Enterprise Tech – Dutch Uncles

All About The HPE Digital Catalyst Program For Enterprise Tech Start-ups

Anju Nambiar — Mon, 02 Aug 2021 05:35:08 +0000

The HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprise) is a global technology giant which recently opened applications for the second Cohort of their Digital Catalyst Program in partnership with Start-up India and Invest India. It identifies disruptive start-ups in the enterprise tech industry and provides them with help and support. The inaugural edition of the programme concluded in 2020 and applications for this year’s edition concluded on the 19^th of July. The 2021 chapter is set to commence in August and will go on for a duration of 4 months.

Purpose of the Programme

The purpose of the programme is mainly to co-innovate with disruptive start-ups in the Enterprise tech space. It was launched to identify and go to market with next gen disruptors in the Indian start-up ecosystem. The programme is mainly interested in enterprise tech start-ups in India with product-market fit (PMF), have been through a few rounds of funding, and are already having multiple paying customers.

Eligibility Criteria and Application Process

Eligibility Criteria

Enterprise focused start-ups are eligible that offer digital platforms, cater to industries like QA (Quality Automation) and manufacturing. This year, the focus of HPEs scouting for enterprise tech start-ups will be towards areas like Artificial Intelligence, DevSecOps, Cybersecurity and Intelligence Edge. HPE is looking to partner with the best class of innovators who can respond to unprecedented times through this cohort. B2B start-ups building deep tech solutions in the above-mentioned segments are eligible this year. Also, you should be in an ideation stage, validation stage, growth-stage, early traction, or a scaling stage start-up to be eligible. Vertical agnostic start-ups are mainly eligible.

Application process

The application process is online where you need to navigate to HPE’s Digital Catalyst Program page on their official website. From here, you will be directed to Start-up India’s official website where you can view your submitted application. If you missed the deadline for this year’s application, you could apply in 2022 since this is a yearly event.

Benefits for start-ups

Shortlisted start-ups will obtain the opportunity to work with HPE along three tracks

Technology track

Tech collaboration through licensing agreements

GTM Track

Exploring joint solutions and GTM models

Investment track

Exploring investments in longer horizon technology areas through HPE’s pathfinder program.

Shortlisted start-ups mainly acquire non-fiscal initiatives also get access to resources and support including

Business and Technology Mentorship

Access to expert mentorship across sales, marketing, and technology verticals.

Rapid Prototyping Infrastructure

Access to HPEs infrastructure for building rapid prototypes.

Go-to market support

Building joint solutions with HPE

Partner onboarding

Eligible start-ups within the cohort will be handpicked to join HPE’s Global Partner Network.

Access to Investor Networks

Shortlisted start-ups get the opportunity to pitch to HPE’s Venture Capital (VC) wing, ‘HPE Path Finder’.

Access to HPE Resources

Start-ups get access to the very best of HPE resources and get the opportunity to interact with renowned mentors who are part of the program.

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The programme is mainly interested in enterprise tech start-ups in India with product-market fit (PMF), have been through a few rounds of funding, and are already having multiple paying customers.

What’s in it for me?

Start-ups which are on a level playing field with HPE’s core business will benefit from being selected in the Catalyst program. Through the program, you can get access to HPE’s presence across the world as well as the opportunity to tap into their massive consumer base. Early-stage start-ups participating in the programme can achieve accelerated growth with the support received by the global tech giant.

Participating in programmes organised by industry leaders like HPE allows you to acquire valuable guidance and to strengthen your connections within the industry. Start-ups participating stand to get a chance to develop joint solutions with HPE which you can showcase when the programme concludes. In the four-month period, you will obtain insights into how you can cater to HPEs clients with digital transformation needs. By partnering with Government Initiatives like Invest India and Start-up India, HPE has reinforced its commitment to encouraging absolute small-scale domestic start-ups to apply and obtain a chance of winning.

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Blunders to Avoid When Relocating to US

Shalmoli Sarkar — Thu, 29 Jul 2021 10:30:09 +0000

India is home to around 38000 startups making it the third-largest in the world. Though it is giving birth to unicorn startups and there has been a significant development of incubators and monetary initiatives to help seed the entrepreneurial spirit, it still has to travel a long road to create a more startup-friendly ecosystem.

Why do startups want to relocate to the US?

The fuel of any venture to begin is to secure funding, where the path to get one is a bumpy one. This is because in the US the startups can receive funding based on a strong business proposition made without revenue or a set business model. Startups there atleast get the opportunity to prove their value proposition and test products before releasing them to the market. Whereas, on the contrary in India the access to funding is limited resulting in startups stressing on monetisation, revenue, and lean operations even though having an interesting business concept on hand.

