Ather is a company in Bangalore which manufactures Electric Scooters which can be purchased for a rather high price of Rs. 1.2 - Rs. 2.7 Lakhs or leased for sums ranging from Rs. 3700/- to Rs. 4200/- (Plus Rs. 30000/- down payment) and finally pay some 45000/- at the end of 3 years.

I am not sure of the lease amounts.

My nephew uses Ather and says it is a very good vehicle that gives around 70 Kilometers for a 100% Charge.

Sure it has some minor issues like No Central Locking or Backseat Sliding (No Idea what it means) but he is happy.

Now that the Electric Vehicle migration is starting - Ather could be the company to watch out for (Although once the big guns start coming in - you could see inferior electric scooters from big players which may crowd out ather like Paytm wiped out Oxigen wallet which was a pioneer in digital wallets)

Best Part is the CEO - You can actually criticize the bikes design and the CEO will personally interact with you, call you and talk to you and talk to his design team in front of you. Unlike some CEOs who file 20 Cr lawsuits or force deleting of Twitter Accounts- these guys in Ather actually listen to you.

Their Unique Technology - Distributed Applications on Cloud - these are regarded pretty good and can be regarded unique enough to be Certified Technology.

PayTM has 3 Pieces of Unique Certified Technology - means PayTM is also one of the rare Indian Startups which is more than a Haircutting Saloon.

It is in tough competition with Google Pay and Phone Pay but still holds its own in terms of convenience. Especially for people like me who simply cannot remember 2 pin numbers.

Its valuation of $ 15 Billion is still at least 5 times more than it can be conservatively valued and worth

Postman API is a San Francisco Headquartered company which helps Coders who test APIs. Today when you depend on the Cloud for everything - this collobration is particularly useful.

APIs are basically “codes” that help multiple apps communicate with each other- delivering messages like a Postman

The App is valued at $ 2 Billion which is estimated to be 4 times overvalued

Postman has Unique Technology (Certified or not - i dont know)

Thanks to a Quoran for guiding me to Postman - He gave me a comment in one of my answers that led me to this App

These three are the Startups that right now are going the right way.

Apart from these three - there may be more startups which have

• Unique Certified or not certified/Patented or not patented Technology
• Are not mere Haircutting Saloons which use standard code and hype to build their valuations.

If So - You can let me know in the comments.

Startups which are Grossly Overvalued and in MY OPINION -definitely on their way out once a better competitor sets in:-

OLA Cabs, Zomato, Swiggy

Startups which are Grossly Overvalued and IN MY OPINION - definitely on their way out once OPENSOURCE and FREE RESOURCES really set in:-

BYJUS, Whitehatjr, Vedantu, Unacademy

Startups which are Grossly Inflated and IN MY OPINION - eventually be doomed to be unable to meet their commitments

Policybazaar, All Insurance Startups

Startups which are Grossly Inflated and IN MY OPINION - built on a house of cards

OYO

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​
​Book a room for 10 hours, pay for 10 hours. Cool, isn't it?

Couples in India are always vulnerable to physical attacks by moral police and self proclaimed guardIans of culture when in public. StayUncle has come to their rescue. This New Delhi-based startup has tied up with hotels where unmarried couples can rent rooms for a duration as short as 8-10 hours. The idea is to help them with affordable rooms, without feeling uncomfortable or unsafe.

The idea was conceived by Sanchit Sethi, a BITS Pilani graduate, who partnered with Blaze Arizanov and launched StayUncle in April, 2015. The initial business plan was to offer hotels for short durations in India where reserving a hotel for 24 hours is a costly affair sometimes. To their shock, close to 99% of enquiries came from unmarried couples and that let them to relook into their business idea. So they started to focus on unmarried couples. They got funding from the country manager of Airbnb as well.

There is no law in India that prohibits an unmarried couple to rent a hotel room, as long as they have a valid identity proof. Sanchit and Blaze took advantage of it and started off with Hotel Ace Residency in December 2015- it was the first hotel to tie up with StayUncle for providing rooms on rent to unmarried couples. Since then, close to 45 hotels have tied up with StayUncle in Delhi as well as Mumbai and it includes premier names like Trident and Oberoi.

Although there's always a fear of people(mostly hoteliers) judging it going against the culture yet the startup has served 200 couples in first 3 months of it's launch. Hotels don't announce that they are open to unmarried couples as there might be some resistance from the people but they admit this is not illegal. StayUncle faces a challenge however- to ensure privacy, as in India it's quite common to find hidden cameras inside hotel rooms. To mitigate the risk, they tie up only with reputed names who would not do something that puts their business on stake.

