The programme will provide a platform to developers and entrepreneurs in smaller cities to hear from experts and gain access to direct mentoring and support from Google.

Google aims to reach over 10,000 developers and entrepreneurs this year alone through the programme.

The company will also share product usage insights and help the entrepreneurs build solutions across areas like agri-tech, healthcare, transportation, education and sanitation, among others.

The focus will also be on developing mobile first solutions with strong offline and language capabilities.

Google will take the initiative to cities like Pune, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Kochi, Indore, Nagpur, Nashik, Madurai, Kanpur and Chennai.

There are growing number of entrepreneurs in smaller Indian cities who are focusing on building solutions that caters to the real needs of India, Google India Programme Manager Lead Karthik Padmanabhan said in a statement.

“Through this initiative, we want to bring the best of Google under one programme and join forces with them to help create solutions that serves the needs of a billion Indians,” he added.—PTI

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The managing director of Shanghai-based startup incubator Bits and Bites was at the TED conference in Vancouver on Wednesday as part of a mission to promote sustainably-sourced food and healthful diets in a country of more than a billion people.

A startup about to bear fruit at the incubator is focused on making noodles from silkworm powder, which she described as a sustainable protein source that also happened to be a by-product of the textile industry.

“It is a fantastic ingredient,” Ho said, adding that silkworm noodles have passed her personal taste test.

The startup is working with chefs and getting consumer feedback to refine the noodle recipe.

“Silkworm has a fishy taste, so we are trying to get it just right,” Ho said.

The startup is working on a funny, winning name while it refines the silkworm noodle recipe.

About 18 months ago Ho and her team went public with an online farmers market to connect China’s growing middle class with more healthful foods grown with environmental sustainability in mind.

Since starting out with slim pickings, the online farmers market has grown to offer a wide array of produce from local growers, and Ho’s team even found an island where the cows graze freely on grass.

The website boasts 40,000 subscribers.

“We really have a sense of urgency,” Ho said, referring to a need to address troubling rates of obesity, diabetes and other lifestyle-related health woes.

“People have more money to spend on food, but they don’t know how to eat well.”

The small pool of startups at Bits and Bites includes one devoted to drinkable salads and another focused on converting old cargo shipping containers into hydroponic gardens.

“Why drive a slow food movement in a country where it is almost a crime to take it slow?” Ho asked rhetorically during an on-stage talk at TED.

“Because we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”—AFP

Image: AFP

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A magnet for regional entrepreneurs seeking to start or scale businesses, the UAE has always been known for its ease of business and open door policies. This is particularly true for businesses in the e-commerce sector, where the country has given rise to blockbuster successes such as Souq.com.

InvestUAE’s new report highlights sector specific opportunities in the UAE, proven best practices, successful examples as well as resources for those exploring building or expanding their startups in the UAE and investors with lists of funds and up-to-date prospects.

UAE provides a business-friendly environment with low taxes, favorable regulations, strong government backing of SMEs as well as numerous co-working spaces, incubators, accelerators, training programs, and networking opportunities to get new businesses off the ground.

According to Saud Al Nowais, Trade and Commercial Counselor in Washington, D.C., “enterprising US investors looking to explore the UAE will find numerous startups that are set up to succeed by strong underlying economic currents and a supportive ecosystem with a demand for venture capital and attractive valuations for promising ventures and access intriguing opportunities in the wider Middle East Africa South Asia (MEASA) region”.

During a recent launch of InvestUAE’s report, US-UAE Business Council President Danny Sebright noted, “These opportunities are only increasing as attitudes and philosophies toward venture capital rapidly shift for the better and as legal and business reforms accelerate in the UAE and the wider Gulf region.”

A complete copy of the “Entrepreneurial Emirates” report can be found here. Additional information can also be found at a new website, www.investuae.com, which provides a high-level overview of the benefits the UAE provides for both startups and investors.—WAM

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Azuri Technologies’ entry level solar system – for which customers pay a one-off installation fee, then use scratch cards or mobile phone payments to top up on a weekly or monthly basis – provides eight hours of lighting each day.

