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The author is Assistant Editor at BW Businessworld
In 2010, while he was in second year at IIT, Kedar Kulkarni, CEO and co-founder, HyperVerge, co-founded his first company, Lema Labs, which has become a leading robotics education company in South India. In IIT-Madras, he represented India at the International Aerial Robotics Competition (IARC) in 2009 and 2010.In 2014, he teamed up with four other IITians (IIT-Madras) Vignesh Krishnakumar (CTO), Kishore Natarajan (User Growth), Saivenkatesh Ashokkumar (Engineering) and Praveen Kumar (Product) to develop artificial intelligence which deals with teaching computers to mimic the behaviour of the human brain. The Seed FundingHyperVerge, a deep-learning startup by IIT-Madras graduates, announced that it has raised $1 million in seed funding from several US venture capital firms, including NEA, Milliways Ventures and Naya Ventures.In 2014, HyperVerge went to US to do a Kickstarter campaign, where people made them realized the prominence of their product. "We didn't visit US for seed funding, our intention was to do a kickstarter campaign in the US. We were hoping to raise about $50,000 through crowd-funding. We thought it will be just enough to build a basic app. Through conversations with mentors from IIT Madras Alumni community, we realised that the technology developed by the team was a lot more valuable than we earlier thought. It also became very clear that HyperVerge will need backing of strong and supportive VCs for us to be a serious contender in the space of deep-learning". The AppSilver, the first smartphone application developed by the company helps users automatically organise their photos, eliminate poor quality photos and duplicates, and share their best photos. Optimized self-learning algorithms produce results that are real-time and highly accurate to ensure users find the photos(s) they are looking for within just a few seconds. Kittu Kolluri, General Partner at NEA, said, “They have strong ambitions and the potential to achieve them—the technology developed by the company can span out as useful applications for consumers, enterprises and developers. We are thrilled to partner with HyperVerge to bring innovative deep-learning solutions to users and prospective partners.” "Working with a budget of under six lakh, we were able to create classifiers for identification of people, scenes, events and unique patterns in images", said Kedar Kulkarni, CEO and co-founder of HyperVerge. "We believe that our image recognition technology can be the foundation for several breakthrough consumer applications in the near future".poonam@businessworld.in(Poonam Kumar)
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The monsoon season gives us respite from summer heat and presents an opportunity to try out special dishes at home while it rains outside. There are so many special snacks and other food items that can be enjoyed during the rainy season.Eating fried and spicy food can be an offense in any other season, but pakoras and samosas are the season's delights. One can shun all the exercise, yoga, gym, and throw away diet food to indulge in monsoon treats.This year's rainfall is healthy. Experts are expecting a normal rainy season between June and September. Here is a list of some recipes worth trying this monsoon:1. The Evergreen Pakodas:- This is one of the favourite and old snacks of India. Nowadays, it is not limited to potato, onion and spinach. We have a numbers of pakoda varieties, including baby corns, chicken, brinjal, fish, ice-cream, green chili, noodles, macaroni, curd, and cabbage. Baby corn pakodas are easy to make. Take out 12 pieces of tender baby corns and chickpea flour to make a batter. Put in a bowl one cup of chickpea flour and mix it with red chilli powder, turmeric, ginger-garlic paste, garam masala, salt, baking soda and carom seeds to make a smooth paste with water. Add some baby corns and deep fry. Serve them hot with green mint chutney or tomato sauce.2. Mumbai Masala Toast Sandwich or Potato Sandwich: A famous street food of Mumbai that will give a feel of the city's rainy weather. Mumbai toast sandwich is also called masala toast sandwich and generally known as aloo toast among Delhiites. Use a few boiled potatoes, green peas, tomato, onion, butter, mustard seeds, cumin seed, onion, chopped green chillies, curry leaves, chilli-ginger to make a smooth curry. Gently apply this curry on the bread slices with butter and green chutney and place into the grill until the bread becomes crisp and golden brown. Serve this specialty with hot coffee.3. Onion Samosa: While many are familiar with aloo samosa, onion samosa is a unique delicacy. Let this monsoon be a memorable one with this recipe, which is a specialty of Hyderabad. All