Sethi believes it to be a risky yet sustainable business. That's why unlike most ecommerce startups he doesn't believe in deep discounting. An eight-hour stay at hotels that are listed on StayUncle costs anywhere between Rs1,400 ($21) and Rs5,000 ($75). The average rates, however, is around Rs2,000 ($30) for an eight-hour stay- that's quite reasonable.

True to it's tagline- Couples need a Room, not a Judgement, the startup has picked the right thing- something today's youth want the most but couldn't help themselves.

So, next time you're in Delhi or Mumbai with your partner, do give a chance to the most understanding uncle to realize your fantasies.

During my 40 years in the software business, I have seen the number of my colleagues who are Indian go from zero to the vast majority. Currently, my first three levels of management are Indian. Some things I think have contributed to this:

• Size: India has the second largest population of any nation, so it is not surprising that there are potentially a lot of Indians in the world-wide employee pool. But size alone is not sufficient, otherwise there are ought to be more Chinese than Indian tech employees in the US.
• English: English is an official language of India and most educated Indians learn it as a second language. The English skills of my Indian colleagues run the gamut from excellent to hard to understand, but for the most part we have little problem communicating. I’ve noticed that Indians usually use English when talking to each other (not surprising since they frequently have different mother tongues), while the Chinese tend to speak to each other in Chinese.
• Education: Indians appear to put a lot of importance on education, and particularly higher education in the US. A few years ago I got a stack of resumes for graduating students at the University of North Carolina, Nineteen out of twenty of the resumes were from Indians, and the one non-Indian was the least qualified.
• Contractors and employees in India: Many US companies either use contract companies in India, or have their own employees there. Initially a big incentive was cost — Indian contractors were paid less money, although I understand that demand has lessened the pay gap. Small companies that I have worked for seemed particularly attracted to Indian contractors, who provided quick expertise but could be terminated easily if needed.
• Employee pool in the US: While there is considerable expense and bureaucracy for companies bringing in workers on H1-B visas, many of those workers eventually get permanent residence status and US citizenship. As time goes on, the pool of Indians who can be hired in the US without a visa increases.
• IBM and Unix: I heard this story years ago: In the 1960s India still had some nationalist economic rules that required subsidiaries of foreign corporations to have majority ownership by Indians or the Indian government. IBM refused to consent to this and withdrew its business from India. Indian enterprises were then forced to use the nascent Unix operating system. Later, when Unix became the dominant operating system for much of the computer world, Indians already had a lot of experience with it.

Indian technology companies except for IT industry have these following problems.

1. When independence was taken by us Nehru told that we don't want small scale industries. So the nation had to rely on imported technology since then.
2. Congress had license raj regime. So who has money to pay all the bribes shall have an industry by his name. This literally killed startups and any private industry possible. Promoting neo zamindari system.
3. Many states didn't know or had industrial corridors. The government created a industry and everybody has to get an employment offer from there or else you will be ridiculed for ever.
4. Most government industries were in the hands of communists hence any private company competing with government industry will be handled by Communists.Even mafia of raw materials were created by the communists.
5. Most IIT and NIT students were skilled in a technology but the advancement of the technology required money which the nation didnot have. This slowed the nation's progress.
6. By 1980 most asian economic giants were free market economy. They got a huge support and backing of USA to boost their trade and she'd communisim. India didnot adopt this system.
7. Communism was so high that even our agricultural industry and service sector industry struggled until PV Narasimha Rao ji liberated service sector of India partially. The first ever manufacturing and industrial awakening happened during Indira Gandhi ji's regime.
8. India had thirty to forty years of black market and incompetent industrial practices. All these practices came to an end during Dr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee ji's regime. Which means india had nothing till 2004. In case of industry. Except for BHEL, SAIL, IR, CIL, SCI, IOCL, BPCL HPCL, OIL, DRDO, HAL and OFI. As our major industry. Most private industry expanded after atal jis government. Dr. Manmohan Singh liberated usveven further.

In the early 80’s (~35 years ago), I was a graduate student in an US university. There was a scholarship offered to qualified students that would cover all expenses. There was a condition attached to it. One had to be a US citizen to get it. The scholarship went unclaimed as the graduate student population consisted of mostly Indians, some Chinese and some from other nations, all on student visas. I don’t think the situation is any different now in terms of make up of nationalities in advanced education in USA. Now I work for a top semi-conductor company and when I hire or recommend someone, I look for prospective employees with at least a Master’s degree. Guess which nationality I end up hiring or recommending?

