reach $16 billion by 2020.
The Public Cloud services market in India is projected to hit $1.9 billion by the end of this year — an increase of 42 per cent from 2016 — predicts market research firm Gartner.
Business leaders across industries are increasingly adopting Cloud technology, says Mohit Pande, Country Manager-India, Google Cloud, because they understand it helps solve real challenges like teams working better together, data becoming useful to make smart decisions and companies creating new values to stay competitive.
“We are committed to offering and investing in technology that leaves the choice to customers. Customers don’t want to be locked in. They are making sure that their workloads can be managed by containers that run on any platform,” Pande told IANS.
A container is a piece of software that includes everything needed to run it — code, runtime, system tools, system libraries and settings, etc.
Google has been running its services in the Cloud for over 14 years. The company hosts seven Google applications, each with more than one billion users.
“Over the last few years, a large number of Indian enterprises have chosen Google Cloud to grow their businesses. We are excited by the growth of paid Google Cloud Platform (GCP) customers in India, many of whom are leveraging our Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities,” Pande added.
Google offers solutions like “Kubernetes”, an open source technology for managing containers which allows customers to run across multiple Clouds. Google “Stackdriver” provides power monitoring, logging and diagnostics across Clouds.
According to Gartner, the highest growth in India will continue to be driven by Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) services, projected to grow 42 per cent, followed by 33.5 per cent in Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and 33.3 per cent in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).
“In 2017, enterprises who looked at creating new value with Cloud evaluated three major steps while building their strategy: Decide which IT and business functions to deliver through Cloud, identify and address challenges in adopting Cloud and realise operational, financial and innovation benefits,” Vikas Arora, Country Manager, IBM Cloud, India/South Asia, told IANS.
For Prasad Rai, Vice President, Cloud Applications, Oracle India, the new model of business applications delivery, which is SaaS, will actually meet the customers’ objectives much more appropriately in the country.
“Over the last two-three years, we have seen a significant shift in the customers’ mindset towards the SaaS-based solutions on Cloud. Everyone is today looking at embracing SaaS and this is something that we’ve seen across industries in India,” Rai told IANS.
The Indian enterprises today want more than just productivity and cost-saving perks.
“For them, Cloud as a technology is an enabler to turn increasing volumes of structured and unstructured data into easily accessible insights and help them continually improve customer experiences and applications by infusing cognitive and AI,” Arora explained.
With over 50 million SMBs, India is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.
“India’s workforce is already ahead of the curve from being mobile-first to largely avoiding the costly hurdle of transitioning legacy systems. Google has a local team of seasoned enterprise and developer experts connecting with start-ups, SMBs and large corporations to understand their needs and offer solutions accordingly,” Pande added.
Google recently launched its own Cloud Platform region in Mumbai which offers several services, including Compute, Big Data, Storage and Networking.
“With the India region, enterprises will be able to take advantage of the high speeds, low latency and performance benefits uniquely offered by GCP (Google Cloud Platform) services. Further, Indian customers will now be able to buy these services directly in the local currency,” Pande emphasised.
Hosting applications in the new region, Pande added, can improve latency from 20-90 per cent for end users in Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and, of course, Mumbai, compared to hosting them in the other closest region which is Singapore.
According to Arora, IBM has announced multiple new innovations on IBM Cloud that will help enterprises further derive value from their Cloud.
This has opened more options for the organisations that are not only relying on Cloud to enhance internal efficiencies but also target more strategic business capabilities.
“The customers are looking at Cloud to provide them access to new-age technologies like IoT, Blockchain and Mobility services, coupled with strong security, compliance and regulatory features. Besides large-sized enterprises, we have started to see a huge demand coming from SMEs and start-ups,” Arora added.
(Nishant Arora can be contacted at nishant.a@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Investing
By Gaurav Sharma,
Dalian (China) : India’s National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) and China’s Dalian city have signed an agreement to set up a platform for partnership between Indian and Chinese IT companies.
The move will help Indian IT software companies enter Dalian, a cyber city in China’s northeast province Liaoning where over a dozen of Indian firms such as Infosys, TCS, HCL and others are already present.
Under the agreement signed on Tuesday evening, Indian companies will get “preferential” entry into the Chinese market.
“Today, the lines between hardware and software are merging very fast. Indians companies, who have an edge on the software side, and Chinese companies, who have an edge on the hardware side, can co-develop and co-create for the global market, ” NASSCOM Senior Director Gagan Sabharwal said here.
“This partnership with the government of Dalian will help us create a platform where companies from India and China can co-develop for global markets leveraging their respective strengths in hardware and software,” he added.
Under the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), a NASSCOM corridor will be set up in Dalian’s Best city — a hub of IT companies — exclusively for Indian firms for setting up operations and availing policy benefits by the local government.
“We strongly believe this is the innovative step in enhancing and mutually benefiting Chinese and Indian companies in software and services sector,” Governor of Dalian’s Best City Sun Long Ye said.
“The SIDCOP Sino-Indian Digital Collaboration Plaza platform developed by Zeta-V is an extremely innovative use of digital technologies and shall pave the way for greater and wider cooperation amongst our countries,” Sun added.
Zeta-V Technology Solutions Ltd, an Indian start-up with a local presence in Dalian, will be deployed as the operator of the SIDCOP platform.
The firm will help Indian and Chinese companies communicate and understand each other’s requirement by using artificial intelligence.