that you need to do to prepare this snack is just replace the potatoes with onions. Heat oil in a pan and add sliced onions and fry till they turn pinkish in color. Add turmeric powder, red chili powder and salt, and cook for two more minutes. Turn off the gas stove and put some poha (flat rice) and mix it well. Make small chapattis and fill them up with the onion mixture. Deep fry all the triangle shapes. Serve hot with tomato ketch-up.4. Masala Idlis: This staple food from south is famous for its healthiness and instant cooking. It can be presented as an attractive evening snacks by pricking them with tooth picks. Pick up 30 button idlis or four normal size idlis. Cut normal size idlis into eight even sizes. In a kadai crackle mustard seed with heated oil and add urad dal, curry leaves, milagai pod and mix it well. Instantaneously add button idlis/cut idli pieces and mix well until the milagai podi mixture coats the idlis nicely and it becomes dry. Serve it with hot coffee.5. Baked kachori: This non-fried version of kachori should suit health conscious people. In a bowl add some wheat flour, sugar, water, little oil and yeast to make dough. Leave it for an hour to get it firmed. Make patties of the dough by stuffing urad daal pithi and roll these into small chapattis. Bake all the small chapattis in a preheated oven at 160 degrees till the kachoris are crisp and brown. Serve with masal chai.- Poonam Kumarpoonam@businessworld.in
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A holy month of the intense prayer 'Ramadan' started today around the world. The Muslims in the entire world are ready to fast all through the day. They eat only after sundown and before sun rise by offering namaz prayers. However, for certain people it is a month of feast. The variety of food which has been cooked during the entire month is completely a finger licking food festival. It gives everyone an opportunity to taste the food with Islamic touch and flavours. Wondering what all are the dishes and where these will be served/cooked? Let's walk into Jama Masjid's (Old Delhi) Matia Mahal, you will get your destination with the end number of shops brightly lit up and filled with the food. Let me make a list of the awesome food of Ramadhan's month.The fast is broken by consuming suhoor/iftar meals dates, following by the fresh fruit chaat, papad, mutton korma, fried chicken, tandoori rotis, different types of tikkas, fried meat balls, mix pakodas, shahi tukda, sheer maal, butter bun, khajla sweet, sweet noodles and many other delicious taste of the world.
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Professor Robert Allison, Vice-Chancellor and President, Loughborough University, spoke about the courses provided by the university as well as benefits of tie-ups
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The Common Admission Test (CAT), a gate pass to India’s top management institutes, is set to be held in November. Tens of thousands of MBA aspirants appearing in the test, organised by the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), are clear where they want to study. But not all of them will be able to secure seats at IIMs and those unsuccessful will have to look for other options.This search to find a suitable college or institute that can match a student’s aspirations can be full of hassles. Keeping this in mind, a tech entrepreneur has set up an online platform that helps students find a good place to study.IndiaCollegeSearch is not just about MBA colleges. Over one crore students in India enter college every year and most of them need to make a choice of college based on a variety of reasons. India's first college search and application platform is ready with its list of information about 10,000 colleges across 31 courses of study.Anirudh Motwani, founder and chief executive officer of IndiaCollegeSearch, is a consumer web enthusiast with more than five years of experience in the field. He worked at Digital Satellite in the UAE, Tech Mahindra and Cvent before founding IndiaCollegeSearch. Motwani holds a bachelor's degree in software engineering from BITS Pilani, Dubai, and handles product development and marketing at ICS.In an interview, Motwani talked about his venture and how it helps students.What made you start IndiaCollegeSearch?ICS was born out of personal pain. A lack of access to decision-enabling information about colleges such as faculty, placements, fees, infrastructure and campus life meant that our awareness was limited to the 3-4 per cent colleges covered by traditional media rankings.Please give us a brief intro of ICS. How does it work for students and universities?IndiaCollegeSearch is the country's largest education platform used by over two million students and 5,000-plus colleges. Our algorithm sorts colleges on a variety