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Axilor Ventures today announced that Kris Gopalakrishnan will be taking over as its Non-Executive Chairman. Kris Gopalakrishnan, co-founder of Infosys and its former Vice-Chairman, is recognized as a global business and technology leader. Kris was selected to Thinkers 50, an elite list of global business thinkers, for the year 2009. A Padma Bhushan awardee, he was elected president of India''s apex industry chamber Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) for 2013-14, and served as one of the co-chairs of the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2014. He serves on the Board of Governors of IIT-Madras, IIM Bangalore and is the Chairman for the Board of Governors of IIIT-Bangalore.   On taking over as the Chairman, Kris Gopalakrishnan said, ‘Axilor Ventures helps startup...

Uber a US-based cab aggregator service, will start a car-leasing program with features that could be more favorable for short-term drivers.  Uber says the pilot program will initially run in California, Maryland and Georgia. It's first major revamp of the program since the company introduced it in November 2013. (more…)

With the recent announcement made by Uber to invest 1 bn in India and setting up an excellence centre in Telangana with the support of the government, it could be hard for the company to take over Indian market, given the recent surge in Ola's market share. (more…)

After a three-year stint, Mukund Mohan, Director of Microsoft Ventures is leaving the organization run by the Redmond-based software giant. In his personal blog he wrote, 3 years ago to the month, I was at the crossroads. Having moved back to India and grown, then sold BuzzGain, I had started my next startup and had started to find a way to grow a new business. I was spending more time helping entrepreneurs and was interested in starting a new company, but I realized that having a bigger impact is what I was seeking. I met with Amaresh, at an event called Think Next in May and he was a very nice, humble and wicked smart guy was my impression. When he started talking to me about the Microsoft Accelerator program, I was keen to help. He then offered to get me on board full time and...

Indian e-commerce shopping giant Paytm has bagged title sponsorship rights of Indian cricket team for all series played at home till 2019, tweets BCCI. Paytm will pay Rs 2.42 crore for every international match hosted by BCCI. Approximately eighty-four matches are scheduled in the calendar so far. The first home series will be against South Africa starting September. BCCI welcomes @Paytm as the new home series title sponsor pic.twitter.com/y1XHaDvVI6 — BCCI (@BCCI) July 30, 2015 .@Paytm gets title sponsorship rights for India home series for 4 years. Winning bid was at a price of INR 203.28 Cr pic.twitter.com/ie4yhaLFFp — BCCI (@BCCI) July 30, 2015 "I am thankful to @Paytm for their interest and faith in Indian Cricket and welcome them on board" - @ianuragthakurpic.t...

Indian popular instant messaging app "Hike Messenger" (owned by Bharti SoftBank) has decided to launch a new web version which will let you seamlessly sync your messages on the desktop browser. "The news was made official by the CEO of Hike, Kavin Bharti Mittal on his Twitter page, along with a screenshot which reveals how the feature works. It seems like this is still in Beta, judging by the screenshot. In just a week since the acquisition, images of the said feature have made their way to the web". It seems Hike looking to give a tough competition to WhatsApp's in web app series. Now Hike users for those on the computer to message their contacts without having to take out their phones. Now we have to look, the authenticated process of user's account with Hike Web will  be the s...

Matti Makkonen, widely considered as the "father of SMS" after developing the idea of sending messages via mobile networks has died from illness at the age of 63. Matti Makkonen (16 April 1952 – 26 June 2015) was a Finnish engineer in the field of mobile communications. He was employed (among others) by Nokia Networks and Tele Finland, as well as Finnet Oy. Matti Makkonen played a leading role in creating the mobile communication unit of what is today TeliaSonera. He was quick to downplay his involvement and saw SMS as a "joint effort" between many people (Friedham Hillebrand developed the 160-character format in 1985, for example), but much of the initial credit belongs to him. In 2008, Matti Makkonen was awarded The Economist Innovation Award in the computing and telecommunications categ...