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Reliance JIO and Qualcomm Join Forces to Bring 5G to India

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India is all set to receive superfast internet soon enough. Making this dream a reality will be a partnership between India’s Reliance JIO and US-based Qualcomm. The two technology and communication giants are joining hands to build and develop 5G technologies in India. Reliance will be leveraging its subsidiary Radisys Corporation, which it wholly owns to help build the necessary 5G infrastructure. In this article, we will take a look at how this deal works out, and by when we can expect super-fast internet in India.

Jio and Qualcomm partners for the Better

Chipset manufacturer Qualcomm and Radisys Corporation will develop a virtualized RAN. Such a Radio Access Network will help boost the development of 5G architecture in India. With the help of this partnership, we can expect a faster roll-out for such services within the country. The companies also announced that they achieved speeds eclipsing 1 Gbps over their 5GNR network. Reliance Jio’s 5GNR software leverages Qualcomm’s RAN platform to obtain these high speeds. Furthermore, Qualcomm announced that this platform allows it to enter the Gigabit 5G NR portfolio.

Faster Internet for all

The usage of 5G will allow mobile phone users to receive higher data rates. Furthermore, 5G also offers lower latency communication and enhance the overall digital experience. The network supports a slew of devices, including AR and VR gaming products, smartphones, and laptops. The announcement which occurred on Tuesday will fast-track the much-awaited 5G roll-out in India. The indigenous network infrastructure for 5G will help in streamlining network services for millions in India. Also, the 5G RAN product has become a part of the Gigabit throughput clock. Furthermore, a Tier-1 American carrier has already tested and verified the product for its quality and high-speed performance. This move will also help India join the 5G club. Presently, only a few nations, including Australia, Germany, the US, South Korea, and Switzerland have produced 1 Gbps speeds over 5G.

Qualcomm
Image Source: qualcomm.com

What the Companies Had to Say

Mathew Oommen, who serves as the President of Jio Infocomm, stated that the company was looking forward to the partnership. While speaking at the Qualcomm 5G Summit, he noted that the development of new-gen 5G RAN will be a revolutionary technology. The cloud-native software will help both companies scale their operations tremendously. Qualcomm Technologies, while working with Jio Platforms, will help make India a genuinely 5G inclusive nation. It will provide a vital boost to local manufacturing and help accelerate the achievement of Atmanirbhar Bharat.

Meanwhile, VP of Qualcomm India Rajen Vagadia stated that they were delighted to take their partnership with Jio to the next level. Both companies have now been working together for quite some time now and enjoy a great relationship. By creating a shared 5G vision for India, the partnership will help in supporting India’s digital transformation. As per the needs of the day, India requires a better and more powerful mobile experience. Rajen noted that very soon more and more consumers will want 5G services, leading to a massive spike in demand. Such services will be of great help to healthcare, retail, and manufacturing industries. Since Jio is a game-changer when it comes to the delivery of cost-effective 4G services, this partnership will help both companies drastically. Jio already enjoys massive network coverage and a large user base, which will be ready to switch to 5G once the roll-out is complete.

Moving Forward

As you can see, the partnership between Qualcomm and Reliance Jio will help catalyze the adoption and implementation of 5G in India. The adoption of this technology will finally put an end to lousy streaming, never-ending buffering, and frequent voice cuts over calls. It will also give a push to the adoption of vertical IoT solutions and other smart devices across the nation. Such an indigenous network will prevent India from having to depend on Chinese systems for their infrastructure. Not only will this help reduce our dependence on them, but it will also help improve security on our national infrastructure. Also, earlier this year Qualcomm picked up a 0.15% stake in Jio for a whopping INR 730 crores. Hence, this venture may be the start of many more such partnerships between the communication-industry legends.

PUBG Mobile

Indian Government Bans Another 118 Apps Including PUBG

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The Indian government took a big decision on Wednesday by deciding to ban an additional 118 or so mobile applications, including the uber-popular video game PUBG. The move follows in the heels of an earlier decision to ban 59 Chinese applications earlier this year. All of these bans were a result of rising tensions between the two superpowers. India cited security reasons and data privacy concerns as the primary cause of the ban. Here’s a look at the impact the move will have, and what led to the government taking such drastic measures.