“We are delighted to play a key role in building this ecosystem of NASSCOM members and Chinese companies to help furthering the Sino-Indian collaboration in the new age technology space,” said Sujit Chatterjee, Co-Founder and Director at Zeta-V Technology Solutions.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Entrepreneurship, Startup Basics, Startup Financing
Bengaluru : India added about 1,000 technology start-ups in 2017, retaining its position as the third largest hub for entrepreneurship, IT apex body Nasscom said on Thursday.
“About 1,000 tech start-ups were registered this year (2017), taking their total to 5,200 and making India the world’s third largest start-up ecosystem,” said Nasscom Chairman Raman Roy here at an event.
Releasing a joint report on the ‘Indian Start-up Ecosystem – Traversing the maturity cycle’, at the ninth annual edition of Nasscom Product Conclave, Roy said despite tough competition from Britain and Israel, India retained its momentum as a vibrant landscape for start-ups.
“Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR and Mumbai retained their position as the key start-up hubs, with 20 per cent of the start-ups emerging from tier-2 and tier-3 cities across the country,” Roy said.
He cited the report Nasscom compiled with city-based research, consulting and advisory firm Zinnov.
Among the verticals, health-tech, fin-tech and e-commerce have seen a rapid rise in the B2B (business-to-business) segment, signifying maturing growth.
“The Indian IT industry is renowned for pioneering innovation and the start-ups arena is no different. Our country is one of the fastest growing start-up landscapes, with the participation of every major accelerator, investor and angel group from the world over,” Roy said.
Noting that the ecosystem was ripe for healthy growth through verticals and innovative business model, Roy said the Indian landscape was brimming with innovative ideas, which need guidance to accelerate, scale-up and funding.
“With 40 per cent of start-ups in the B2B segment, its share in the tech start-up funding is 30 per cent, thanks to corporates, which are supporting them with 50 collaboration programmes, 20 accelerators and 40 investors,” said Roy.
Fin-tech start-up base is about 360, indicating 31 per cent annual growth, with $200-million funding in the first half of this year, recording a whopping 135 per cent annual growth.
“Sub-segments like digital payments and lending are maturing, while wealth management and insurance-tech emerging as growth areas. Implementation of advanced technology are also becoming prominent, with 33 per cent fintech funding towards advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and analytics,” said Roy.
Similarly, health-based technology start-ups are 320, with 28 per cent annual growth and attracted $160-million funding in the April-September period, which is an increase of 129 per cent in the same period of 2016.
“With 60 per cent start-ups, the B2C (business-to-customer) segment is focused on creating innovative business models and taking the vertical approach, securing about 70 per cent funding in the year’s first half,” said Roy, also Chief Executive Officer of Quatrro Global Services, on the occasion.
Observing that the ecosystem was driven by young, diverse and inclusive entrepreneurs, Nasscom President R. Chandrashekhar said the landscape was leading to focused domain solutions in verticals like healthcare, agriculture and education.
“Findings of the report is a testimony to the potential of the start-up landscape and the scope of growth and opportunity that India presents.
“We will continue its drive towards catalysing tech start-ups, build category leaders and support start-ups to create for India,” said the former Telecom Secretary.
Growing at five-year CAGR of 30 per cent, advanced start-ups are focused on creating solutions in Artificial Intelligence, Analytics, Augmented Reality, Virtual reality, Blockchain and Internet of Things.
Enterprise and SMB (small and medium businesses) focused start-ups, which are SaaS (software as a service) are also getting venture funds.
With 167 per cent growth, funding of the start-up ecosystem led by unicorns stood at $6.4 billion till September.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate Jobs, Employment
Bengaluru : The back office services sector posted about $30 billion revenue in2016-17, with 12 lakh employees, said the Indian IT industry apex body Nasscom on Thursday.
“The Indian Business Process Management (BPM) or back office services sector remains the world’s largest base, with $30 billion (Rs.1,95,000 crore) revenue and 12-lakh employees in 2016-17,” Nasscom Chairman Raman Roy told reporters here.
Asserting that advanced technology solutions and intelligent automation would drive the sector’s growth, he said the BPM sector was projected to touch $50-55 billion by 2025 with a steady growth over the next eight years.
Overcoming the slower growth phase, the Indian BPM industry has 35 per cent share of global sourcing and 38 per cent in the employable graduate pool, with revenue growth of 1.7 times.
“Digital streams will account for 60-70 per cent of the BPM service providers’ revenue by 2025, overtaking traditional streams, with intelligent automation driving its growth,” said Roy on the margins of the 19th BPM Strategy Summit of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom).
Noting that the BPM industry was growing in strength, embracing the change, he said hybrid growth of higher order thinking and digital assistance would drive dynamic shifts towards new geographies, verticals and markets.
“The shift towards digital strategy is witnessing adoption of robotic process automation, advanced analytics and digital assistance,” he added.
With the advent of new pricing models and increasing demand for unique skills in analytics, domain-knowledge and emerging technology, the BPM industry is aided by strategic acquisitions, partnerships and collaborations.
“These are interesting times for the BPM industry, with digital becoming the driving force behind the growth of the sector. With customer experience becoming mission critical for companies, they are investing in new technologies enabling AI, Automation and Big Data Analytics in a secured fashion,” said Nasscom BPM Council Chair Rohit Kapoor at the summit.
The BPM industry is creating impact in process improvements, helping lower cost to serve, higher return on investment, customers as partners to reduce risks and drive results.
To accelerate the pace of growth, the Council has decided to position India as the destination for global firms to deliver transformation value and the BPM sector as an industry of choice for aspiring professionals.
—IANS