Having power at home for the first time encourages customers to also buy mobile phones, radios and televisions, giving them regular access to the media and the internet, said Simon Bransfield-Garth, chief executive officer of UK-based Azuri.

“This is about so much more than just providing light,” Bransfield-Garth told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. “It is about changing expectations, raising aspirations, and empowering people to become part of the knowledge economy.

“One thing you can be sure of is that once people have solar power in their lives, they’ll never go back to kerosene,” he said.

Some 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa – nearly two-thirds of the population – are estimated to be living without access to the main electricity grid, one in 10 of whom are using off-grid clean energy, said the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

Home solar systems not only provide electricity to hard-to-reach households, but do so at a far lower cost than using diesel or kerosene for energy.

Swapping kerosene for home solar energy can cut African families’ spending on lighting to two percent from nine percent of their household income, according to a 2016 report by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), a UK-based think-tank.

The pay-as-you go approach for home solar systems has proved successful as mobile money services are rapidly growing across Africa, allowing those without bank accounts to use their phones for everything from receiving remittances to paying bills.

While upfront costs are high compared to traditional fuels, the cost of producing power from solar mini-grids is expected to fall by at least 60 percent in the next 20 years.

“Solar has the power to completely transform the nature of the rural economy in sub-Saharan Africa,” Bransfield-Garth said.

CONNECTING FUTURE GENERATIONS

Rather than charge for the solar system and accessories such as radios upfront – which would be unaffordable for many people – Azuri offers its services on a pay as you go basis, with the users ultimately owning the equipment after about 18 months.

“People start off small with our service, but they soon want more technology – to be more connected,” Bransfield-Garth said.

“By being online more often, and following the media, people can really boost their businesses,” he said, adding how a person with satellite television in their household could make money by charging others to watch films or live sports matches.

Azuri also plans to launch pay-as-you go solar irrigation systems to help farmers grow more, and higher-value, crops.

Such ambitions may be restricted by the limited capacity of solar home systems – which are unable to supply enough power for heating, cooking and small businesses, according to Oxfam.

A fledgling industry just a few years ago, off-grid solar technology is now estimated to provide power to at least 500,000 households in East Africa, according to IRENA.

Industry experts predict that figure will soar continent-wide as solar costs tumble and West African nations invest more in renewable energy to catch up with countries in the east.

Solar home systems have fallen in cost by as much as 80 percent since 2010, while investments in off-grid solar systems globally grew by 15 times between 2012 and 2015, with $276 million spent on them in 2015, according to data from IRENA.

Renewable energy could therefore be key to helping sub-Saharan Africa meet a global goal of providing universal access to electricity by 2030, experts say.—Thomson Reuters Foundation

Image: Thomson Reuters Foundation

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What could pass for a dystopian vision of the workplace is almost routine at the Swedish startup hub Epicenter. The company offers to implant its workers and startup members with microchips the size of grains of rice that function as swipe cards: to open doors, operate printers, or buy smoothies with a wave of the hand.

The injections have become so popular that workers at Epicenter hold parties for those willing to get implanted.

“The biggest benefit I think is convenience,” said Patrick Mesterton, co-founder and CEO of Epicenter. As a demonstration, he unlocks a door by merely waving near it. “It basically replaces a lot of things you have, other communication devices, whether it be credit cards or keys.”

The technology in itself is not new. Such chips are used as virtual collar plates for pets. Companies use them to track deliveries. It’s just never been used to tag employees on a broad scale before. Epicenter and a handful of other companies are the first to make chip implants broadly available.

And as with most new technologies, it raises security and privacy issues. While biologically safe, the data generated by the chips can show how often an employee comes to work or what they buy. Unlike company swipe cards or smartphones, which can generate the same data, a person cannot easily separate themselves from the chip.

“Of course, putting things into your body is quite a big step to do and it was even for me at first,” said Mesterton, remembering how he initially had had doubts.