India Making Big Moves

Tensions had been high ever since the India-China scuffle at the Ladakh border a few months ago. These border skirmishes, coupled with the world’s resentment towards China for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, has snowballed into trade embargos and political battles around the world. Following India’s model, the US too recently banned the usage of a sleuth of Chinese applications citing security concerns. The Ministry of Information and Technology released an official statement yesterday, wherein it said that 118 apps have now been banned in India. The reason being cited that these apps were prejudicial to the integrity, security, sovereignty, and defence of the nation. As per the statement put out by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the ban falls under the purview of Section 69A of the Indian IT Act.

Major Apps to Leave India

Some of the biggest names in the list of apps now banned in India are Baidu, FaceU, WeChat, and PUBG Mobile. Several reports state that PUBG has over 33 million active users in India, meaning that this move will have a significant impact on the game. In fact, most reports state that PUBG is one of the most popular applications in India, with over 13 million users signing in every day. The Ministry noted that it frequently received complaints regarding people misusing these applications in various ways. Some of the complaints referred to the stealing or personal and private data and then selling such data to servers located outside India. The fact that such data could be mined, processed, and analyzed to harm the sovereignty of the country is what led to such drastic steps as per the statement from the Ministry. 

PUBG Mobile
Image Source: businessinsider.in

Further Notices and Suggestions

Furthermore, the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, which works under the Ministry of Home Affairs also released a statement of recommendations regarding how to block these apps. In the public domain as well, people had been asking the government to take more stringent actions to protect the private data of Indian users. Such a targeted move will therefore help put to rest worries that a large part of the demographic had regarding the safety and security of the Indian cyberspace. The government has decided to retaliate at the best time, as global superpowers unite to protect their data and frameworks from foreign assaults and attacks.

Earlier Steps

Just a few months back, in June, the Centre had banned another 59 applications, with most of them being Chinese-based on similar grounds. This list included popular apps like UC Browser and TikTok. The recent ban on an additional 118 apps will see PUBG Mobile leaving India for an indefinite period. The wildly popular shooter videogame ranks within the world’s top five most popular smartphone games and boasts of over 734 million downloads. The game, which comes under Tencent Holdings Limited’s videogame department also has a loyal fan following in India, leading to social media being flooded with memes on the ban. The Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi himself had referenced the game last year during a talk on exam stress. This interview after it went live led to the creation of the “Yeh PUBG-wala hai kya?” meme, which roughly translated to the PM asking a worried mother whether her son was a PUBG player.

It is quite evident that the ban on apps has a clear political agenda behind it. The very fact that the ban came after the Indian government accused China of using troops provocatively along the Pangong Lake in Ladakh is proof enough of this. As the Chinese troops had made a similar move on August 31st, the government was left seething at this provocation. However, the Indian army was able to successfully thwart both actions, preventing any damage or loss for the Indians. Recent months have witnessed several clashes and showdowns, with over 20 soldiers being martyred in the Galwan Valley in June. Political or not, there is no doubt that the banning of these apps will have a ripple in our cyberspace. It will be interesting to see whether China will retaliate in any way to these bans, as TikTok gears up to fight the US government through a civil lawsuit. 

jugnoo

Story of Jugnoo : The Desi Uber for Autos

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Over 5 million auto-rickshaws ply in India, and only 30% of them are properly utilized. This leads to a loss not just for the rickshaw drivers, but also for people looking for some affordable means of transportation. Jugnoo was established as a means to solve this problem by helping customers make use of affordable services for their daily needs all on a single platform. Beginning as an auto-rickshaw aggregator, the company revolutionised the way rickshaw service worked in India, and have now branched out into other fields and sectors by launching services such as Meals, Jugnoo Fresh, Menus and even Jugnoo Delivery. Here’s a look at how Jugnoo grew from being a small idea that two IITian’s had to a thriving business.