Startups in India receive funding only when they have a working product and a proven business model with its proof being revenue. Without any cushion of funding, many Indian startups find it imperative to relocate their business to the USA. Moreover, the cost of customer acquisition for an Indian startup to operate on American soil is inexpensive, since the consumers’ loyalty and repeat business depends upon a simple mantra of superior customer service, this strategy will help to generate revenues first. The startups, especially those operating in enterprise tech, find it difficult to scale their business in India since several family-run businesses find it hard to trust the solutions of a young startup. Also India lacks funding for young technology startups in India that in the US is abundant.

Much said about the pros of relocating business to the US, here are some of the blunders you might make while relocating the business there.

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In the US startups can receive funding based on a strong business proposition made without revenue or a set business model.

The Top 5 Blunders to Avoid While Relocating Business to the USA

Insufficient Market knowledge: The presence of tech moguls and customers entices startup founders to bring something new to the market and makes it the largest playing ground. But the first mistake which Indian entrepreneurs tend to make is which city to choose? While entering a new market the entrepreneur is initially a salesperson and needs to meet with the customers and investors of that region to gain their early attention before relocating full time. For instance, If the startup is in enterprise tech then Silicon Valley is the city; if the startup is in health tech then North Carolina is a better city.
Not knowing the marketing methods: This goes without saying that cultural differences are significant and it is reflected in marketing content. The USA is a country of low context culture meaning that they communicate information indirect, explicit, and precise ways. Entrepreneurs need to research more and look at similar ads for products similar to yours. If we are opting for print marketing for a startup based in Silicon Valley, then the approach should be to connect with the tech publications and media.

Not Knowing about the costs and taxes involved: The cost of relocation from one country to another is a must to consider as there are several hidden or secondary costs involved. Relocating to a new location would also mean considering the overhead costs that will impact the routine business operations. Things like lease, mortgage payments, utilities, shipping and wages will impact the cost. When moving to new countries, it is important to assess the tax situation of your new location. Depending on where you are relocating, taxes could have a huge impact on the profitability of your organization.

Not considering the growth capabilities: The entrepreneurs must think about the long-term scenario of the business. For instance, if the business is on a growth path and has plans to increase the employee size in the next 3 yrs, then it is important to assess the labour pool to support the growth of the business. It is easy for an enterprise tech startup or an e-commerce startup to find developers, digital marketers, etc. but would be difficult to find professionals in farm science for agritech startups. Growth capabilities do not limit to human capital but also apply to the growth of the facility space or even the capacity of local shipping companies.
Not doing a check on the scope of products and services: Say here we take a SaaS-based enterprise tech startup where there can be two possibilities i.e. create a better product that is already available in the market like developing better CRM solutions or better accounting software or marketing automation tools. The second possibility lies in building something in a completely new category which can be risky with its pitfalls disguised as opportunities. The companies in the first possibility do not require to relocate, it can be started in India with local hires and talent and selling high-quality remote services to middle-sized companies around the globe. The second option is ideal for targeting the more advanced SaaS software market in the United States.

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Its raining IPOs, What This Means for Google Cloud

DU Desk — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 08:35:12 +0000

Google is adamant on making it rain IPOs because of the billions of dollars in funding being pumped into the Indian start-up ecosystem. With big names like Zomato, PayTM, Mobikwik, PolicyBazaar, CarTrade and Nykaa headed for IPO at rapid speed, Google cannot afford to miss the chance at offering up their products and services to them.

Tech giants like Amazon, Facebook and Google have long been actively supporting start-ups in India, taking the cue from the Indian Government’s efforts to bolster the start-up community. Getting help from these tech giants is invaluable because your success rate shoots up. The technology stack and services from tech giants like Google are unparalleled. Start-ups shouldn’t miss the opportunity to apply for support programmes by these big tech firms.

Google Cloud’s interest for IPO bound start-ups

Google Cloud is interested in IPO bound start-ups and the Indian start-up ecosystem as a whole for two key reasons. One, the capital inflow into the ecosystem is set to touch a high of $19-$23 B by the end of 2021. Two, Google Cloud wants to further bolster the growth of these already-growing start-ups by empowering them with cutting-edge Cloud technology.

Google Cloud is providing specially designed programmes for start-ups across various growth stages as well as for unicorns and IPO-bound start-ups. Through these programmes, they are providing training, zero credits, mentoring sessions and giving them the opportunity to work with specialists. As start-ups grow and progress towards becoming unicorns, Google Cloud helps tackle their larger problems by making them shift from providing an engagement model to offering solutions.

How Google Cloud is empowering start-ups and unicorns

Google Cloud is empowering start-ups and unicorns in India by helping them grow the number of monthly active users on their platform. By leveraging Google’s Cloud technology, these start-ups and unicorns are being empowered to achieve key milestones along their growth trajectory.

