Your Tech Story

Annasha

Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more

parallel wireless

Rajesh Mishra’s Parallel Wireless is the future of the telecom industry

Leave a Comment / Founder, Tech Story / By

Parallel Wireless is the only company in the telecom sector to use OpenRAN architecture and build up a software-based solution for All G (2G/3G/4G/5G). It is the first company to date to challenge the biggest telecom companies and design solutions for all networks. Rajesh Mishra, founder of Parallel Wireless says that the OpenRAN ecosystem helps in cost-saving and easy to maintain as Wi-Fi at the same time. Founded in 2012, this US-based start-up has engaged in business with more than fifty leading network operators around the world. And, companies like Vodafone and Telefonica has named it the best performing vendor at this age. The products of Parallel Wireless has won many awards and recognition as network operators understand the importance and flexibility of open virtualized RAN solutions.

About Rajesh Mishra

Rajesh Mishra is an alumnus of IIT Roorkee who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer science in 1993. Rajesh started his career as Software Engineer at Hughes Network System and switched to Tellabs after a couple of years. He worked at many companies which include Sonus Networks, Cedarpoint Communications, Whaleback Systems, Powerwave Cognition, etc. Before founding Parallel Wireless he was the President of Bramhand Consultancy Services Inc. Currently, he is the President of Parallel Wireless.

Rajesh Mishra
Image Source: digianalysys.com

Importance of Open RAN

The pandemic situation has increased the demand for efficient network connectivity. Most of the people are continuing work from home and the students are attending online classes as well. With existing 4G and 5G networks helping millions of users to connect and work, the telecom industry faces challenges like geopolitical stresses, 5G deployment challenges, etc.

And, all these challenges can be overcome by one simple solution, that is, Open RAN. The biggest trouble of network vendors limited to a certain geopolitical region can be solved by establishing an open market. Many network operators are supporting Open RAN and its commercialization. This had led to the development of the companies on a massive scale that builds equipment for Open RAN. The technology of Open RAN primarily concerns having more vendor choice but cost savings is also an important factor.

One must also understand that Open RAN is not a new technology and exists in the market for more than a decade. But, the current situation of the global pandemic and financial stress had led many operators to consider this option. Thus, it might mark a big change in the telecom industry inviting more players and broadening the market.

Expansion in Asia and Africa

Currently, Parallel Wireless is the leading company in the world in terms of delivering Open RAN solution for coverage and capacity. One of the biggest flaws in general network operators overcome by Open RAN solution is geopolitical stresses. Last year, Vodafone in collaboration with Parallel Wireless deployed a macro Parallel Wireless OpenRAN pilot in Turkey and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

As the only company around the globe to provide ALL G cloud-native fully virtualized RAN solutions, it is doing a commendable job. The excellent team of Parallel Wireless has shown exceptional efficiency, top-class quality of the product, and along with that optimization the cost of it. Moreover, due to the disaggregation of hardware and software the deployment is fully virtual making it easy to install, maintain, and upgrade.

Partners and Funding 

Parallel Wireless has partnered with many prominent companies in the telecom industry to make cellular communication as easy and affordable as possible. Some of the major partners are Comba and KMW for Open RAN hardware ecosystem, Intel, Dell, and many others for baseband, RedHat, VMWare, Cisco for other aspects. To date, Parallel Wireless’s total funding is $8.8 million. The number of employees in the company is around 400.

Awards 

As the company is trying to reach many rural areas as well as targeting the countries in Africa mainly, it has received several awards for its breakthrough. Some of the most prestigious awards include Best Mobile Breakthrough Technology (20th Global Mobile Awards), Best Technical Platform Based on Network Intelligence for SDN/NFV in 2015, Winner Excellence in Commercial Deployment (Rural and Remote) in 2015, Most Innovative LTE Service, etc.

The recent awards bagged by the company are Aegis Graham Bell Award WINNER- Innovation in the cloud, WINNER of Best Network Software breakthrough, and shortlisted in Leading Lights Awards 2020.

