tech | Pixr8 News

31May By AdityaNo Comments

FUNDING

Vahanalytics Raises $200000 Seed Funding From Venture Catalysts

Vahanalytics, a tech-driven startup aimed at making Indian roads safer and better has raised USD 200, 000 through Venture Catalysts, India's first Seed Investment and Innovation Platform. The investment was led by prominent VCats angels Vikram Lakhotia and Anirudh Damani. With driverless smart cars increasingly being explored as a viable medium to improve the on-road transportation efficiency by tech giants around the world, the investment into Vahanalytics is aimed at addressing a global problem on a local scale. Speaking on the investment, Dr. Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, Co-founder, Venture Catalysts, said, "Data analytics in transportation using telematics is the need of the hour. The space is extremely exciting and opens the door for almost limitless possibilities for implementation. The...

mChamp, Bags Rs 5 Crore Seed Fund From MoMagic Technologies

26May By AdityaNo Comments

FUNDING

mChamp, Bags Rs 5 Crore Seed Fund From MoMagic Technologies

Delhi-based mChamp Entertainments, a celebrity and entertainment-driven contest app, bags Rs 5 crore seed funding from MoMagic Technologies, a leading mobile Internet market and app ecosystem player. mChamp, a fund-driven contest app, in the past 9 months of its launch has already conducted 50 'Celebrity Meet and Greets' for contest(s) players. And the app is witnessing a 15% growth month-on-month, in terms of tie-ups and partnerships with leading FMCG brands, celebrity shows (TV/concerts) and productions houses. Founder, Paresh Shah, mChamp Entertainments, said, "We are indeed very honored and happy to bag the very first round of seed funding from MoMagic, a Foxconn and MediaTek invested company. Along with being seed funded, we believe our mission of: mChamp being the No 1 Cele...

Tatas Tech Arm GTIO Will Commercially Launch 4 Products in Next 2yrs

22May By NitishNo Comments

News

Tatas Tech Arm GTIO Will Commercially Launch 4 Products in Next 2yrs

Tata Sons Group Technology and Innovation Office (GTIO) will roll out four high-tech products in the next two years. GTIO is working on four specific products -- a smartwatch for industrial workers being tested on Tata Steels workforce, a drone-based pesticide spraying system, a factory and fleet analytics system, and an advanced material called graphene. "All the projects that we undertake will take three to five years from start to finish... You will see a rollout in the next two years," Tata Sons Group Technology Officer Gopichand Katragadda said. The salt-to-software conglomerate is the biggest spender on research and development among the large companies in the country. Last year, GTIO had spent 2.7 per cent of its USD 110 billion revenue on R&D and innovation. The incuba...

Four things to expect from upcoming Google I/O conference

16May By AnkitaNo Comments

Tech

Four things to expect from upcoming Google I/O conference

Internet giant Google's I/O (input/output and 'Innovation in the Open') conference is around the corner and developers around the world are awaiting to discover the latest version of the Android operating systems. Google may unveil a modular smartphone this year. According to reports, the tech giant is developing an environmental friendly and cost-effective smartphone with a customizable design, made up of various small blocks containing the different components (processor, memory, camera, speaker, 3G chip, etc.). The 'Nexus 6P' smartphone is expected to have great display, battery life and camera, the Verge reports. Secondly, Google is also expected to unveil virtual reality on similar lines of the Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Samsung. The...

Infosys Co-founder Nandan Nilekani Invests in RailYatri.in

2May By PriyankaNo Comments

FUNDING

Infosys Co-founder Nandan Nilekani Invests in RailYatri.in

Nandan Nilekani, Infosys co-founder and former chairman of UIDAI invested an undisclosed investment in RailYatri.in. Founded by Kapil Raizada, Sachin Saxena, and Manish Rathi, Railyatri is a web and mobile app-based startup that provides real-time and analytics-based travel-related information to passengers. The startup claims to serve 2 million users a month. Helion Ventures, Omidyar Networks and Blume Ventures has also invested an undisclosed sum along with Nilekani. “What excites me about RailYatri is the fact that this is a new-age product made by Indians for Indians,” said Nilekani in a statement. “The RailYatri app, which intelligently harnesses the power of smartphones, data and mobile payments, has a huge opportunity of impacting the lives of millions of travellers.” “...

6 Percent Levy Tax Will Hurt Indian Tech Startups: Report

29Apr By PriyankaNo Comments

News

6 Percent Levy Tax Will Hurt Indian Tech Startups: Report

The proposed 6 percent levy on online advertisement revenue of foreign companies will "severely raise the cost of doing business" for Indian tech startups, industry body IAMAI said today. "Tech startups are already paying 14.5 per cent service tax to use these ad platforms, which amounts to an estimated Rs 906 crore of taxes to government. With GST implementation, the tax rate is likely to move to 18 per cent bringing more taxes to the government from this segment," Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) said in a statement. Considering that the incidence of 6 per cent levy will be passed on to the advertisers by the ad platforms, the total burden to SMEs and tech startups on account of equalisation levy would be an additional burden of Rs 429 crore, a massive hike of nearly 50...