The Founders

Jugnoo was founded in November 2014 by two IIT-Delhi alumni, Samar Singla and Chinmay Agarwal. Samar always dreamt of becoming an entrepreneur and had already invested in other companies before founding Jugnoo as he hails from a business family. He tried his hand at entrepreneurship with his first venture Prodigy foods and then sold it to start Click Labs. His second outing, which he founded in 2011, with Chinmay as a partner was a profitable marketing automation software that used SaaS technology. While Samar is a physicist by his education, it is business that excites him, and that is why this serial entrepreneur decided to take a risk again with Jugnoo.

Chinmay Agarwal who serves as the Chief Operations Officer at Jugnoo has a BTech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Delhi. Following his graduation, he won the Erasmus Mundus scholarship, and so went on to do his Joint Masters in Advanced Robotics from Ecole, France and the University of Genoa in Italy. He later switched to business, embarking on his first venture, Click Labs with Samar, where he held the position of Chief Technical Officer. At Jugnoo, he wears multiple hats, helping Samar with both the operations and product side of things.

Founding Jugnoo

Jugnoo founders
Image Source: homebusinessmag.com

In 2014, while at Chandigarh, the duo launched Jugnoo at PECFEST and gave people free rides as a part of their marketing strategy. The idea caught on, and soon the pair realised that there was untapped potential in this sector. Samar and Chinmay then began connecting drivers and customers, and soon enough Jugnoo took shape.

One of the toughest challenges they faced initially was getting the rickshaw drivers familiar with the technology they employed. This introduction wasn’t always smooth, as the drivers came from an environment wherein technology wasn’t so well integrated. Hence, it took a lot of time, effort and dedication to explain the process to them, how the layout works, and how it would help them. Convincing the drivers that such a platform would be beneficial to them wasn’t an easy task, because these weren’t people who liked the idea of change. But, the duo persisted, and soon enough, people started seeing the application as a boon that would help improve their accessibility, and that was when the company started taking off.

Leading the Way

Soon enough, Jugnoo started earning a name for itself, and the first big investment came in the form of seed funding, when the company raised USD 1 million through investors such as Junglee Flywheel, BCG Group, Rapportive, and Kirloskar Bros. It followed this up with a Series A funding and was able to raise another USD 5 million. Furthermore, recently they embarked on a Series B funding round which raked in an additional USD 10 million with their main investors being big players such as Paytm and Snow Leopard ventures.

Within the first seven months, Jugnoo had amassed over 80,000 users and was completing over 1,500 transactions a day. They earned 80% of their total revenue from auto-rickshaw deliveries and bookings and was making more than $1,500 a day.

By 2016, Jugnoo had evolved and had branched into various verticals, growing into an end-to-end solution for their customers. The app has continued to grow at over 20% a month and boasts over 5 million registered users and an auto-rickshaw fleet that is 12,000 drivers strong. Jugnoo recently added the facility of UPI payment on their app as a means to promote a cashless economy that the government is pushing. They have also launched products in the B2B market, including the likes of Tookan and Juggernaut.

Unlike other start-ups that rush towards the metros once established, Jugnoo prefers to stay in Tier-II and Tier-III cities, because 80% of India’s population resides in such cities. Today, the company is rapidly growing and employs over 1000 people, across 35 cities and successfully completes more than 50,000 transactions a day. Jugnoo does more than making money for its founders. Rather, it has a social side to it as well, as it helps people get access to affordable transportation, while also uplifting the lives of millions who depend on menial jobs for their survival.

goibibo

GoIbibo : An Indian Startup Helping you Explore the World

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If you love travelling, then chances are that you swear by GoIbibo! But do you know how GoIbibo got to where it is now, and who made that possible? This time around, we will be looking at Ashish Kashyap’s story and understand how working with multiple large companies helped give Ashish the experience he needed to launch something as massive as Ibibo.

Kashyap’s story has a familiar pattern to it; one we have seen countless times when it comes to Indian entrepreneurs. After getting a business degree from a good university, freshers join large corporations as managers and product designers. After gaining experience working under company greats, they exit a few years down the line to start their own company and turn entrepreneurs! Ashish did the same, as he launched Ibibo in 2007, after heading Google India’s operations and having worked as the General Manager for Indiatimes.com.