WorldRemmit

A UK-based start-up to make international remittance service easier

Leave a Comment / Tech Story / By

Many companies have been founded recently that provides the service of online money transfer. In this digital era, people are eventually becoming cashless thus depending on more on the wire transfer. Today, if we go for buying a cup of coffee we prefer paying through any application or simply swipe our card. Nobody wants to take the headache of counting cash anymore. But, apart from how our day-to-day dependence on electronic money transfer is growing deeper, international money transfer is also very important. When a migrant or a worker on foreign land sends money back to his native land it is called remittance money. Previously, the workers had to face a lot of trouble sending money back to his country. In 2010, a start-up called WorldRemit was founded to provide international remittance services.

Ismail Ahmed, one of the founders of WorldRemit faced many problems to send money back to his native land, Somalia. So, he came up with this thoughtful idea which would especially help work migrants. Apart from Ismail, the other two founders of WorldRemit are Catherine Wines and Richard Igoe. Currently, Breon Corcoran is the CEO of the company. The headquarters of WorldRemit is based on London.

About the Founders of WorldRemit

Ismail Ahmed

Ismail received a prestigious scholarship that allowed him to study economics at the University of London. He was smuggled to the UK as a refugee after the Somali Civil War. He needed to send back money to his family which was very costly and time-consuming. He worked with the United Nations Development Programme and later went to the London School of Business for acquired his MBA. After graduating, he created a mobile app, WorldRemit, to make money transfer easier and affordable. Last year in October, Ismail appeared in Powerlist 2020.

Catherine Wines is one of the most powerful women in financial technology. She started as an Audit Manager in KPMG in 1989 and within ten years she became the Finance Director of City of Westminster College. She worked in many companies like Emile Woolf International, Universe Group plc, Prime Time Services, etc. Currently, she is the Director of WorldRemit.

Richard acquired a bachelor’s degree in economics from Exeter University. He worked at Dell and has more than 20 years of working experience in business and technology. Richard is the Head of Integrations at WorldRemit.  

Story behind WorldRemit

When Ismail came to the UK he worked part-time and arranged money for his family. Since he was an economics student the trouble for money transfer bothered him more than others and he wanted to come up with a viable solution. So, he carried on his further research in remittances at the University of Sussex. Ismail had a very clear idea about all the problems faced in the area of remittance services since he was a part of it. This problem led him to think about a fully digitized solution for money transfer.

He built a mobile app, WorldRemit to make money transfer easier and faster. With time it has come in partnership with many payment companies to make the entire process smoother. The remittance service with the help of WorldRemit has benefited many African countries and currently, the app is used in 47 countries of Africa.

Funding and expansion

WorldRemit represents one of the biggest networks for online money transfer on an international level. The company has come in partnership with M-Pesa in Kenya, MTN in Africa and Asia, and bKash in Bangladesh to meet customer requirements on a global level. Today, WorldRemit can remit money to around 115 countries around the world through mostly famous in Africa. But, some of the African countries where WorldRemit’s service is not provided are Sudan, South Sudan, Libya, Eritrea, Algeria, and Eswatini.

Some of the major investors of the company are Accel Partners, Technology Crossover Ventures, LeapFrog Investments, etc. Last year, it raised $175 million in Series D funding.

Why go cashless?

When the company was established it was fully cashless from the sender’s side. But, the receiver had plenty of options like cash collection, mobile money, bank deposit, etc. The company is trying to make the entire process 100% cashless because of the chances of corruption decrease with mobile money. Previously, when WorldRemit was founded, the company witnessed more than 90% transaction in cash. But, with time digital transactions have been preferred by customers to seek more transparency. Moreover, now with the power of AI and transaction history, the pattern of a profile can be determined. So, any transaction off the track can be immediately notified to the owner of the account, and then necessary steps can be taken.