of quantitative and qualitative factors to provide a student with the most relevant results. ICS also allows a student to compare colleges and get access to alumni reviews. It is currently the #1 education portal in India by views and engagement and processes over one college application every minute. Nowadays, every college has its own website, why should people come to your website? In fact, IIM alumni also provide guidance to the aspirants.At present, less than 50 per cent of colleges in India have a website. The ones that do primarily speak about vision and mission rather than offering decision-enabling parameters to students such as student-faculty ratio and in-depth placement information.In other verticals where most companies have a career page or hotels have a website, yet users prefer to use Naukri or Makemytrip where they can evaluate all options. On average, each student on ICS applies to 4-5 colleges.Do you have any tie-up with universities listed on to your website?Over 5,000 colleges and universities on ICS maintain their profiles on the platform and accept applications via the platform. Of these, more than a hundred pay ICS for products ranging from data, analytics, featured listings and an application management tool. Our clients are spread across 15 states and include almost all leading universities in India such as Chandigarh University, Symbiosis, Alliance, LBSIM and Shiv Nadar University.Who has funded ICS?It is an Indian Angel Network's (IAN) incubatee company, which has graduated from the IAN incubator and has raised investment from IAN, Asia's largest network of angel investors. This round of investment was led by IAN investor members, Vikram Kant Upadhyaya, Anupam Mittal and Varun Khurana. Vikram Kant Upadhyaya and Varun Khurana also join ICS’s board. IAN is our alma mater - helped us build ICS from a concept to a live and growing business. IAN's trust in (co-partner) Parul and me has been hugely reassuring and I am sure we will build ICS amongst IAN's star companies.What is the source of revenue?The platform is free for students (including search, comparison and application). Colleges and universities can also use the platform for free to maintain their profile, update events, respond to reviews and receive and process applications. As stated above, we earn revenue from more than a hundred colleges and universities who pay us for products ranging from data, analytics, featured listings (to increase quality and quantity of applicants) as well as our application management tool.How does ICS assist in admissions and the challenges faced by students and universities?The objective of our platform is that students should be able to get best and most updated info in one place and it should have the ability to filter. For instance, if someone wants to do Aeronautical Engineering or an MBA specifically in Entrepreneurship, ICS is the only place they can find out what colleges offer this branch. It also saves students the hassle of running around to apply to each college by offering them direct applications to over 5,000 colleges.For colleges, we have increased the visibility of a particular event or course by 300-400 per cent. We also enable them to reduce lag time and errors in processing their applications by allowing them to import or export offline applications and manage in one place.Do you charge for assistance or counselling from students or universities?No, we cannot do counselling due to the huge volume of applications via ICS (more than 1,000 a day).What is the user base of ICS? How many unique users do you have?We have 2.3 million unique users. We get over a million views every month. It is more than doubling every year.How many colleges and institutes have already enrolled on ICS?Five thousand colleges use ICS, we provide information about 12,000-plus and over 100 colleges from 15 states pay us. Under Mass Communication and Media, I did not find the name of Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC). Any particular reason for this?None that I'm aware of. We've launched this course only a few weeks ago so we might have missed it.What is the USP of ICS?Best search algorithm, updated info not available elsewhere, largest community of both students and colleges and only direct application platform in India.What are your future plans?We are hoping to make college selection a more social experience by allowing you to see where other students are applying and getting accepted - these could be people from your social network or from your city in general.poonam.bw@gmail.com