The Founder

After finishing his Honors in Economics from the University of Delhi, Ashish went ahead to procure a Masters in Practicing Management from Insead, France. Once he was done with his studies, he joined the prestigious Times Group, and slowly worked his way up the corporate ladder, finally becoming the General Manager of E-Commerce at Indiatimes. Even there, Ashish was looking for new opportunities and successfully launched several e-commerce applications.

Goibibo founder
Image Source: techcircle.in

Similarly, while heading Google India’s operations, Ashish focused on creating a lively and active entrepreneurial environment by building and designing product launches and establishing and building the business. Later, Ashish served as a senior member of PayU global, Netherlands, and helped the conglomerate by spear-heading some well-timed exits to generate income and increase company value. He is also the co-creator of PayU India, which in 2016 acquired CitrusPay. The more Ashish helped businesses grow, the more he realised that this is something he loved to do. It was this realization that led him to found the Ibibo group.

Founding Ibibo

As the internet grew, more websites and applications sprouted, and this led to the creation of a whole new customer segment. As more entrepreneurs burst into the tech field, it opened up avenues for several B2B and B2C companies to come forth and seize the opportunities available. One such service sector, that Ashish felt needed a revamp was the tourism and travel industry. Applications like redBus, GoIbibo and MakeMyTrip have forever changed the way people travel, and none of this would have been possible, if not for Ashish.

When it came down to choosing a name for his company, Ashish drew inspiration from the very movement that made its creation possible; the internet and the power it gave consumers. As the internet grew more popular, it helped shift power to the consumers, and hence, he felt his company’s name should focus on “I build”. The internet also helped people create pieces, connect with others and really made the world a smaller place. This brought together the ‘I bond’ and ‘I build’ elements, which went mashed together to become ‘Ibibo’!

While the company was backed by Napster, it was seen more like a social media experiment, rather than a company. Starting out with just eight employees in 2007, the company soon grew from being an experiment to one of the largest names in the field of travel and tourism, in just five years! It is interesting to note that the company started out with just $50k as seed capital, but by the end of the grew, and became a 15-member team.

The Success

Being the first person in India to sell a plane ticket online, in 2002, Ashish knew how to turn Ibibo into a multi-million-dollar company, and that is exactly what he did. Within a span of two years, the travel agency had its own payment portal that turned out to be a huge success. By 2011, Ibibo had grown by 180% and had become the first online travel agency to assure complete refund on cancellation of bookings. They also partnered with big brands like Citibank, MasterCard and HDFC to better their payment portals.

The same time next year, the company had launched a bus booking option and had even acquired redBus for 600 crores. By 2013, the company was growing at 130%, after having launched its own app for Android and iOS. The same year, the company expanded into the field of hotel bookings, which of late have been able to generate significant amounts of revenue for the company. GoIbibo also launched their engine for flights, Flight Advice in 2013, to help customers choose the best airline service. Since then, they have enjoyed over 140% growth, and even acquired YourBus in 2014. With a team of over 200 professionals, the team also launched a Windows app goCash, to help customers cancel tickets and bookings easily.

In 11 years, the Ibibo Group went from being a small team of employees to a conglomerate that had sizeable properties such as Goibibo.com, redBus.in, YourBus, and Travelboutique with a reach that extended to countries such as Indonesia, Singapore and even Columbia. With over 25 million app downloads and transactions that went over 24 Million USD, the Ibibo group established itself as a stalwart in the field of travel and tourism.

GoIbibo became a pillar for the travel industry in India after Ashish launched Redbus and Rightstay, and soon enough, in 2016 the Ibibo group merged with MakeMyTrip via a deal which was estimated to be worth around $1.8-$2 billion. This, in turn, brought all the businesses under the GoIbibo bracket, under the umbrella MakeMyTrip, whose largest shareholders are Naspers and Tencent.