My kids have gone through their schooling here and they are on their way to pursuing advanced degrees. During their schooling I have watched with sadness many students drop out of school. Some are likely to have had some type of hardship to pursue education. What about the rest? If they don’t pursue education, what are they expecting to do when they become adults? The business of the future (or even today) will require advanced technical knowledge to be successful. Who will fill the knowledge gap if the American kids don’t gear up?

Though I see anguish at the political and senior management level about the lack of qualified workers in US and some talk about or even experiment with improving the situation, in my opinion there is something more fundamental at play. When I was coaching a Robotics team in my kid’s middle school a number of years ago, the class teacher lamented that most students either don’t show up or when they do they are distracted by other things. I still remember the comment I made to him. I think it still applies today.

The primary factor I saw then and still see today is lack of parental participation in their children’s education. Road to a better future starts at home. If parents think the future they see is good enough, their kids are not encouraged to do anything better.

The secondary factor is Community. When we as a community don’t celebrate academic excellence, but waste no time in celebrating sport events, achievements in arts (TV, Hollywood, etc.), the kids do get the message that academics are not a priority.

India has emerged as a significant player in the data annotation industry, with several companies undertaking innovative projects to support AI and machine learning development. Notable among these are:

Playment: Founded in 2015 and based in Bangalore, Playment specializes in data labeling for AI, particularly in computer vision applications. The company utilizes a microwork approach, distributing large tasks into micro-tasks among a vast community of trained annotators. This method ensures high-quality datasets essential for training and validating machine learning models. In July 2021, Playment was acquired by TELUS International, enhancing its global reach and capabilities.

IndiVillage: As a BPO and social enterprise, IndiVillage employs impact sourcing to provide opportunities in rural India. In 2020, they partnered with Swiggy, a leading on-demand delivery platform, to annotate speech data for developing AI-driven speech recognition models. This collaboration aimed to enhance Swiggy's call center processes by accurately transcribing and analyzing customer interactions in multiple languages, including Hindi, English, and 'Hinglish'.

Indika AI: Specializing in data annotation, Indika AI offers services such as bounding box annotation, semantic segmentation, and named entity recognition. Their solutions cater to various industries, including finance, healthcare, and autonomous vehicles, ensuring precise and high-quality annotations that drive advanced AI capabilities.

Roora: Based in Bangalore, Roora provides data labeling services for machine learning and AI, focusing on image and video annotation techniques like bounding boxes, polygons, and semantic segmentation. They cater to industries such as autonomous vehicles, healthcare, and retail, emphasizing quality, scalability, and data security.

AiDataForge: With over a decade of experience, AiDataForge assists data scientists and AI engineers in collecting, organizing, and labeling data across various formats, including images, videos, text, and audio. Their services support applications in object detection, pose estimation, and sentiment analysis, among others.

These companies exemplify India's growing expertise in data annotation, contributing significantly to the global AI and machine learning landscape through innovative projects and collaborations.

There are many technology companies that I admire but Google got the number 1 spot after using its product Google Assistant.

So here are some screenshots of my conversation with google assistant.

1.When you get such a beautiful answer so you start to have an interesting conversation .

2.When I ask him to introduce himself.

3. I was amazed.

4. I got more interested in the conversation.

5.Even more interested.

6.Thanku Google Assistant.You surely know how to impress people.

7.Competitive spirit: Bring it on!!!

8.When you know how to handle situations like this-

9.When you have to solve the problem keeping in mind of your motto.

10.Your company-the best.

11.when you accidently enter your competitor's name.

12. And when you are destined to be single..

After this I never chatted with it again.

In India, several innovative data annotation projects are being undertaken by companies, leveraging advancements in technology and addressing various industry needs. Here are some notable examples:

1. AI-Powered Medical Imaging:

• Project Example: Qure AI | AI assistance for Accelerated Healthcare
• Details: Qure AI | AI assistance for Accelerated Healthcare uses data annotation to improve AI algorithms for medical imaging, including X-rays and CT scans. Annotated medical images are used to train AI models to detect and diagnose diseases like tuberculosis, cancer, and fractures with high accuracy.
• Innovation: Combining data annotation with deep learning to enhance diagnostic accuracy and speed up the process of medical image analysis.

2. Autonomous Vehicles:

• Project Example: Aindra Systems
• Details: Aindra Systems is involved in annotating data for autonomous vehicle development. This includes labeling and categorizing objects in video footage collected from cameras mounted on vehicles to train self-driving algorithms.
• Innovation: Utilizing annotated video data to improve object detection, lane recognition, and obstacle avoidance systems in autonomous vehicles.