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Time is ripe for tech entrepreneurship evangelism in India and March is the season for start-up boosters. With the launch of the logo, 10,000 Start-ups on 20 March, Nasscom introduced a programme for incubating, funding and supporting 10,000 technology start-ups in India over the next ten years. Added bonus? A 5-fold increase in start-up employment.The programme, supported by Indian Angel Network and supported by Google, Microsoft and Verisign, saw Eric Schmidt, Chairman, Google Inc. giving tips to aspiring/successful CEOs.Som Mittal, President Nasscom, said, “10,000 Start-ups aims to catalyse the technology start-up ecosystem by 5X and create a significant national impact on employment, GDP, innovation and entrepreneurship indices. This is one of the largest initiatives that Nasscom is undertaking and will be vital to realise the industry vision of $300 billion by 2020”.The programme will focus on activities to foster entrepreneurship, building entrepreneurial capabilities at scale and providing robust early stage support through incubation, mentorship and angel funding.They will provide a funding of Rs 5 lakh and Rs 2 crore in the early stages of a start-up with three to four months of incubation and acceleration. There will be a start-up kit consisting of hosting credits and other technology and business tools valued over $25,000.Rajan Anandan, VP and MD, Google India said: "With over 150 million internet users and growing, the internet in India presents enormous opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship. At Google we are very excited about the possibilities that India represents and are committed to extend all the support to make this initiative a roaring success. We will work very closely with Nasscom and all the players in the ecosystem to boost the technology innovation rate in India."The three core areas the programme will focus on include:Evangelising and creating awareness about technology entrepreneurship as a preferred career option. India has an organised workforce of 30 million of which 3 million are IT professionals.Engaging deeply with aspiring entrepreneurs through digital / social channels and start-up support groups to create entrepreneurial capability at scale. The 10,000 Start-ups programme will facilitate over 7,000 start-up events such as hackathons, investor roadshows and best practices workshops across 30 cities. Tech talks and white space discussions will help young entrepreneurs identify global technology trends and needs.Incubating and facilitating funding of 10,000 start-ups through partnerships with some of the leading incubators / accelerators and angel networks in India. 10,000 Start-ups will also extend support to incubators / funding partners in the form of industry connects and co-working infrastructure and a start-up kit consisting of hosting credits and other technology and business tools valued over $25,000.Nasscom has a long history of initiatives to promote Indian start-up ecosystem through programme such as BizSpark, BizSpark Plus and the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure. "We will continue to work with the startup ecosystem of India, both on our own, and in partnership with industry bodies like Nasscom. We believe that disruptive technologies and opportunities in the Indian market supported by this collaborative initiative will propel technology entrepreneurship in India to the next level," said Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft India.Incidenatally, Techcircle DEMO India 2013, the India edition of the technology products launch platform DEMO, also started on 20 March 2013 in Bangalore with 29 plus companies showcasing their consumer and enterprise products.
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The Belkin AC1200 is the next generation router that features 802.11ac technology for speeds up to three times faster than existing 802.11n technology. As the first to market with routers that support the new 802.11ac networking standard, Belkin's AC1200 DB Wi-Fi Dual-Band AC+ Gigabit Routers provide enhanced reliability, greater speeds, and enhanced streaming capabilities. Mohit Anand, MD, Belkin India Sub-continent, said, “The Belkin AC 1200 is an important addition to our artillery of existing routers. It gives internet users across the country an opportunity to witness internet speeds like never before. Belkin products are designed keeping in mind the changing needs of the users and the Belkin AC 1200 is a great example of how the brand has taken faster, smarter and safer browsing a notch higher.” Feature Belkin AC1200 DB provides gigabit speeds wirelessly to extend network range and provide more reliable coverage at greater distances. A centerpiece to any advanced home technology ecosystem, Belkin's AC router makes it possible to stream more content to multiple devices virtually anywhere in the home and ideal for smartphones and tablets. The router works well with Wi-Fi ‘N’ and ‘G’ devices taking network integration to the next level.