Prominent start-ups using Google Cloud infrastructure

Well-known start-ups and unicorns in India using Google Cloud’s infrastructure include Glance (Artificial Intelligence (AI) – based software company), ShareChat (consumer tech unicorn), Rapido (automobile start-up) and Dailyhunt (consumer tech).

How Google Cloud works with start-ups

Google Cloud works with start-ups by first offering them with cloud solutions and then giving them access to ‘ALL of Google’. What this means is that the start-up will grow with Google. The start-up’s products will also be added to Google Maps. Google will also help with Google Ads integration.

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As start-ups grow and progress towards becoming unicorns, Google Cloud helps tackle their larger problems by making them shift from providing an engagement model to offering solutions.

What’s in it for me?

Google has a number of start-up programmes which are very easy to apply and get approval for. Products and services by the tech giants are all start-ups need to propel them forward since Google’s offerings are very powerful and robust. Migrating to the Google Cloud is very beneficial for start-ups in various growth stages because you not only enjoy tools and resources provided by Google, but you also get support to fix issues along your start-up journey.

Google is also offering their Startups Accelerator Program (GSFA) through which you can get nurtured for a period of three months with free mentorship and support. It is designed for growth and early-stage start-ups. The leadership training from Google experts that you can avail through this programme will prove to be invaluable in later stages. In this programme, you stand to gain equity-free support, training and credits which you can use to purchase premium Google cloud and other products.

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Technology Adoption, Covid Induced Disruption Changing Small Business

DU Desk — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 05:30:09 +0000

With covid-induced impositions, small businesses were grappling with business continuity that forced them to quickly seek refuge in technology to keep up with the remote working culture. The covid induced situation has accelerated the technology adoption in businesses across sectors like communication, marketing, team collaboration, payments, hiring, procurement of goods and services and storage, registration of new business verticals by 7 years. This quick pivot to technology is aiding small businesses to reap the benefits of cost reduction and increased productivity levels.

The premise stated above is strengthened by a survey on small businesses conducted by Dun & Bradstreet, where 54 percent have reported that technology adoption has helped them in reducing costs and 51 percent said that it has helped in enhancing competitiveness. When it comes to technology adoption, small businesses are showcasing agility and taking faster decisions for adoption, unlike larger corporations, where they have to wait for the top brass’ decision.

According to a study from KPMG and Google, digitally-enabled small businesses can grow profits up to two times faster than offline businesses. Digitally-backed small businesses can employ more people, create a seamless supply chain, expand their customer base, foray into international markets and reduce redundancies in workflows.

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According to a study from KPMG and Google, digitally-enabled small businesses can grow profits up to two times faster than offline businesses.

Sectors where technology adoption has benefitted small businesses

Technology taking offline market online

With e-commerce behaviour becoming the new norm of shopping, several small businesses are embracing e-commerce channels for creating their D2C stores to increase market reach and tapping the unexplored markets. Small businesses are adopting digital marketing tools such as search engine optimisation (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, e-mail marketing, Pay-Per-Click, and Google Analytics to increase visibility, acquire more customers and generate revenues.

Technology for creating seamless workflows

Adoption of technology has been beneficial to small and medium scale manufacturing companies in supply management, logistics, and procurement or manufacturing operations and human resources by eliminating redundancies and creating seamless workflows.

For bringing easing operations MSMEs are adopting customer relationship management (CRM) software to help them maintain a comprehensive digital record of customer engagement, design and customise offerings and manage orders, and parallelly enable to keep track of sales. Similarly, the human resource management (HRM) systems are simplifying the hiring process involving recruitment, staffing, training, compensation, performance appraisal, retention strategies, etc.

Adoption of cloud technologies

MSMEs with tight budgets are adopting cloud tools rather than going for the conventional IT infrastructure as it eliminates the need for a business to spend on hardware, slash maintenance costs and also free from the hassle of software patch-ups and updating.

Since it is a cloud, an on-demand service, it allows flexibility in operations enabling quick scaling up or modification ensuring data backup without hampering the business continuity while operating remotely.

Fintech technologies to avail financial assistance

With increased stress on liquidity and working capital, small businesses are seeking fintech services to secure microloans by deriving credit scores from borrower’s digital footprints by leveraging big data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) algorithms. Such technologies by collecting and analysing data will help small businesses avail more loans, improve underwriting processes, and prevent MSME loan proposal rejections to a great extent.

What lies ahead of small businesses in technology adoption?

Technology adoption that earlier seemed a privilege for small businesses has now emerged to be a necessity in times of pandemic. Small businesses are gradually coming out of the perception that technology adoption is limited to larger corporations or organisations.

With improvements in customer assistance and enterprise tech companies offering affordable tech solutions, small businesses are now letting go of the fear of implementing technologies to achieve self-reliance with minimal intervention. Enterprise tech giant IBM Public Cloud has been providing tech offerings to MSMEs, that include cloud-enabled AI, data, security, integration, video, etc. which help businesses to keep their operations running in the remote environment.