The Acquisition

Once the acquisition, which was deemed one of the largest ever made in India, came through, Ashish Kashyap stepped down as president of MakeMyTrip, in 2017. He even signed an agreement that forbade him from soliciting and forming a rival company until September 30, 2019. MakeMyTrip which is listed on the American NASDAQ is the ultimate travel application offering everything from flight booking to hotel reservations and car hires.

As the agreement comes to an end this year, it is safe to assume that Kashyap will be back with some new creation soon enough. GoIbibo which started as a social media campaign idea became one of the largest travel e-commerce companies in the span of a mere five years. Having grown 200%, just a year after its launch, GoIbibo provides the kind of success story that inspires us to take chances and go after our dreams!

meesho

Meesho : India’s First Facebook-Backed Startup Emerged out of a Failed Business

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The world has already created a rough background framework in the mind of every young entrepreneur out there. If you are a good programmer and a tech guy, you are surely a potential entrepreneur, or that is what everyone thinks. But, there is always this one person who burst our bubbles and brings us back to the real world. Sanjeev Barnwal, the co-founder of Meesho, an online e-commerce platform created for the resellers in 2015, believes that it is always not coding that opens the scope of doing good business. One of the most important criteria for fueling a business is to know your clients. So, meeting the clients in real life, interacting with them contributes to one’s successful business as well. Let us know more about this platform, and its founders, Sanjeev Barnwal and Vidit Aatrey.

Sanjeev Barnwal

Belonging to a middle-class family from Ranchi, Barnwal was always influenced to do well in his academic life. In his 10+2, he opted for computer science only to get rid of biology. Since, he chose to study pure science, like most of the students these days, he also wanted to pursue engineering, and not to mention from the best institution of India, i.e., IIT. After passing his twelfth standard, he went straight to Kota to prepare for the entrance exam, and next year, he made it to IIT Delhi, Department of Electrical Engineering. After getting into college, Barnwal realized the power technology and coding is acquiring in our lives.

During his days in the IIT, he met Vidit Aatrey, his classmate. But these four years were absolutely not the time when they sat together and planned their own start-up. After completing his BTech, Barnwal moved to Tokyo, Japan and started working for Sony Corporation. After working there for a couple of years, Barnwal was really inspired by the start-up community growth in India and wanted to join in. So, he called up Aatrey, his IIT Delhi batch mate, to ask if there is any start-up which he could possibly join. But, Aatrey was very much interested to create a start-up of his own, rather joining one. And this is how it all began.

Meesho founders
Image Source: angel.co

Vidit Aatrey

With an AIR of 182, Aatrey was admitted to the Electrical Engineering department of IIT Delhi in 2008. After graduating, while Barnwal moved to Tokyo, Aatrey joined ITC as Supply Chain Manager and worked there for a couple of years. He switched to InMobi in 2014 and moved to Bangalore. He was doing really well in this company, until one fine day he received a phone call from his old batchmate, Sanjeev from IIT Delhi. Over a single conversation, both of them decided to quit their jobs for something which was as uncertain as an exit poll in India.

Anyway, both of them resigned, and Barnwal returned to India in June 2015 to start his new venture with Aatrey.

And, the End Result was Meesho!

At first, both of them decided to open a fashion-based online marketplace that would remap all the shops for customers, and through the app, the user could actually try the product before buying it. They named their start-up FashNear and launched it in mid-2015, but unfortunately the idea back-fired.

So, they came up with another idea of a start-up and created a platform where offline retailers could take their business online, and sell through different social platforms like Instagram, Whatsapp, Facebook etc. After they came up with the idea of this new business, they worked day and night to create this online premise. Their office was their 2-BHK apartment in Bangalore and weekends meant nothing to them except coding more and more. After a long month, they finally set up the company and launched Meesho in December 2015. This is how Meesho was born, from a failed business to the first Indian start-up Facebook invested in. The co-founders performed diligently and made their comeback in the same year.

Where Meesho Stands Today?

Meesho has received a robust response from the customers of India as it has turned the table for many young businessmen/businesswomen of India who basically gave their business a face due to this entire online social media marketing.