CMR Surgical

CMR Surgical’s robotic system for surgery brings a new wave of technology in the medical world

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By

The rate at which our technology is growing every day, it is difficult to predict what will happen after five years. How will the future look like? Will human labor be completely replaced by robots? AI and ML have transformed our life making unimaginable inventions in every aspect of life. Who could have imagined a decade earlier that we can make machines think like us and make them adapt our behavioral responses? With engineering making the greatest inventions and breaking its record every time, they are very versatile creators. On top of the list is the health industry that is highly benefited due to the inventions of smart devices and heavy equipment used in hospitals. So, some brilliant minds with knowledge in diverse fields came up with the idea of a robotic system to assist medical professionals to perform surgery. In 2014, five founders, namely, Martin Frost, Luke Hares, Keith Marshall, Paul Roberts, and Mark Slack founded CMR Surgical.

CMR Surgical is based on Cambridge and is famous for its robotic surgical system Versius. The company is founded with a vision to bring a robotic revolution in surgery. According to the founders, it would make a dramatic effect in the health industry if they can be assisted in surgeries by the robotic system. But, they also need to keep in mind a cost-effective versatile system that can prove advantageous to millions of common people in need. Let’s have a look at the success of CMR Surgical.

About the Founders of CMR Surgical

Martin Frost went to the Manchester Grammar School followed by the University of Cambridge. He has a great and rich experience in the professional world. Started as an Audit Senior in 1985 he became the Director of Chord Capital in 2005. He was also the CEO of Sagentia for a few years, co-founder of RedCloud Technology Limited, etc. Currently, he is associated with Peek Vision and CMR Surgical (Director).

Martin Frost
Image Source: businessweekly.co.uk

Luke Hares graduated from Cambridge in 1997. Before co-founding CMR Surgical he was a Senior Consultant at Sagentia.

Keith Marshall went to the University of Hertfordshire and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering. He worked with Nokia Networks for almost a year followed by PML Flightlink, Xerox, and Sagentia. Currently, he is the Engineering Director of CMR Surgical.

Before co-founding CMR Surgical, Paul Roberts had ten years of experience in product and system development. He worked with Science Group PIc and built many complex medical devices. He is the Chief Customer Success Officer at CMR Surgical.  

Mark Slack is currently the Chief Medical Officer of CMR Surgical. He has a very rich medical background. Mark went to the College of Medicine of South Africa and he is a consultant gynecologist.

Versius Robotic System

Experts and medical professionals from around the world have given positive feedback about Versius. Versius is not like any other robotic system we have come across before. Versius provides maximum flexibility as its engineering allows both the arms to move effortlessly. This helps to save a lot of time and increases the efficiency within the OR suite. Versius is also designed perfectly with a footprint of 38cmX38cm. It doesn’t take up a lot of space and it is also transportable. Versius has ports and provides the freedom of the port placement as well. It automatically chooses a working position that provides the least amount of fatigue for the surgeons.

Apart from many cutting-edge features, the cost is a very essential factor. CMR Surgical claims that Versius can be afforded by who all are in need. It also provides a robotics programme for a fixed annual cost.  

A billion-dollar company

Last year, after the Series C funding of CMR Surgical the company hit a valuation of £1 billion. The last funding round where the company raised £195 million was the largest funding raised in Europe’s medical sector. Apart from launching Versius in the UK, clinical trials were carried out elsewhere in Europe and India. The product, Versius has three active arms during operation. The best part of this robotic system is they can not only be transformed from one O.T to another but also between hospitals.

The main investor for CMR Surgical is Cambridge Innovation Capital which raised £309 million for the company. Some of the other investors also include Escala Capital Investment, Vestland Invest, Watrium, etc.

India and CMR Surgical

In October 2019, India became the first country in the world to install Versius robotic system. Under the leadership of Dr. Shailesh Puntambekar in Galaxy Core Hospital, Pune, Versius successfully performed many surgical procedures which include mainly laparoscopy, myomectomies, and hysterectomies. Dr. Shailesh said that its compactness and cost-effectiveness will help meeting the surgical demand in India.