To aid MSMEs to adopt technology, the government has introduced special schemes where a small business can avail collateral-free automatic loans worth Rs 3 lakh crore.

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Postman – Hitting the API Growth Pedestal with a Strong Product

Franzil Dias — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 12:35:08 +0000

In 2012, two humble coding interns at Yahoo kept running into the same issues over and over again. Working out of their Bengaluru-based office, Ankit Sobti and Abhinav Asthana had one key job – to take Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and convert them into a shareable format that developers could use in their projects. Doesn’t sound very simple, does it?

Well, amidst this complicated procedure, the duo found a solution to many coders problems, and thus began the inception of Postman, the collaboration platform for API development.

The Birth of Postman

To begin with, let us understand what an API is. Application Programming Interface – API – is a software intermediary that, in simple words, allows two applications to talk to each other. When you open an application on your phone, any type of process or service from that app requires an API to function. It works as a messenger between the app from your phone to the server’s mainframe wherever it is.

For the founders, learning how the APIs worked was a complex process. Testing and debugging APIs was also a pain for the production team. They had to start over every time an API was changed or updated.

The duo figured out that there were a lot of communication issues when it came to API testing. However, they failed to reach a consensus or a probable solution. The same issue erupted a few years later at Asthana’s first start-up TeliportMe, a social media platform.

The duo was then joined by Abhijit Kane, the third co-founder of Postman. This team of three was building a front-end architecture of their app, and that’s when they had to work with a complicated API and needed to exchange details in the process. However, they ran into the same communication issue and failed to find a solution.

This became the first building block for the trio’s venture. Collating all the previous and current issues, the founders had realised that the tools to support API development were missing. They started noting down the codes to solve the issue (making API testing easier) and posted it on the Chrome Webstore; things took off from there. Google reached out to the team and appreciated the Postman tool. Thereafter, they featured it on the homepage of the Chrome store, which gave the start-up a fantastic visibility and the needed kickstart.

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Postman is the leading API growth collaboration platform in India and is being rapidly adopted throughout the industry.

A Good Product Sells Itself

APIs have been around for four decades but Postman is probably the first start-up to realise the opportunity of private APIs. It is an online company that works into designing, developing and managing APIs for organisations and developers. As soon as the company was launched in 2015, the trio’s desk was flooded with feedback from developers besides enquiries from investors. Interestingly, the USP of the product is its scalability. Right from start-ups to big companies, the adoption, applicability and usage of tools is not limited. The start-up had nearly half a million users even before officially starting the business.

Postman is branded as an all-in-one toolkit for API developers. It is a versatile tool for rapidly, effectively and precisely creating linked applications using APIs. There are two components of the Postman API Network:

Postman Public API Network

It is accessible to the entire API world

Postman Private API Network

It is only accessible to particular groups.

As a user, you can make and store basic and complex HTTPs requests, as well as read their comments. Consequently, the work done is more productive and less stressful.

But the obvious underlying question here is what is so special about this product? Or, why is it so prominent in today’s market?

The answer lies in the product’s versatility in almost all aspects of the company to suit the customer. For example, there are three different types of plans for clients just to make the product more inclusive.

Free option
Postman Pro: For small teams and projects with expanded usage limitations
Postman Enterprise: Includes additional governance and account management for official corporate needs.

Apart from versatility, another reason why its demand in the market is high is because of its convenience. It has many in-built features which make the ability to design, mock, debug, generate automated tests, monitors, documentations and published collections easier. Besides, it is able to fix bugs at 4x faster on average, which helps in staying ahead of the curve.

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The sheer number of operational options on the platform not only make it a favoured platform but a versatile one too.

Turning Product into Business

The start-up received its first round of Series A funding in 2016 of $7 million from Nexus Venture Partners and opened offices in Bangalore, San Francisco and Austin. To date, the company has managed to raise $208 million from the existing investors besides others like CRV.

In June 2020, after receiving $150 million in a Series C round from Insight Partners, at a valuation of $2 billion, Postman became the quickest Software as a Service (SaaS) business to attain unicorn status. Postman is the API development tool of choice for nine of the top ten cloud computing providers, according to Asthana. Its API development platform is used by over 11 million developers around the world, across more than 5,00,000 companies globally, including Microsoft, Twitter, Best Buy, AMC Theaters, PayPal, Shopify, BigCommerce and DocuSign.

What is interesting, as stated by the founders in their blog, is the fact that Postman was started in India. Lots of technology products start in the Silicon Valley and getting global support right in the beginning was commendable for the start-up.

Twitter bought into the idea of Postman because of their feature of mock servers. Daniele Bernardi, a staff partner engineer at Twitter Inc. said in a media statement that they would be able to offer developers easy access as well as secure their production data due to the feature of mock servers.