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Sony's rolling out new products thick and fast. With the festive season around the corner, Sony launched five innovative products including the mammoth 84-inch LCD TV, personal 3D viewer, touch-screen laptop with Windows 8, the new flagship full-frame α99 interchangeable lens camera and Cyber-shot RX100 on 11 October. While the pre-booking starts from 20 October, the products will be available at selected stores only from November.The price ranges from Rs 34,900 for the Cyber-shot RX100 to Rs 16,99,900 for the 84-inch LCD TV.Talk about big picture, the LCD ‘4K X-Reality PRO’ picture engine is capable of up-scaling any HD content to 4K resolution, four times the resolution of today's top HDTV. It has a ’10 unit live speakers’ side speaker system, creating a virtual 5.1 surround sound field.As opposed to the large-scale cineplex experience of the 84-inch LCD TV, there is the Personal 3D Viewer HMZ-T2 with all new head-mounted, HD 2D and 3D personal display with 5.1 surround sounds with OLED screens for each eye. It gives a personal cinematic home entertainment experience.Kenichiro Hibi, Sony India MDThe alpha 99 (α99) has a translucent mirror technology and newly developed 24.3 mp full-frame Exmor CMOS sensor. The Cyber-shot RX100 has 1.0-type Exmor CMOS sensor with a resolution of 20.2 effective megapixels.With this mega offering, the company is expecting a turnover of Rs 2,850 crore with an investment of Rs 100 crore in this festive season (from September to November). “We are expecting to achieve 50 per cent increase over our last year’s festive season sales,” says Kenichiro Hibi, Sony India MD.“We have around 10,000 counters for Sony products and are aiming to introduce approximately 6,000 more to boost the sales”, he added.The company will manufacture some of the product in India, some in Japan and some in China.BRAVIA, with 27.4 per cent market share in Value (as per GFK) and Cyber-shot, with 47 per cent share in value (as per import data) have achieved No. 1 market share in the flat panel TV and compact camera markets in India. Even VAIO has obtained high market share in the consumer PC segment, with an overwhelmingly strong brand image among customers in India.
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Founded in 1994, Zicom was the first to offer home security systems in India. With operations in over five countries, 400 cities in India and over one million customers and with Rs 450 crore in annual sales, Zicom Electronic Security Systems can be seen in the popular reality show Bigg Boss season six, where it acts as the CCTV surveillance partner. Pramoud Rao, the promoter managing director of Zicom Electronic Security Systems, oversees strategic planning, local and international partnerships, acquisitions, marketing, sales, technical and branding of the security company. In an email interview with BW Online's Poonam Kumar, he explained the advantage of installing security gadgets at home. Who is the target customer for your security products? Zicom provides security as a holistic solution across all verticals, B2B, B2C and B2G (business to government). We offer services as a strategic differentiator using hardware and software only as an enabler. It's our belief that consumers, don't buy products, they buy safety. With our holistic services approach, we are able to offer consumers end-to-end solutions aimed at delivering peace of mind, at a nominal rate. Who are your clients? We have clients across various verticals. In retail, we service Bharati Walmart, Gitanjali, D' dmas, Kimaya Fashion, McDonald, William Pens. In banking we serve HSBC, Kotak Mahindra, ICICI, Saraswat Cooperative, Indus Sind, Federal, etc. Among NBFCs, we service IIFL, Mini Muthood, HDFC Ergo to name a few. Who are your competitors? When it comes to pure product sales, we compete with all the multinational companies, like Honeywell, Schneider, Bosch, Tyco etc. Since we have just started pioneering the Make Cities Safe (MCS) and e-SaaS (electronic security as a service) projects, we expect competition in the next few months. You have tied up with Tulip Infratech. Can you tell us more about the project? The Tulip Housing project located at Sohna Road, Gurgaon, is one of the biggest projects with more than 5,000 flats. We will provide security to the project via state-of-the-art technological innovations and services, including video door phones, access control cards and radio frequency identification (RFID) sensors. The apartments will have video door phones (VDP) with two-tier security that will include installation of a lobby station that will have RFID-based access card system as well. Any visitor will be required to dial the respective destination flat. The resident will be able to see the visitor in their lobby from inside their house before opening the door. The entire project will require 5,000 VDP and seven lobby camera stations with integrated card reader. A resident will simply have to show the card at the lobby panel and the main glass door will open automatically with the help of electromagnetic locks. What is the Cities Safe concept?The eco system protecting our