3. Agricultural Technology:

• Project Example: Agrimetrics
• Details: Agrimetrics focuses on annotating satellite imagery and field data to support precision agriculture. This includes labeling crop types, identifying pest infestations, and analyzing soil conditions.
• Innovation: Integrating data annotation with satellite and drone imagery to provide actionable insights for optimizing crop management and yield predictions.

4. Retail and E-Commerce:

• Project Example: Fynd
• Details: Fynd, an e-commerce platform, uses data annotation to enhance product recommendations and search functionalities. Annotating product images and user behavior data helps improve the accuracy of recommendation engines.
• Innovation: Enhancing user experience by annotating data to provide more personalized shopping experiences and improve inventory management.

5. Natural Language Processing (NLP):

• Project Example: Haptik
• Details: Haptik focuses on annotating conversational data to train chatbots and virtual assistants. This includes labeling intents, entities, and dialogue context in user interactions.
• Innovation: Leveraging annotated dialogue data to improve natural language understanding and conversational abilities of AI-powered assistants.

6. Smart City Initiatives:

• Project Example: UrbanClap (now Urban Company)
• Details: UrbanClap uses data annotation to enhance smart city solutions, including urban planning and traffic management. Annotating data from various sensors and cameras helps in analyzing traffic patterns and optimizing city infrastructure.
• Innovation: Utilizing annotated data for real-time traffic management, predictive maintenance, and improving urban infrastructure planning.

7. Healthcare Records and Research:

• Project Example: MedicoReach
• Details: MedicoReach involves annotating electronic health records (EHR) and research data to support clinical research and improve healthcare outcomes. This includes labeling patient data for various studies and AI applications.
• Innovation: Enhancing research and treatment planning by accurately annotating medical records and patient data.

8. Language Translation and Localization:

• Project Example: LangPad
• Details: LangPad works on annotating text data to support language translation and localization services. This includes labeling phrases and contexts to improve machine translation models for Indian languages.
• Innovation: Improving translation accuracy and contextual understanding for multiple Indian languages through comprehensive data annotation.

9. Content Moderation:

• Project Example: Mindtickle
• Details: Mindtickle uses data annotation for content moderation, including identifying and labeling inappropriate content on social media and other platforms.
• Innovation: Enhancing automated content moderation systems to ensure compliance with community guidelines and improve user safety.

10. Financial Services and Fraud Detection:

• Project Example: Razorpay
• Details: Razorpay employs data annotation to detect fraudulent transactions and patterns in financial data. Annotating transaction records helps in training models to identify and prevent fraudulent activities.
• Innovation: Using annotated financial data to strengthen fraud detection algorithms and secure online transactions.

These projects highlight how data annotation is being used innovatively across different sectors in India to enhance technology, improve services, and address specific industry needs.

One of the most inspiring Indian technologies is the Jalyukta Shivar, a water conservation program implemented in the state of Maharashtra.

It aims to make the state drought-free by 2025 through the use of various techniques such as rainwater harvesting, soil and water conservation, and the rejuvenation of traditional water bodies.

The program has been successful in increasing the availability of water, improving agricultural productivity, and empowering local communities.

The Intelligent Transportation Systems Lab at IIT-Madras (Page on 115.108.126) is involved in some pretty cool research related to transportation in Indian conditions.

The researchers of the lab are using GPS devices fitted on city buses, image processing tools from various video cameras installed in Chennai, bluetooth data and more to better understand and model the chaotic conditions in the Indian streets.

As most of the transportation theories used in developed countries are not the ideal fit for the multi-modal Indian conditions, I have seen research scholars analyze a cluster of vehicles and try to understand the the influence of neighboring vehicles on the behavior of a driver.

They also have a bus tracking mobile and desktop app that allows student of the campus actually see when the next bus will arrive to take them from one zone of the campus to another.

You can also see Variable message signs in the lab waiting to be deployed on the road- its pretty cool to have your say in what the people of the city would see during their daily commutes to be able to make informed decisions.

Recently appeared in an article in the Hindu- IIT-M lab to study traffic, aid navigation
I really think that they are up to something really nice and exciting. Would be really interesting when the Chennai metro is fully functional and the lab is able to analyze data generated through it!

This is just not innovative but also very helpful start up:

Bloodman

Bloodman App helps people that are desperately in need of blood, connect with those that are in a position to help/donate blood.

This is a location based mobile app for blood donation.

Imagine one of your family member needs​ blood on urgent basis and you are not able to find it in blood bank. What will you do? You can call all your contacts and ask for blood or just request for your required type of blood on Bloodman.

Main feature of the app is, you can directly get connected with the donor who is nearby. Plus there are no hidden charges applied for the same.

Each year millions of people lose their life because they do not find donors when needed most.

It is unfortunate that there are donors and people willing to help everywhere but they are not sure when/where an actual need arise.