Meesho raised good funding in these few years as well as many prestigious awards. After a year of its launch, Meesho was selected by the Y-Combinator and earned $120,000 from there. The latest investment by Facebook was in June 2019, and the last month Meesho raised $125 million from series D funding.

Today, Meesho has over 500 members inspiring every commoner of India with a passion to create something of his or her own.

Echovme-logo

Sorav Jain : An Indian Entrepreneur Crusing Down the Bay of Digital Marketing

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The traditional ways of marketing have been outweighed by digitalized promotions as soon as we stepped into the era of digitalization. But, since the last few years, online marketing space has been overcrowded by people with low experience and claimed professionals. The presence of such freelancers, who have a very minimal idea about digital marketing and social media, creates confusion among the customers which reduces trust in the long run. So, the effectiveness of a good digital marketing company gradually loses its demanding position while people with basically no knowledge-creating havoc in the digital world.

And, to clear the mind of people and help them chose the best, Sorav Jain, a young Indian entrepreneur created some offbeat strategies for his digital marketing company, echoVME. He built the company out of pure passion, as he was ever really into studying biotechnology, though he pursued it. But, later he made his mind to create something of his own, like his father and uncles and went abroad to study marketing management.

Family Background and Early Life

Sorav Jain belonged to a family where creating your own ship cruise was appreciated more than working on a royal one. His father and uncles were established businessmen, so going the unconventional way and turning down tempting jobs were absolutely supported by his family members.socialsamosa.com

Sorav Jain
Image Source: digitalscholar.in

Sorav went to Loyola College and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biotechnology in 2007. While being an undergraduate student, he already mastered the art of SEO, and hence, joined Contempo Technologies as an SEO and Content Executive in January 2006. By this time, Sorav already chalked out his plan to start off his venture and explore the entrepreneurial endeavours. He went to the University of Leeds to complete his master’s degree in International Marketing Management and joined CMO Axis as a Digital Marketing Specialist after graduating. Working for CMO Axis, a global digital marketing firm fascinated him even more about the world of advertising.

Setting up echoVME

Sorav Jain still continued working at CMO Axis, while he was building his own empire. Quite a business mind!

An entire plan was set up, and Sorav started assembling the building blocks of the company from December 2009. The company became operational from March of the next year, a couple of months after leaving CMO Axis. So, like any other young entrepreneur, Sorav dived into his business with the utmost passion and energy to bring a significant change in digital marketing.

The company started with a team of 10 members operating from Mumbai and Chennai.

At People’s Best Interest

echoVME wasn’t established with the regular idea of going around, convincing people, taking in clients and earning money. Sorav really wanted to put some effort to make young minds, especially college students, learn about digital marketing so that the quality of freelancers available in the marketplace improves and more students get exposed to the light of digital marketing.

Since its establishment, a lot of training sessions and workshops are conducted by echoVME. Apart from covering major cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, echoVME has also spread its wings to Sri Lanka. It was a really smart strategy from the owner to conduct such workshops, as they received humungous positive feedbacks, even from CEOs, CMOs, and Executive Officers of many famous brands.

Within few months of founding the company, it made deals worth $10 million through corporate blogging strategy.

Obstacles and Competitors

For Sorav Jain the hardest challenge was time management and implementing every theoretical statement from the heavy books of business administration in real life. He said that when you set up a business, it is more than just the bookish definition of the business terminologies, as you have to deal with real people and real crisis. But, that’s how one learns, isn’t it?

Sorav gives very vague answers, every time it comes down to mentioning echoVME’s competitors. In an interview, he said that every company that is trying to reach a standard position in digital marketing, especially blogging-centric marketing, are the competitors.

Success of echoVME

Presently, echoVME has trained more than 2000 professionals and brands through their training programs and workshops. More than 100 workshops have been conducted echoVME in major cities of India till date. The training sector of echoVME, SOCIALME has gained unexpected popularity from the very first day.

What after echoVME?

Sorav founded Digital Scholar, an agency-based learning institute in July 2019. Apart from this, Sorav has also been a guest lecturer at many famous educational institutes, like IIT Madras and Leeds Metropolitan University.