homes today is unreliable and unsafe. The buildings where we live have practically no security. There is no authentic record of visitors, services staff, food delivery services, etc. Further, housing societies are shy about investing in security due to cost, technologies obsolescence, daily management of security devices, concerns of service and return on investments. Under Make Cities Safe project, Zicom offers CCTV surveillance systems to housing societies with all the benefits without having to own or manage it. There is neither capital investment nor the headache of what technology to purchase plus the added advantage of not having to maintain or manage the system daily. The housing society pays a monthly nominal service fee to Zicom. We launched MCS on 26 January, 2012 with a pledge to make our cities safe. Currently our system is installed in over 1,000 residential buildings in Mumbai in just six months, Zicom takes the responsibility of awareness, education and training of residents on various household safety and security aspects. What are all the products Zicom has to offer? a) Home Alarm Systems - Door Sensors, Motion Sensor, Glass Break Sensors and Gas Leak Sensor; b) Finger Print Locks; c) Video Door Phone ranging from a 4 inch screen to a wide variety of 7 inch screens including Touchpad Technology; d) CCTV Cameras - IP based DIY kits are also available. How beneficial are the security products for household system? Nowadays, families are nuclear in nature, with both parents working and children being left to be taken care by others. Our dependence on outsourced resources has increased drastically and so has the crime conducted by these "dependable" outsourced resources. It has therefore become imperative for us to protect what we value the most. The advantage of installing security gadgets at home is that they make you and your loved ones feel safe. While CCTV is reactive in nature and would only be able to provide circumstantial evidence of any wrongdoing, alarm systems are more of an active measure that detect unauthorised intrusion and deters the criminal from carrying out his intentions. The alarm can be raised locally as well as remotely. What is Zicom's most popular product line in India? Our hot selling products are our video range- video door phones, low-end CCTV cameras and digital recorders. What is your business plan post sale of integration business to Schneider Electric?Zicom has always been driving the markets with pioneering initiatives. We pioneered the category of Electronic Security in 1994. Currently, we are pioneering a new concept called e-SaaS (Electronic Security as a Service) and another new concept called Make Cities Safe (MCS). Both concepts are pathbreaking and unique in many ways. We have no competition in e-SaaS and MCS. What are the services offered under e-SaaS? Under E SaaS, Zicom Command Centre is the focus of attention. The current services we offer are :- Remote monitoring and management of Fire Alarm SystemRemote monitoring and management of Intruder Alarm System MAaaS - Managed Alert as a Service ( Monitors the health of Digital Recorders )Time and Attendance on Cloud People counting solutions for retail stores What is Zicom's new business strategy? Zicom is re-entering the retail security business by offering our products in shop-in-shop formats, large format stores, electronic retail stores, e commerce portals etc. There is now greater focus on brand building, expanding our services offering with geographical spread and profitable growth.
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Nokia was back with a bang in the Indian market on 23 October as the phonemaker launched the Lumia 510 in Delhi. Keeping the Lumia 510 somewhere between the low-end Asha smartphone series and the high-end Lumia series, the 510 will cost around Rs 11,000. And Nokia is banking on the 510 to help it regain its market."We want to regain our smartphone market with the Lumia series. And we know we have the right ingredients to regain our niche and we have sold over 10 million Lumias all over the globe in the three quarters," said Vipul Mehrotra, Director and Head, Smartphone Devices, Nokia India.The Nokia Lumia 520 will be available in the market in the first week of November and the company is promoting as a Diwali gift for youth in the 18-24-year age group.Lumia 510 is a entry-level Windows Phone 7.5 with 5mp autofocus camera, 4-inch screen, Snapdragon S1 processor, 256 MB RAM, Nokia Maps, Nokia Drive, 1300 mAh battery, 4GB internal memory, 4GB internal memory with 7GB of free SkyDrive cloud storage (It has no space for SD card). "With the Nokia Lumia 510 we continue to meet our commitment to bring Windows Phone to new, lower price points," said MehrotraThe smartphone will come with a 3-month unlimited Nokia Music and MixRadio offering. Through MixRadio, consumers can stream music directly to the phone, with the ability to listen to personalised radio channels, including offline listening. "MixRadio servie station is the first personalised radio channels that no other device has," added Mehrotra.poonam(dot)bw(at)gmail(dot)com
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