Right now, there are just thousand download of the app but it can be more effective if more people register themselves as donor. It can save many lives as in India. As per report on TOI - India faces, on average, shortfall of 3 million units of blood annually.

This can be the best thing you can do with your mobile!

I would like to mention two innovative Indian companies here ,that most people have not heard of ,

1. Tejas networks

2. Sasken technologies

The reason why I am writing about these companies is because they are really unique, innovative,basically technology and product companies and top of that based in India; Following engineering's core principle-

“Application of basic sciences for the help of humanity and commercialization of research/technology”.

Both of these companies have filled lot patents, i.e research and innovation out of India. They support India’s growth story.

We waste large fraction of our engineering talent on services, we have bright talent, technology entrepreneurship in India must be encouraged.

Tejas Networks:

Tejas Networks designs, develops and sells high-performance and cost-competitive products to telecommunications service providers, internet service providers, utilities, defense and government entities in over 60 countries. Tejas products utilize a programmable software-defined hardware architecture with a common software code-base that delivers an app-like ease of development and upgrades of new features and technology standards. Tejas is ranked amongst top-10 suppliers in the global optical aggregation segment.

Recently Tejas Network went public,

You can read captivating story of Tejas Networks in following article,

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/ipos/fpos/decoding-the-rise-of-tejas-networks-an-optical-networking-product-company-that-got-listed-in-june/articleshow/59638627.cms

Sasken technologies:

The story of Sasken is interesting they were firstly based in Silicon Valley but shifted to Bangalore after some time.

Sasken is a specialist in Product Engineering and Digital Transformation providing concept-to-market, chip-to-cognition R&D services to global leaders in Semiconductor, Automotive, Industrials, Smart Devices & Wearables, Enterprise Grade Devices, Satcom, and Retail industries. With over 27 years in Product Engineering and Digital Transformation and 70 patents, Sasken has transformed the businesses of over a 100 Fortune 500 companies, powering over a billion devices through its services and IP.

Established in 1989, Sasken employs 2200+ people, operating from state-of-the-art centers in Bangalore, Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad (India), Kaustinen and Tampere (Finland), and Beijing, Shanghai (China). Sasken also have a presence across Germany, Japan, UK, and USA. Sasken has been listed in the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange since its initial public offering in 2005.

Engineering is basically application of basic sciences, the purpose of engineering is to build innovative products in the help of mankind. This is what most US technology companies have been doing since long time, they convert their research into products/services to solve some problems or to make things easy, it is called commercialization of technology. (eg. Google,Microsoft,Intel etc.)

By converting their products/technology into business i.e commercialization of technology they help lift their county’s economy and at the same make great products/services which basically solves some of mankind’s problems or make people’s lives easy. So this completes engineering’s basic purpose- application of basic science to the help of humanity. When these companies become big , they supports nation’s economy to large extent.

I think Tejas Networks and Sasken are doing the same building great innovative products through research and helping grow India’s economy.

Let me add The Boring Company

Quite opposite to what the name suggests, I think it's one of Elon Musk’s most fascinating companies. The Boring Company’s goal is to create a viable method of digging tunnels fast. These tunnels have the potential to revolutionize our transportation systems.

Our current transportation systems are 2-D, but Elon is proposing a network of tunnels underground where our roads become 3-D. By going underground, you can build layers and layers of tunnels, have a weatherproof method of travel, and not disturb the general public during construction.

These tunnels are also going to be used to make his Hyperloop

They just received permission to begin digging in LA as a test bed.

Why do I admire this?

Like his other companies, Elon Musk is going against seemingly unsurmountable odds to make his vision a reality.

Digging tunnels is expensive - costs can go up to $1 billion per mile. But he’s willing to look beyond and analyze the root of the problem. The biggest factor of these costs is the tunneling diameter and he’s approaching that problem in all sorts of innovative ways, taking on decades of conventional tunneling wisdom.

And just look at how he announced his plans…

Footnotes

I wish I could write with my credentials however since mea culpa applies, I can not.

Below is the hypothesis

You need the below traits in employees to be a successful business

1. Your employees should feel they are doing something great by working for you
2. They should feel proud to do what they are doing and hence be viewed as “being arrived in life”

Let me also bring a very old yet accepted model of management in picture

An average Indian goes from the bottom slab to one below the top, the moment they get a Job in US.

India has such a high socio economic backlog that the average Indian is desperate to make it big in life.They have forgotten contentment, something their ancestors gave to the world. They will go to any extreme to just get up and above

Most of the H1B’s are people from middle to lower middle class and they feel that they have done something big as soon as they are in US.