Tech Mahindra To Launch ‘Startup Garage’ For Its In-House Entrepreneurs

6Mar By Press Trust of IndiaNo Comments

News

Tech Mahindra To Launch ‘Startup Garage’ For Its In-House Entrepreneurs

MUMBAI: In a first for a corporate entity, Tech Mahindra is all set to create a 'startup garage' for its in-house entrepreneurs. "Within our set-up, we have a number of companies that is working already. But we are about to launch a garage soon ...ours will be the first corporate garage for the startups," TechM chief strategy officer and head of the 'growth factories' initiative Jagdish Mitra told PTI recently. At present, as many as 15 businesses have emerged from among the over 1.05 lakh TechM employees and they work as part of the 'growth factories' set-up, Mitra said. He said all the businesses which are getting incubated will be physically housed together in the garage and doing so will give them independence to operate. Mentoring the businesses will also be ea...

IT, Start-ups Get Less Attention in Budget 2016: Nasscom

1Mar By PriyankaNo Comments

News

IT, Start-ups Get Less Attention in Budget 2016: Nasscom

The union budget for 2016-17 was a mixed bag for the Indian IT industry and start-ups, which witnessed very few proposals with caveats, the industry’s apex body Nasscom said. “The budget is a mixed for the technology and services sector, as clarification and simplification boost business and more technology adoption in governance is a step in right direction,” Nasscom said in a statement. “In the backdrop of global economic volatility, there are unmet expectations on policy announcements that enable ease of doing business for our sector. The budget partially covers our wish list on policy bottlenecks, including ease of business, nurturing start-ups, products and e-commerce sector,” Nasscom chairman B.V.R. Mohan Reddy said. On Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s stress on leveraging techn...

How NewsBytes got 1500 downloads in 4 days with their innovative campaign!

1Mar By Sonia MotwaniNo Comments

Story

How NewsBytes got 1500 downloads in 4 days with their innovative campaign!

Valentines week this year was filled with campaigns of e-commerce companies giving away discounts. In the middle of all the mess we came across an innovative campaign by a news technology company- NewsBytes, with a theme ‘Intelligence is the new sexy’. Pixr8 got in touch with the founders to understand how this worked out! NewsBytes is a Gurgaon based news technology company, started by Sumedh Chaudhry, Shikha Chaudhry, Romesh Khaddar, and Sripriya Yegneswaran. They call themselves a bunch of geeks who discuss start-ups when relatives talk about marriages, who get excited when they see a 3D printed iPhone case, who have strong opinions about random things they read on Quora and who think they are la-di-da entrepreneurs. “A lot of entrepreneurs say that you should be able to measure eve...

First Indian Unicorn Startup is Going to Be Profitable in 2016

8Feb By reutersNo Comments

News

First Indian Unicorn Startup is Going to Be Profitable in 2016

Indian restaurant search and food delivery service Zomato, one of only a handful of Indian start-ups to succeed abroad, said on Monday. It had broken even in key markets including India and is on track to make a profit as early as June next year. The result comes as Zomato seeks $200 million in funding, a source close to the group said, in an increasingly tough environment for start-ups. Zomato, which makes money through advertising and its delivery service, said it had hit operational break-even in India, the UAE, Indonesia and three other markets in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Together, they account for the three-fourths of the company's revenue, co-founder and chief executive Deepinder Goyal told Reuters. "The fundamental model of our business is that in mature markets we...

IIT Graduates Find a Convenient Way To Maintain Your Homes

8Feb By PriyankaNo Comments

Story

IIT Graduates Find a Convenient Way To Maintain Your Homes

All Indians have faced situations where we need urgent services for our homes, be it an electrician, a plumber, someone to look under the hood of the car or just clean our carpets. Usually, the process is tedious where we ask our acquaintances for references or go to the Yellow pages or Google it and take our chances. Then comes the agony of waiting for an unpunctual repairman and not knowing his reliability and background apart from his charges. Enough to send a shiver up the spine. The Solution: Aurospaces A Passionate IITian has brought the best of tech and built a common platform for a variety of services to ease the process of maintaining our homes and make it a pleasurable experience. With a deep understanding of what a common Indian goes through in accessing basic services, ...

4Jan By AnkitaNo Comments

INDIA

Indian Minister Nitin Gadkari to Automakers: Develop Tech For Engines

New Delhi- (PTI) Calling upon automakers to develop homegrown technologies to build environment-friendly car engines under the Make in India drive, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari today said encouraging such endeavours will help them save on huge royalty costs. "Even today despite more than 90 per cent indigenisation some of our car manufactures have been paying royalties for technology of over Rs 4,000 crore every year. They will not be required to do so if they develop indigenous technologies," Road Transport and Highways Minister Gadkari told PTI. The automakers should encourage indigenous technologies under Make in India drive, the minister said while stressing that nation is battling with the problem of pollution and this could be their contribution to check it. Citing example o...