“But then on the other hand, I mean, people have been implanting things into their body, like pacemakers and stuff to control your heart,” he said. “That’s a way, way more serious thing than having a small chip that can actually communicate with devices.”

Epicenter, which is home to more than 100 companies and some 2,000 workers, began implanting workers in January 2015. Now, about 150 workers have them. A company based in Belgium also offers its employees such implants, and there are isolated cases around the world where tech enthusiasts have tried this out in recent years.

The small implants use Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, the same as in contactless credit cards or mobile payments. When activated by a reader a few centimeters (inches) away, a small amount of data flows between the two devices via electromagnetic waves. The implants are “passive,” meaning they contain information that other devices can read, but cannot read information themselves.

Ben Libberton, a microbiologist at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute, says hackers could conceivably gain huge swathes of information from embedded microchips. The ethical dilemmas will become bigger the more sophisticated the microchips become.

“The data that you could possibly get from a chip that is embedded in your body is a lot different from the data that you can get from a smartphone,” he says. “Conceptually you could get data about your health, you could get data about your whereabouts, how often you’re working, how long you’re working, if you’re taking toilet breaks and things like that.”

Libberton said that if such data is collected, the big question remains of what happens to it, who uses it, and for what purpose.

So far, Epicenter’s group of cyborgs doesn’t seem too concerned.

“People ask me; ‘Are you chipped?’ and I say; ‘Yes, why not,”‘ said Fredric Kaijser, 47, the chief experience officer at Epicenter. “And they all get excited about privacy issues and what that means and so forth. And for me it’s just a matter of I like to try new things and just see it as more of an enabler and what that would bring into the future.”

The implants have become so popular that Epicenter workers stage monthly events where attendees have the option of being “chipped” for free.

That means visits from self-described “body hacker” Jowan Osterlund from Biohax Sweden who performs the “operation.”

He injects the implants — using pre-loaded syringes — into the fleshy area of the hand, just next to the thumb. The process lasts a few seconds, and more often than not there are no screams and barely a drop of blood. “The next step for electronics is to move into the body,” he says.

Sandra Haglof, 25, who works for Eventomatic, an events company that works with Epicenter, has had three piercings before, and her left hand barely shakes as Osterlund injects the small chip.

“I want to be part of the future,” she laughs.—AP

Image: AP

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A dipstick survey of bootstrapping 2,925 internet startups by the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) suggested that this shortage of funds persists despite nearly 74 per cent of them leveraging mobile technologies to scale up their businesses.

The survey was conducted in the cities of Jaipur, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune and New Delhi.

The survey found that while a majority 74 per cent of the respondents are leveraging mobile technologies to boost their businesses, 12 per cent of the respondents had completely mobile-based products.

“Very few of the respondents had any kind of formal funding in the form of business grants, loans or lines of credit, leave alone Angel or VC (venture capital) funding…it is no surprise that funding is considered to be the biggest challenge,” the survey said.

“Thus, it is imperative that the government should start funding the startups through approved incubators, for the startup ecosystem and the apps economy to grow in India,” it added.

Thirty-five per cent of the respondents also mentioned that “manpower” was a major challenge for these startups in their effort to scale up.

“Thus, there should be special focus of skilling and retraining, and the government should create a separate skills development council aimed at skills training particularly for the digital industry,” IAMAI survey suggested.

The survey pointed out that mobile is the key platform for new business generation (customer acquisition) and customer retention and transaction completion, in terms of finalising the deal.

“Digital payment is another major factor for going mobile. Many startups are in the field of mobile-specific services or into Internet of Things (IoT)-based products, like wearables and other gadgets, and hence completely based on the mobile platform for their products,” the survey said.—IANS

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The existence of the company was reported by Wall Street Journal on Monday and Musk later confirmed it in a tweet.

The company, registered as a “medical research” firm, will develop so-called “neural lace” technology which would implant tiny electrodes into the brain, BBC reported on Tuesday.