Why does this happen - As a child any average kid is exposed to such a harsh upbringing where he is always compared to others and this comparison leads him to desperately look for an opportunity where he/she can prove it to his friends, family, parents and above all himself a sense of achievement.

They will come to US at sub optimal salaries, will stay in pigeon holes. Will happily face discrimination at work( Don’t you guys give me gyaan here). Will not take leaves, will work 80 hours for 40 hours pay and cry like a baby if asked to go back. In a nut shell the continuity to stay in US will make them do anything in life.

In reality they are only ruining their career in most of the cases. They could have done bigger and better stuff at home.

Hence when you have such a high venerable population available companies hire them.

Americans are too proud and are aware of the laws of work. They treat companies as employers and work without FEAR.

I hate to write the below ending but

“the psychology of Indian’s is no different from the AF who worked in plantations during 1700’s”

Talent level and industries have changed the psychology hasn’t evolved yet.

Sorry India - you need to up your game to make your population feel proud to contribute at home. You need a new Ghandhi who can help you achieve independence from the clutches of everything foreign.

Disclaimer:- The below was written late 2010 - Many of these issues are no longer relevant - I'm time constrained and so just putting in this note - In 2013: there is more liquidity, many funds have people at the top who are successful entrepreneurs in their own right and yes - I belv. Bangalore has now achieved critical mass as the place to be or is getting there rapidly.

Written in 2010:--

I'll try and list out some of the reasons why we have not seen any great technology companies:-
1. The ecosystem for startups is still not fully built out in India. To build a great global technology company, it is important to move to the Bay Area (even facebook did it). To build a great Indian Technology company, it is unclear where you need to move to in India. Without the cluster effect, getting things done in a time bound fashion is difficult and hence more expensive and exposes the company to technology and market risks.

2. The VCs are constrained to invest about 5-6mn USD per deal at a minimum. In this situation, the choice usually boils down between investing in Ideas Vs. investing in a mid sized company which will return capital and can probably go public sooner. It takes real guts, conviction and passion to choose to give that money to the person with ideas. The VCs in India are presently staffed with guys who have not made significant money (The only people who have made significant money in the internet sector are Rajesh Jain, Sanjeev Bhikchandani, Ajit Balakrishnan and more recently Deep Kalra) The guys who are presently investing know the amounts that they exited at given that they had significant money to throw at the problem, had a great team and operated at a time when costs were lower. Can't blame them for being skeptical about the chances of building a huge company from India.

3. Infosys has been one of the only companies where equity was given liberally to employees. For the bigger exits (Indiaworld, Naukri, Makemytrip, Rediff) - there has been a negligible option pool. There are very few developers and talented product managers who can tell their peers that yes, I bought this 2cr. apartment from my stock options. Unless this culture becomes mainstream and every developer has one friend in his immediate circle who has made 2-10crores by 'working' in a startup - not founding it, the best talent will not choose to work at startups. Without technical talent, it is not possible to build great companies.

4. VCs in India do not have the confidence and the ear of the entrepreneurs with currency to buy other companies and provide liquidity and money into the ecosystem. I would name these entrepreneurs- Raju in the past (SIFY - now no currency there) and presently Ajit Balakrishnan (Rediff), Sajeev (Naukri), Arvind Rao (Onmobile), Deep Kalra (Makemytrip). Of the guys with currency, Deep Kalra is probably the only one who the VCs (SAIF partners) enjoy some leverage with as they own quite a large chunk of the company. The others of course are known to all the VCs but there is no VC who can claim to know the direction they are going in as evidenced by them having invested in a company and sold it to one of these guys later. In fact, Rediff, Naukri and Onmobile have taken the position that they are better at recognizing opportunity than the VCs and have funded seed stage companies directly. Lots of companies in the west get invested and built because of a known acquirer with stated intent (Cisco, Google, MSFT etc.) - In the absence of this clarity in India, exits are rare and profitable ones even more so, thus making investing in great technology companies even more difficult.

So to summarize, my feeling is that the reason we're seeing so few great companies is that most companies being invested in, are not great companies even at the time of financing. The VCs are yet to build the ecosystem that will reward big bets and till such time as they see this ecosystem being built, my guess is they will continue to remain gun-shy.

Although I google the below content, I feel few small scale companies are innovative too.. like ID [Instant foods, dosa/ idly dough, ready to make parota, ready to make rava idly..] Bindu Jal Jeera soda, OLA cabs..]