Microsoft’s decision to become a client of the platform was because of the feature where Postman allowed them to create API integration tests for all of their endpoints, which meant that its API would verify whether the system was functional or not. Apart from this, they also used environment variables and test scripts offered by Postman to build their own flow control structures.

One of the reasons the Postman product is so successful is because of the founders obsession with customer feedback. The team, starting from initial days itself, began tracking every piece of feedback from users all over the world. They were obsessive about product reviews and user requests, and had in-depth conversations with developers as often as possible and continue to do so to date.

In his blog, Asthana writes that loads of feedback is great, but one has to be smart about acting on it. Many start-ups encounter problems when they try to take on too much at once, focusing on the big picture rather than the next feature needed. He says the company had decided early on that it would tackle only one or two problems at a time, get as much input as possible, and really get the solution right before moving on to the next problem.

Besides the initial setup of API Testing, Postman faced a series of challenges. They weren’t too concerned in the early days about things like business model and pricing and wanted to be (and still are) focussed on the product and its development. While other companies prior to Postman were building products, they were close to managers or decision-makers rather than the developer community. That’s where Postman earned the brownie points with the developers. They first started exclusively with developers and gradually moved into more of a true business-to-business offering where they solved organisation-wide problems that impact managers, senior leaders, and cross-functional teams. This was the most organic growth of the company. The product-market-fit was found and worked upon.

Postman ranks 5th in the top 10 API Companies around the world. Its management software is a popular technology and many people are looking for top-rated, well-known software that includes API testing, monitoring and app integration. It is also one of the only three Indian start-ups to appear in the Forbes Cloud 100 list of the most influential SaaS companies in the world

The Pioneer

Postman’s portfolio of products is based on making developer communication simpler. Its approach has been to provide free customer assistance, which is a function that many SaaS firms charge extra for. Given that the majority of developers utilise Postman’s platform, the only option for the company to continue to grow is to extend its use cases and build on the present product.

According to Gartner’s prediction, more than 65% of global infrastructure service providers’ revenue would be produced by API-enabled services by 2023 – that is up from 15% in 2018.

SaaS unicorn Postman will always be credited as the first in history to recognise the potential of API management. In the current era, no software engineer lives without the Postman platform if they ever work on APIs. Postman has become a default tool in API testing and development. APIs may have emerged as a critical part of the software ecosystem lately, but this product will always be credited to be the first one to recognise their potential.

For more inspiring stories like this, read our Inspire Section!

The post Postman – Hitting the API Growth Pedestal with a Strong Product appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

AI Start-up Fractal Growth Strategy Predicts Revenue Growth in 2022

Anju Nambiar — Sat, 17 Jul 2021 03:34:39 +0000

Big Data rules the world and in the initial days when it was emerging as the giant of IT (Information Technology), companies that tapped into the market grew in leaps and bounds. Fractal.ai is one such company which has achieved tremendous growth over the years. Along their journey, they’ve checked a number of boxes which has made them the market leaders of the Analytics-as-a-Service space.

Fractal.ai and its IPO listing

Fractal.ai is an AI (Artificial Intelligence) company with Fortune 100 companies across the world as its clients. They are an Analytics Solution provider and a strong player in the AI space. They are confident that an Initial Public Offering (IPO) will further add to their growth story and will soon be listing publicly. Fractal is expecting a revenue growth of 37% touching $160 M in the Financial year ending March 2022.

Fractal’s growth strategy

Fractal’s growth story has been fuelled by acquisitions and funding. They ventured into analytics at a crucial juncture when it was being prioritised by organisations for their digital transformation.

Fundraising

The company raised funds and achieved a valuation of 12 times than its global revenue back in 2016 (INR 350 Cr). They redirected this money strategically. They invested the new funds into new markets, employed data professionals and poured money into building their data platforms.

Incubation of other AI projects

Also, a part of their growth strategy are Fractal’s strategic acquisitions of other AI projects like Qure.ai, Theremin.ai, Equgenie.ai and more recently Samya.ai. The acquisition of Samya.ai will further strengthen Fractal’s offerings and expand its reach across industries and increase their global footprint.

A few years ago, they went on an acquisition spree where they acquired start-ups for the sole purpose of building their Natural Language Processing and Deep Learning capabilities. They acquired companies like Imagna Analytics and Mobius Innovations. These acquisitions strengthened Fractal’s technology offering which naturally contributed to its growth.

The Pandemic has been a turning point for Fractal

The start-up has witnessed a business expansion with the outbreak of the pandemic. The pandemic period has boosted the demand for their services. Enterprises have been forced to move their functions and operations to the cloud.

A brand-new Initiative – Crux Intelligence

Their new initiative ‘Crux Intelligence’ is also a part of their upcoming growth strategy. Crux is a solution that offers business intelligence to enterprises and even converts the data intelligence into actionable insights.