BlueDot

BlueDot is the company to bring a revolutionary change in the healthcare world using AI and ML

Leave a Comment / Product, Tech Story / By

In 2015, Bill Gates while giving a speech at Munich mentioned that nothing is worse for mankind than an outbreak. An infectious pathogen can harm the entire world that no nuclear weapon or natural disaster can do. Looking at the scenario of 2020, the outbreak of COVID-19 has proofed every world of him is true. It’s been around five months that people around the globe have been traumatized by a virus turning our life upside down within a few days. The world will be highly benefited if the probability of such infectious diseases can be predicted with accuracy. BlueDot, a company based in Toronto, Canada has been striving to accomplish it using advanced AI and ML. We are living in a data-driven world where everything is based on the amount of data we receive and transfer every day.

BlueDot is famous for building technology exclusively based on data analysis to predict the risk of such outbreaks. With the help of data science, they create models to observe different areas and timing depending on various factors where a chance of any kind of infectious outbreak is high. They help the government and hospitals to take precautionary measures to minimize the risk of any damages.

Who founded BlueDot?

Kamran Khan is the founder of BlueDot Inc. He founded the company in 2009 and delved deeper into the unexplored world of data science to bring a massive change in the medical world. Kamran Khan has a very strong medical background and that is probably the reason he wanted to do something innovative to save the world from infectious diseases.

Kamran khan has a degree in Doctor of Medicine from the University of Toronto and graduated in 1996. He went to Columbia University in the City of New York and received a degree in Master of Public Health. He started practicing as a Clinician at St. Michaels Hospital from 2003 and still working there. In 2010, he joined the University of Toronto as an Associate Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases. The same year, he also joined the World Health Organization as a Medical Advisor. After three years, he founded BlueDot comprising of a talented bunch of scientists, engineers, data analysts, and experts from other fields to improve global health conditions.

Journey of BlueDot

While working at St. Michaels Hospital, Kamran launched a scientific program called BioDiaspora. This program’s main objective was to study how the spread of infectious diseases is correlated with commercial air travel. Thus, he studied its impact on different populations worldwide. In 2009, the result of this program was implemented to predict the first influenza pandemic of this century. The model of BioDiaspora helped to predict the degree of impact on a global level. The company found out that the air travelers from Mexico were carrying novel influenza without their knowledge to various cities around the world.

In 2012, the company jointly worked with Public Health England to estimate and take precautions at a local level from foreign pathogens. This year, the main field of their research was the spreading of infectious diseases in mass gatherings and how to predict it via mathematical modeling. In 2013, the BioDiaspora received plenty of support from St. Michaels Hospital and MaRS Innovation and got incorporated as Certified B Corporation.

BioDiaspora started expanding slowly and with seed funding from Horizon Ventures, the company established itself rigidly and renamed it as BlueDot. With the help of data science and mathematical modeling, BlueDot in 2014 successfully predicted the migration of the Ebola virus out of West Africa. After a couple of years, the risk assessment models of BlueDot successfully predicted an outbreak of Zika in Florida months before it took place.

Launch of George

Over the years BlueDot received impressive funding. In Series, A funding round the company raised $7 million making its total funding to $9.5 million. Throughout the years, BlueDot has been helping government and healthcare professionals by predicting risks way ahead of time. But, in 2017, BlueDot launched the software George to help common people protect themselves from infectious diseases. This software was mainly launched for travelers who send personalized alerts based on location and how to take preventive measures.

Prediction of COVID-19 outbreak

The algorithms of BlueDot are so brilliantly designed that it was one of the first companies to predict the outbreak of novel coronavirus. In the New Year’s Eve of 2020, BlueDot spread out an alert that an infectious flu-disease has broken out in the city of Wuhan, China. They went through several medical reports, news bulletin, and livestock reports to confirm the prediction. BlueDot is truly doing a commendable job and maybe it would stop the world from witnessing such outbreaks in the future.