1. UNIQUE IDENTIFICATION AUTHORITY
For amassing a trove of biometric identification to activate benefits for millions of Indians. The government office is using multimodal biometrics—fingerprints, iris scans, and photographs—to build the world's most ambitious identity database. A mammoth ecosystem of agencies deploys its open, scalable model, and the robust system can enroll the identities of a million people a day with 99.99% accuracy. It authenticates people over a mobile phone network using a one-time password or their fingerprints (illiteracy is a problem in India). In the process, it enables instant, paperless provisioning of banking services and welfare benefits to millions of Indians who lacked any identification until now. At last count, 450 million Indians had received their new IDs and used them to make 40 million cash transfers. Read more >>
2. ZIPDIAL
For dialing into the very Indian "missed call" money-saving tactic. ZipDial's marketing and analytics platform is fashioned out of the ingenious practice of escaping a charge by calling and hanging up to convey a predecided message. Its unique business model works by providing a number for brands to publish on their marketing campaigns. So far, ZipDial has targeted 416 million callers for clients like Disney, Dove, and Coca-Cola, which can now text customers about new deals and product launches. India's largest political parties, the Congress and the BJP, have recently signed up, which means ZipDial is now headed for the mainstream. The service just launched in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and will soon be in Indonesia and the Philippines. Read more >>
3. INNOZ
For bringing the Internet to India's vast underconnected masses. Innoz's SMSGyan allows feature-phone users to access the Internet anytime and from anywhere by facilitating their web searches via text messages. The service has processed 1.3 billion queries so far and has more than 120 million active users, mostly in India. But the service is also growing in Africa, the Middle East, and other parts of Asia. Innoz was launched by a group of engineering college dropouts who came upon the idea when they weren't able to search for "How to woo girls" on their very basic phones.
4. GOONJ
For galvanizing a behavior shift in urban India to care for those in need. Goonj channels excess resources from urban households to impoverished, rural, and disaster-struck areas. In exchange for clothes, furniture, household goods, and medical supplies, village and slum communities self-organize and build schools, roads, and toilet facilities. The company has thus turned used clothes and other second-hand material into currency, successfully leading more than 1,500 such projects in the past three years alone. It recently delivered thousands of tons of material to the floodstruck in the Himalayas, to cyclone victims in eastern Orissa, and to victims of communal violence in central Muzaffarnagar, through a network of schools and nonprofits. In a large country, Goonj is a game-changer, teaching urban Indians when, what, and how to give.
5. ERAM SCIENTIFIC SOLUTIONS
For improving the country's mess of a public-toilet network. Not long ago, Bill Gates let the world know that he was serious about building a better toilet. Eram Scientific Solutions, which makes the Gates Foundation–backed Delight public toilet system, is just proof that the man delivers on his promises. The company's toilet flushes automatically—when people enter, after they leave, and every two hours—to keep tidy, but it also saves energy with motion-sensor lights and fans. Four hundred of them have been installed across the country so far, with a reported 6,000 in the pipeline.
6. MITRA BIOTECH
For rethinking conventional cancer drug therapies by applying data analytics.Though it saves lives, chemotherapy—in which enough toxins are pumped into the patient's body to kill malignant cells but spare the host—is still a risky process. Founded by Harvard and MIT researchers, Mitra Biotech's CANScript technology re-creates an artificial environment for a patient's tumor sample and tests various drugs on it directly, allowing the company to arrive at a personalized treatment in less than a week. Mitra has formed partnerships with several Indian hospitals and is eyeing a U.S. entry.
7. INTERVIEWSTREET
For leveling the playing ground for coders all over the world. Interviewstreet's disruptive platform helps screen and hire programmers through online coding tests and contests, thus matching best performers from around the globe to business titans. Interviewstreet counts Facebook, Amazon, Morgan Stanley, Zynga, and Walmart among its customers, and it recently placed 40 Indian computer-science students in some of the hottest jobs in the Valley just as they were finishing up their degrees.
8. MYDENTIST
For putting smiles on thousands of faces with a Starbucks-inspired chain of dental offices. MyDentist is a two-year-old dental chain based in Mumbai and Pune that has brought dimensions of the retail business to dental treatment. With 75 locations throughout the country, which will grow to 150 this year, MyDentist offers efficient care at standard, transparent rates. It's affordable to the underprivileged crowd, such as cab drivers and domestic workers, who live in slum areas: Root canal treatments cost just 2,500 rupees ($40), and 21,000-rupee braces can be paid in 1,500-rupee ($24) installments. The chain treats a whopping 15,000 patients each month.
9. OLACABS
For smoothing the journey of India's growing but scrappy car rental market. Within a year of its launch, Olacabs has grown to become India's largest car rental brand. Its success lies in the myriad tech solutions it uses to navigate the chaos of India's urban commuter system: Its mobile app lets a user summon a cab with a single click and allows real-time tracking of the cab as it nears. Meanwhile, Olacabs' predictive algorithm helps anticipate demand at different locations and times, monitors traffic and weather conditions, and, after a customer books, accurately predicts the time of arrival. Olacabs currently aggregates 7,500 cars in India's four largest cities and achieves an explosive 25% month-over-month growth rate.
10. CLOUDNINE
For delivering world-class services and health care to expectant mothers. Despite the ongoing efforts of India's government, the country still lags behind much of the world in infant and maternal mortality rates. Cloudnine, however, has managed to sustain a 0% maternal mortality rate and a 99.72% survival rate across 16,000 deliveries at its five Bangalore-based health-care facilities. The company, which recently scored $16 million in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital, credits its all-hands approach for its success: Its hospitals contain standard pregnancy and neonatal care but also feature specialized units for fetal medicine and workshops for first-time parents.