The technique could be used to improve memory or give humans added artificial intelligence.download film Mine now

More details about the firm would be made public next week via WaitButWhy — a site known for illustrating its lengthy post with stick figure drawings.

“Long Neuralink piece coming out on @waitbutwhy in about a week. Difficult to dedicate the time, but existential risk is too high not to,” Musk tweeted on Tuesday.

Instead of focussing on upgrading ordinary human brainpower at first, Neuralink will explore how brain interfaces might alleviate the symptoms of dangerous and chronic medical conditions including epilepsy and severe depressive disorder, tech website Techcrunch.com reported.—IANS

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In the latest in a streak of damaging news for the ridesharing giant, Uber came forward about its “Greyball” software after a New York Times report which said the program aimed to deceive authorities in markets around the world.

According to an Uber statement, the tool was used in cities where it was not banned from operating, and the main intent was to protect drivers from disruption by competitors using the smartphone application to interfere instead of summon legitimate rides.

“This program denies ride requests to fraudulent users who are violating our terms of service,” an Uber spokesperson said in an email reply to an AFP inquiry.

“Whether that’s people aiming to physically harm drivers, competitors looking to disrupt our operations, or opponents who collude with officials on secret ‘stings’ meant to entrap drivers.”

Uber said the program was used in locations where drivers feared for their safety, and “rarely” to avoid law enforcement.

The New York Times report, which said Greyball was used in several countries, cited interviews with current and former employees whose names were cloaked.

The report said Greyball was part of a broader program created to reveal people trying to us Uber in “violation of terms of service” and had the blessing of the company’s legal team.

According to the report, the program raised ethical and potential concerns, and had been a closely guarded secret in Uber’s toolbox as it expanded around the world, clashing with regulators and traditional taxi groups.

Data collected about agents of regulatory authorities was used by the software to “Greyball” them, or mark them as city officials, according to the Times.

Greyballed officials trying to use Uber would have rides cancelled and be shown fake versions of the app, complete with maps showing icons of ghost cars appearing to be on the move, the report said.

Tactics used included identifying locations of government offices and then making them off-limits with “geofences” erected in mapping software, according to the Times.

Ways of figuring out which users might be regulators or police included checking whether credit cards used for accounts were linked to governments or police credit unions, the report said.

“Uber clearly lost its moral compass if it ever had one,” entrepreneur and journalist John Battelle said in a Twitter post referring to the Greyball news.

The “Greyball” disclosure comes as accusations of sexism, cutthroat management, and a toxic work environment have Uber trying to pull its image out of a skid as competition revs in the on-demand ride market.

Uber chief Travis Kalanick this week apologized, acknowledging that “I must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up,” after a video showed him verbally abusing a driver for the service.

The incident, which circulated on social media, was another hit for the image of the global ridesharing giant, which faces accusations of sexual harassment and a lawsuit contending it misappropriated Google’s self-driving car technology.

In the message to employees later, Kalanick wrote “To say that I am ashamed is an extreme understatement.”

Uber is one of the largest investor-backed startups with a valuation estimated at $68 billion, and has operations in dozens of countries and hundreds of cities, even as it battles regulators and an established taxi industry.

Kalanick also faced criticism for agreeing to be part of a business advisory panel for President Donald Trump, but then quit the panel amid a campaign by Trump opponents to delete the Uber application.—Reuters

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The history of the company, recently re-branded just Snap in an effort to be seen as being about more than one hit smartphone application, fits into Silicon Valley lore with wealth for its creators as well as controversy regarding who gets credit for its genesis.

The startup about to debut as a public company, however, is based hundreds of miles from Silicon Valley in the Los Angeles beach town of Venice, known for surfers, body builders, bathing-suit clad roller skaters, and sun-seeking tourists.

The image of Snap’s 26-year-old co-founder and chief Evan Spiegel is far from that of a geek.

Media dives into Spiegel’s life paint a picture of a privileged childhood in the posh Pacific Palisades community of Southern California, a penchant for parties, and a celebrity fiancee, model Miranda Kerr.