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The acquisition of Samya.ai will further strengthen Fractal’s offerings and expand its reach across industries and increase their global footprint.

What’s in it for me?

AI start-ups are continuing to raise funds. In 2020, the AI start-up community collectively raised $836.3 M in funding. Real-time AI and Deep Learning platforms have wide use cases and a variety of applications for ‘smart and intelligent’ projects across a multitude of sectors like automobile manufacturing, robotics and transportation.

Data driven SaaS solutions powered by Machine Learning and AI have immense applications in Enterprise Tech. Nascent industries like Manufacturing and Insurance need business and data intelligence AI solutions. These are the industries you can disrupt as a start-up.

While venturing into the AI space, you need to find the perfect ‘product-market’ fit. This is both crucial and a difficult step for Enterprise Tech start-ups. Irrespective of the industry you are targeting, every enterprise in the target market is unique. Your AI solution must be custom tailored to their requirements. To achieve this level of customisation, your tech team must be strong. Thus, you need to invest in hiring data scientists, engineers and technologists. Investor interest around AI and data intelligence is for start-ups that are building customised AI solutions for previously unsolvable problems.

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This is How AWS Public Sector Startup Ramp in India Benefit Startups

Shalmoli Sarkar — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 05:35:12 +0000

The public sector organisations in India are yet mired in their archaic working methods and operations thereby, hindering them to match up with the fast-paced technology advanced world.

With India wearing the crown of the world’s third-largest start-up ecosystem, more number of startups with its innovative technology solutions can eliminate the bottlenecks in the public sector space that have existed for long. The solutions provided by the startups can empower the entities working under central and state governments towards self-reliance.

But hurdles appear for an early-stage startup to whom investors might deny funding due to being apprehensive about the idea’s success, which in turn discourages startups wanting to serve the public sector space.

Realising these challenges, Amazon Web Services has (AWS) announced the launch of the AWS Public Sector Startup Ramp in India- a new programme designed to aid technology startups to build solutions for the public sector using its platform.

What is Amazon Web Services (AWS) Public Sector Startup Ramp?

The AWS Public Sector Startup Ramp is an accelerator programme designed for startups focused on building innovative solutions for public sector customers worldwide and not just limited to customers of national and local government, space and defense, and healthcare.

This accelerator programme is based on AWS EdStart, which works with edtech focused startups, and AWS GovTechStart, a US-based program that backs commercial technology companies serving state and local governments.

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Amazon Web Services has (AWS) announced the launch of the AWS Public Sector Startup Ramp in India- a new programme designed to aid technology startups to build solutions for the public sector using its platform.

Eligible Startups for Amazon Web Services (AWS) Public Sector Startup Ramp

The eligible startups for this programme should be in their early-stage growth and should belong to either of the two tiers Innovative and Member.

Startups in Innovative Tier must :

- Have been founded in the past two years.
- Be Pre-revenue.

Startups in Member Tier must :

- Have been founded in the past 10 years or pre-IPO / acquisition
- Have annual revenues not exceeding 100 crores

Must-Haves for startups of both tiers :

- Focused to solve problems in the public sector customers in the region.
- Demonstrate an innovative solution for the public sector that addresses either a current challenge or a future challenge.

Why is Amazon Web Services launching this initiative?

Several public sector organisations and entities under central and state government are devoid of cutting-edge technologies and innovation that impedes their efficiency and productivity. The accelerator programmes will benefit the public sector by encouraging more startups to ideate and develop disruptive innovative solutions creating a broader impact and quickly pivot to meet society’s changing needs.

Benefits to the Startups through the Amazon Web Services Startup Ramp?

The startups from Innovation Tier and Membership Tier will be benefited from this accelerator programme in four areas namely -Community, Technical, Financial, and Go-to-Market.

Benefits for Innovation Tier Startups :

Community:

- - - Monthly newsletter
    - Thought leadership
    - Business and SME Mentorship

Technical:

- - - Customised trainings
    - Monthly Webinars
    - Startup Kits
    - Technical Office hours

Financial:

- - - AWS promotional credits

Benefits For Membership Tier Startups:

Community:

- - - Monthly newsletter
    - Thought leadership
    - Business and SME Mentorship
    - Pitch days
    - Founder dinners/ roundtables
    - Investor and accelerator connections

Technical:

- - - Customised trainings
    - Monthly Webinars
    - Startup Kits
    - Technical Office hours
    - Architecture design/optimisation reviews
    - Cost optimisation
    - Security workshops
    - Scalability readiness

Financial:

- - - AWS promotional credits
    - POC funding
    - Periodical marketing vouchers
    - Sponsorships to conferences

Go-To-Market:

- - - Government Corner
    - Founders Corner
    - Conference Engagements
    - Accreditation report
    - Design Thinking / Working Backward workshops
    - Blogs
    - Case Studies
    - White Papers
    - Social Media

The post This is How AWS Public Sector Startup Ramp in India Benefit Startups appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Voice Technology and 5 Start-ups Who are Disrupting This Space

DU Desk — Sun, 11 Jul 2021 14:18:30 +0000

Voice Technology is a new-age enterprise technology segment that is rapidly coming-of-age. Voice AI (Artificial Intelligence) is a technology that can recognise voices digitally and can decipher speech. It’s scary and fascinating how this technology is slowly becoming more human. Voice AI can be used to emulate human voices and can even naturally converse like a human that enterprises are quickly incorporating for their use cases. Here are 5 voice tech start-ups in India who are disrupting this space.