ITProTV

Tim Broom and Don Pezet’s ITProTV is providing best IT courses to improve your career

Leave a Comment / start-up, Tech Story / By

The IT industry is the most demanding and top-notch sector to find a career opportunity in the 21st century. After a few years from the hyper craze to work in an IT industry many people thought it might reach the saturation level anytime soon. But, with the era of digitalization and the importance of data in our lives that isn’t going to take place for many years. The IT industry has ample job opportunities in various fields like a developer, security, project manager, etc. So, the demands for taking up short-term courses are high especially to gain knowledge on a specific field related to your job role. Responding to the situation where millions of students and young professionals can be benefited, Tim Broom and Don Pezet founded ITProTV in 2012. ITProTV provides online IT training and streams live video every day and video on demand as well. The company provides certification for many IT courses and trainees can choose from a vast no of choices based on their job role, certification type, etc. ITProTV is a subscription-based learning platform.

About Tim Broom and Don Pezet

Tim Broom studied economics from the University of South Florida and graduated in 1990. He also went to Florida Southern College to obtain a bachelor’s degree in Marketing (BS). In 2009, Tim Broom became the President of Mary Mae Financial and after a couple of years founded ITProTV with Don Pezet. He is the CEO of the company.

Before co-founding ITProTV, Don Pezet worked as a Training Manager at New Horizons Computer Learning Center of North Florida. He was associated with that job for twelve years and left in 2013. Currently, he is an Edutainer at ITProTV and Shows Host at EdutainmentLIVE.

How ITProTV was founded?

Before founding ITProTV, both the founders were running some authorized brick and mortar training centers. But, their goal was to build a larger business with recurring revenue. And, it wasn’t going to happen with brick and mortar business. So, they planned a second business idea and shifted to that though they put a lot of hard work on their former business. The second business was founding ITProTV, a SaaS start-up to deliver online IT training.

The company till today is based on Gainesville Florida. To study their new business, Tim and Don sold the brick and mortar company. It is a self-funded business and after four years the annual run rate of ITProTV turned out to be $9 million.

How the platform of ITProTV works?

According to Tim Broom, ITProTV is like the Netflix of the IT industry. We get access to all shows by paying a very small amount monthly or yearly basis. In the case of ITProTV, there’s a huge library with plenty of IT training videos for different roles that are advantageous for job roles as well as new career opportunities. So, after you pay the subscription fees they are all available for a certain period.

Tim also says that they always like to keep the library updated and add new content. According to him, content is the king and since there is new technology coming in the market every day, updates are necessary. The platform of ITProTV contains many high-quality training videos that received Microsoft and similar level certifications. This is one of the reasons why more customers are attracted.

Business Strategies

At first, when they started with a small library of training videos, the subscription fee for a month was $57 and the annual subscription fee was $570. But, in the beginning, they rolled out an impressive 50% discount offer thus bringing down the cost to $28.5 and $285 respectively. They noticed that most of the customers went for a yearly subscription thus paying $285. And, this helped the company to make a million sales.

From 7,000 members in 2014 the number became thrice next year and by the end of 2016, they had 46,000 members. B2B features were launched this year as well. Next year, the number of members almost doubled summing up to 90,000. The company also opened a regional office in 2017. In 2018, ITProTV came in the Inc 500 list and next year it became one of the best companies in Florida.

Currently, the company is providing the knowledge of IoT to its customers in partnership with Certnexus. It started with four courses in 2019 and they are eventually going to add on. Since IoT is an industry worth $450 billion it will scale up the revenue of ITProTV.

eleks

Eleks- The best Ukrainian company to bag the IoT App Development award 2020

Leave a Comment / Tech Story / By

Hearing thousands of success stories every day, reading inspirational biographies of successful businessmen, but how many of them are Ukrainian? Yes, it is true that though many multinational companies emerge out from the lands of the U.S.A and Europe, we haven’t heard much about the success stories of Ukrainian business tycoons. To be honest, how much we do know about their economical growth at all? So, today let’s talk about one of the most successful IT companies in the country, Eleks. Eleks was founded back in 1991 by Oleksiy Skrypnyk and his son Oleksiy Skrypnyk, Jr. The journey of almost three decades has witnessed a roller coaster ride. Today, the company’s headquarters are based on Lviv, Ukraine. Once started as a small team, Eleks today has around 1,500 employees.