Details from divorce documents filed by his parents, lawyers educated at prestigious US universities, included a then 17-year-old Spiegel arguing a need for an allowance of about $2,000 monthly to support his accustomed lifestyle.

He played his parents against one another to get a new BMW car, according to court paperwork.

At a conference at Stanford University in 2013, Spiegel acknowledge growing up with advantages.

“I am a young, white, educated male,” Spiegel said.

“Life isn’t fair.. It’s not about working hard. It’s about working the system.”

He told of family connections making it possible for him to attend Stanford classes with Silicon Valley stars, and to get a job at software company Intuit.

His eclectic array of professional experiences includes an internship at energy drink company Red Bull; lab work in biomedical computing, and teaching in South Africa.

He wound up majoring in product design, but dropped out shortly before graduation time to devote himself to a nascent Snapchat startup.

If Spiegel is the public face of Snap, Robert “Bobby” Murphy may well be considered its brain.

Snap’s technical director is 28 years old, and he is credited for the software that made Snapchat a hit.

Few details have surfaced about Murphy. According to a Forbes story, his parents were local government workers in the city of Berkeley across the bay from San Francisco.

Murphy’s mother was said to be originally from the Philippines.

The official version of Snap’s genesis is that Spiegel and Murphy were Stanford students who became friends in a fraternity and then invented Snapchat.

“We just thought it might be cool to make photos disappear,” Spiegel said at the Stanford conference in 2013.

However, a third fraternity brother, Reggie Brown, filed a lawsuit claiming that he was ousted from the startup after coming up with the idea — the ghost-shaped logo and the original “Picaboo” name for the application.

Resolution of that case was not made public, but an apparent reference was noted in regulatory filings for Snap’s initial public offering of shares.

Snap paid $157.4 million in 2014 to an unidentified “individual” to settle a legal dispute over intellectual property issues, the filing said.

That payout came the year after Spiegel and Murphy rejected a $3 billion offer from leading social network Facebook to buy Snapchat.

Forbes now estimates Spiegel and Murphy to be work about $4 billion each.

Following a Silicon Valley trend, going public will not reduce the two co-founders’ control over the company. Shares being sold to investors give ownership stakes but no voting rights.

“Picaboo” messaging application launched in 2011, was quickly renamed Snapchat and caught fire with teens who could embrace spontaneity without worrying images or messages would linger to haunt them.

A side effect was that it became seen as a “sexting” app.

By the end of last year, Snap boasted some 161 million people were using it daily.

In what could well be a first for an IPO regulatory filing, Snap refers to “sexting,” but only to stress that its smartphone application is for “much more” than sending risque pictures that vanish after being viewed.

Snap has announced its intends to “reinvent the camera,” and has been expanding availability of its second product — Spectacles sunglasses with built in cameras that synch to the smartphone application.

The company contends it can generate healthy and sustainable revenue with advertising aimed at its users, the bulk of whom are in a coveted demographic of people 18 to 34 years old.

Snap conceded in IPO paperwork that there is no guarantee it will attract older audiences.

Underscoring that point, in a way, was that the Snap road-show pitching the company to prospective investors included a video explaining how to use the application.—AFP

Image: Reuters

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The idea was explored during the recently-held Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2017 at IIT Kharagpur under ‘Edupreneurship’ (entrepreneurial venture targeting the education segment), the institute said in a statement on Thursday.

“It is true that we can Google any information today, but NDL can fetch resources according to your educational need,” said Partha Pratim Das of the Computer Science and Engineering department, who is leading the Ministry of Human Resource Development’s NDL project.

Das said that apps, services and platform scan be built not only to help students, teachers and parents but also for the school, university and college managements.

“Start-ups can use NDL resources, which are free to access. Once the product is up and running, the start-ups winll have to give NDL usage-based royalty. NDL too would showcase the start-up on its website as content-sharing partners, thereby giving them mileage,” Das added.—IANS

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