Slang Labs

Slang Labs is a Bengaluru-based start-up that is working on a multilingual Voice Assistant as a Service platform called ‘Slang Conva’. This is a B2B product which will help other brands to create and add their own multilingual voice assistants to apps. This start-up is making noise in the voice technology space because they are propositioning voice assistants in native Indian languages. They are a disruptor because they are making the voice experience accessible and friendly to consumers. Their plug-and-play-voice assistant solution will help brands create multilingual in-app assistance for customers.

Saarthi.ai

Saarthi.ai is a deep tech start-up which offers a voice-first conversational AI technology. The company is based in Bengaluru and is disrupting the B2B segment in voice by helping enterprises automate their inbound/outbound calls and chats with their conversational voice-first AI assistant. This company is making its fair share of noise in the voice-based enterprise technology market through their conversational AI for low resource, global languages targeted at Indic, South Asian, Arabic and European users.

InCights

InCights is a voice biometrics start-up which is a B2B enterprise technology solution provider. They offer a cloud-based voice biometrics solution and a developer platform. They are disrupting the voice-based technology space with their enterprise-grade authentication security systems. They eventually want their enterprise clients to replace passwords with their product offering.

Uniphore

Uniphore is a well-known disruptor to the voice technology space. They provide a conversational AI and automation platform for enterprises. They are a disruptor because their voice solutions are transforming the customer experience for clients. Uniphore’s popular product offering is their voice authentication and biometrics solution ‘amVoice’.

Voxta

Another noteworthy start-up in the voice technology space is Voxta which is based in Hyderabad. They provide speech technology for their enterprise clients who are mostly call centres. They are a differentiator to the industry since their speech recognition engines can tap into multiple different languages and accents.

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Noteworthy start-ups in India offering conversational AI and voice based B2B solutions.

What’s in it for me?

The voice tech industry has been evolving and Voice AI is seeing applications across numerous key industries including healthcare, retail, hospitality, customer service, etc. The Asian market is seeing high adoption of voice AI solutions for commercial applications. The reason why the Asian market is a hotbed for voice start-ups is due to the sheer diversity of languages, accents, and dialects. There’s huge potential for B2B voice tech start-ups to acquire clients in the government, across enterprises, as well as investor interest.

Conversational AI tools have high demand among enterprise contact centres since they are easing the process of customer communication and subsequently enhancing the customer experience. There’s also great demand for chat and voice-based bots that cater to multiple different languages among enterprise contact centres. Ever since the revelation that massive new markets open up by targeting regional languages in India, every industry is in a race to develop multilingual products. Whether its vernacular gaming apps, social media, or speech services, the whole of Indian population can become your consumer base by being inclusive of local languages.

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Is Artificial Intelligence More Hype, Less Reality?

Vaishali Das — Fri, 09 Jul 2021 16:11:40 +0000

Uses of AI in Enterprise Tech

Usually, AI works with the data that has already been updated in the system. It analyses the data for correlations and patterns which are used for future predictions. Chatbots are used in a similar manner where they interact with people and provide automated assistance.

Using AI can be beneficial for businesses in a way that it provides enterprises with an insight of their operations. It makes sure that everything is well documented without any repetitions and merely makes the data analysing part quicker and smoother. But all this can fail if one doesn’t have the proper knowledge of its working and programs.

Is AI, much Hyped and Less of a Reality?

AI being everywhere in the news, it can be said that it is the need of the hour for company’s growth. Companies usually misunderstand the actual functioning of AI and generally don’t have a clear understanding of its programmes. Although it has a promising factor of easing up some of the hurdles of the company, organisations have to overcome the hurdle of implementing AI successfully in order to enjoy its benefits.

According to the recent survey conducted by KPMG, Artificial Intelligence as a technology is moving very fast. Even with ‘AI winter’, a term describing the downfall of AI in technology’s history, the market for enhancing tools and technology never stopped. In fact, people started taking interest in machine learning to ease up their production process. And with this AI made a comeback in the industry sector again.

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Using AI can be beneficial for businesses in a way that it provides enterprises with an insight of their operations.