What is Eleks?

Founded in 1991, Eleks is a software company that is famous for providing customized software engineering and consulting services. The company has a significant presence in many places outside Ukraine such as Canada, Germany, Poland, United Kingdom, etc. The clients of Eleks are rich in diversity coming from fields like healthcare, finance, entertainment, retail, and many more.

Apart from custom software development, the company also builds and excels in technologies like virtual reality, designing drones, data science, and high-quality research. With time, the company has bagged many prestigious awards as well.

About Oleksiy Skrypnyk, Jr

Though founded by Oleksiy Skrypnyk, Eleks was mainly built and taken over by Oleksiy Skrypnyk, Jr. Born on 8th March 1964; Oleksiy belonged to a family of scholars and researchers. Oleksiy went to Lviv Polytechnic Institute and graduated in 1986 from the Faculty of Electricity. After graduating, Oleksiy was the Engineer of the Central Dispatcher Service followed by Deputy of CDS on ASDC (Lvivenergo).

In 1991, Oleksiy along with his father and mother built the software company ELEKS. For nine years, he was the Technical Director at Eleks followed by becoming the Director and then CEO in 2010. After four years, he resigned from the company and showed interest in a parliamentary election. Apart from political life, Oleksiy shows a high interest in new technologies and entrepreneurship.

Journey of Eleks

Founding Eleks in 1991 was a sign of an independent Ukraine that was going to flourish in every aspect of the upcoming years. Back in those days, common people hardly knew about the internet and how can IT companies bring a big revolution, that is, digitalization. So, Oleksiy built Eleks with the motive to solve the real-world crisis with the application of science and upgraded technology. Little did he know that his products will be used worldwide after a few years from then?

Eleks became famous especially among the over newly independent Soviet states after launching DAKAR, a product to solve the complex power grid. DAKAR helped large power systems to do real-time analysis and provide stability. The product became very famous, especially among Eastern European power companies. Some of the products of Eleks are so flexible that they are still in demand though created twenty-five years from now.

Eventually, the start-up culture started gaining appreciation worldwide and the demand for Eleks’s custom made software increased simultaneously. It started gaining customers from a variety of niche starting from business analytics firms to agriculture. Today, Ukraine is in a position way above from where it started back in the 1990s.

Expansion and Success

Eleks is not only one of the top IT companies in Ukraine but also among the world’s top 100 best outsourcing companies. The area of interest of Eleks keeps on expanding as innovation fuels the spirit of the company and this is one of the best characteristics of the company. Though it is an outsourcing company providing consultancy, building apps, and other software products, the company provides equal attention to R&D.

Eleks’ R&D is the core foundation of their business and probably the main reason why their products are making gigantic success. In 2016, the company said that they are not only experimenting with new technologies but also with the business model. This will help the company offer ideas from R&D as a new service as well. Moreover, every enterprise is unique in its way of dealing with unique clients with needs different from others. So, building a product for the common mass is helpful but only up to a certain level. Creative technology and strategies exclusive to a particular client are what attracts them in the first place.

According to Eleks, responding to the huge diversity of clients with their proper needs is what makes them bigger and better every day. So, the company also chooses to hire employees who have a deep interest in R&D and would invest significant time in new projects.

Awards and Recognition 

Some of the biggest awards that Eleks has received are National Winner in the 2017-18 European Business Award, Bronze Stevie Award in 2018 International Business Awards, Top IT Outsourcing Companies in USA & Europe (2019), Top IoT App Development Companies and Developers 2020, etc.