In the enterprise’s technology, AI has created a buzz amongst the manual workers. With its machine learning algorithm, it is masking the human agency behind certain processes. This has created a much-hyped demand in the market for AI trained people. But because of the less knowledge and understanding of its functioning there has been a shift in the hiring processes as well.

Current Enterprise AI Trends to Keep an Eye Upon in 2021

Starting from investors inclining more towards AI based companies, enterprises are seeking best practices to update their existing data management and IT infrastructure. Organizations are looking at how AIOps and AI network assistants can provide aid to their IT teams focusing more on strategic problems and improve the experiences of their employees and customers.

Some of the AI trends to watch out in 2021:

Greater cloud and AI collaboration which will help in monitoring and in managing the stored data.
AIOps will help IT sectors with an end-to-end visibility needed to support its employees in this new normal COVID world.
In the coming years there will be more structured data that RPA or Chatbots can use to automate transactional activity in an organization.
Artificial Intelligence will become more explainable. Top companies will be investing more in the education of their IT leaders so that they can understand and implement these AI solutions across the network.

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Dataiku’s New Product Offers Simplified AI Operations for Small Businesses

Shalmoli Sarkar — Sun, 04 Jul 2021 05:35:05 +0000

Artificial intelligence (AI) is going mainstream with companies across verticals that are rapidly considering operationalising their workflows for seamless working. From offering superior customer experiences to managing and analysing data for gaining insights, AI has numerous applications.

The outbreak of the virus has accelerated the adoption of AI as now companies will be striving hard to remain relevant in the virtual environment.

As per a survey conducted by PwC India, India in 2020 has reported a 45 percent increase in the use of AI, which is the highest among all countries followed by the US with 35 percent rise, UK at 23 percent and Japan at 28 percent rise in AI usage respectively.

American unicorn company Dataiku founded in 2013 is facilitating the growth of AI and ML (Machine Learning) adoption in businesses. The platform lets businesses turn raw data into advanced analytics, aid in data visualisation tasks, create data-backed dashboards and train machine learning models. The beauty of the platform lies that it can also be used by people with less technical knowledge other than data scientists.

Recently it has launched a new product Dataiku Online that can be used by small businesses to build powerful analytics in no time.

What is Dataiku Online?

Earlier, customers using only Dataiku either had to install the software solution on-premises themselves or run it on a cloud instance. But Dataiku Online enables businesses irrespective of their size to start their data journey within minutes by connecting to their data sources with ease and begin deploying projects in days.

Businesses can leverage the full power of their platform for analysis without having to worry about its installation and management of resources.

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As per a survey conducted by PwC India, India in 2020 has reported a 45 percent increase in the use of AI, which is the highest among all countries followed by the US with 35 percent rise, UK at 23 percent and Japan at 28 percent rise in AI usage respectively.

How Dataiku Online Plans to Solve Challenges for Small – Medium Businesses ?

Small and mid-sized businesses that lack data scientists and ML engineers in the workforce can use Dataiku Online to avail all the same features that Dataiku’s on-premises and cloud instances provide right from data preparation and visualization, dashboards to advanced data analytics and machine learning capabilities at an affordable price.

Its pre-built connectors enable companies to integrate data with a cloud data warehouse like Snowflake Data Cloud, Amazon Redshift and Google BigQuery.

It can also be connected to a SQL database or simply run on CSV files stored in Amazon S3.

Dataiku Online’s flexible interface enables seamless collaboration with a broad range of business and data team users.

Businesses, as they expand, can consider switching to a cloud or on-premise installation of Dataiku with employees working on Dataiku Online’s platform.

Challenges faced by Businesses while adopting AI

While the majority of businesses are considering adopting AI, the road to companies getting acclimated to it is a bumpy one. The insights from Deloitte’s cognitive survey say that only 6 percent of business enterprises find it easy working with AI.

Here are the probable reasons why the rest 94 percent face challenges in implementing an AI solution to its enterprise.

Lack of technical expertise

Business enterprises lack expert professionals in the workforce who have a deep understanding of AI technologies and are aware of its limitations and advancements. The lack of AI know-how defers the companies for its adoption.

Expensive Professionals

Data scientists, data engineers and subject matter experts seek fat paychecks as few individuals opt to have a career in it. The strained budgets of businesses defer companies to hire talent for their project requirements.

Implementing AI is an expensive affair

Implementing AI is expensive for an organisation. Tech Moguls like Facebook, Microsoft and Google have separate budgets allocated for its implementation.

What is in it for Startups offering AI operations to SMEs?

Several startups are mushrooming in the healthcare sector and also hospitals will be seen using AI-powered diagnostic guidance systems to help patients and models to predict the spread of the virus. In the manufacturing space, companies are automating value chain processes with AI.

The use of data science, big data and artificial intelligence will gradually gain ground in the travel, tourism, and hospitality sector as the world slowly recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic.

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