I guess among the top tech products from Indian companies I would rate the following:

1. Finacle: Its a banking product which I heard, powers most of the Indian and some foreign banks. The product is probably the only creditable non-labor arbitrage work from Infosys. The banks using it are: ICICI, Axis, PNB and many more. It has a great market share and also making inroads into Gulf banking and US markets.
2. LPRS: A license plate reading system to read the numbers plates of moving vehicles which won the Nasscom award for innovation. Though there are pages on wiki which establish that this technology existed years back http://www.nasscom.in/Nasscom/templates/NormalPage.aspx?id=55728
3. Collapsible tubes: These tubes made by a firm owned by Subhash Goel of Zee TV is among the world's best and used by most toothpaste manufacturers. Last, I read that this product has more than 40% of world's market share.

According to me, below are the ones :

1. ISRO - with limited resources, it is doing an awesome job.
2. DRDO - again it has developed ICBM’s, anti ICBM’s, Brahmos (fastest anti ship missile), Tejas and many more - not a joke at all. The defense area is very stringent in technology sharing. DRDO has manged to give a swift competition to the western counterparts with very limited resources. Can’t be possible without innovation.
3. Asian Paints
4. Some of Tata Group Companies
5. TVF (The Viral Fever) - These guys have changed the way we look at web series. And its creations Permanent Roommates and Pitchers are the only ones from India to feature on IMDb top 50.

And many more, but I don’t recall.

These are the 15 Companies that best combine innovative technology with an effective business model and hence they are the most technologically advanced complained of this 21st century human world:

Some are large companies that seem to be growing ever larger, like Amazon and Apple. Others, like IBM, or General Electric are old-guard giants betting on technology renewal. And the list is full of ambitious startups like SpaceX, which is changing the economics of space travel with reusable rockets.

1.Nvidia:- Headquarters Santa Clara, California ◆ Industry Intelligent machines ◆ Status Public ◆ Valuation $90.9 billion

Though Nvidia still makes most of its money from selling graphics chips for video games, it has established itself as the leading provider of processing power for AI software, and its newer, AI-related businesses are growing quickly. During its most recent financial quarter, revenues from its data-center and automotive businesses increased by 186 percent and 24 percent, respectively, over the previous year. The company says all the major Internet and cloud-service providers use its chips to accelerate their processes, and a number of large carmakers, including Toyota, are using its autonomous-driving technology.

$3 billion: spending on R&D to create its new data-center chip.

Nvidia CEO: Software Is Eating the World, but AI Is Going to Eat Software

The Race to Power AI’s Silicon Brains

Drones and Robots Are Taking Over Industrial Inspection

Battle to Provide Chips for the AI Boom Heats Up

2.SpaceX:- ◆Headquarters Hawthorne, California ◆ Industry Transportation ◆ Status Private◆ Valuation $12 billion

In 2017, SpaceX proved it’s possible to fly a rocket into space carrying a payload, bring it back, refurbish it, and launch it again with a new payload. Reusable rockets make space travel far cheaper and faster: they are critical to SpaceX’s long-term goal of establishing an interplanetary transport system. The startup also compressed the time needed to refit its recycled rockets (from one year to a few months) and began preliminary tests of its Falcon Heavy booster, which is expected to be the world’s most powerful rocket when it is completed later this year.

10 percent: price discount being considered for customers who agree to fly their payloads on reused rockets

3.Amazon:- Headquarters Seattle, Washington

Industry Connectivity ◆ Status Public ◆ Valuation $479.3 billion

Amazon is using a range of AI technologies, including computer vision, machine learning, and natural-language processing, to reinvent mobile computing and shopping. The company’s voice-activated assistant Alexa now controls everything from TVs to cars and is poised to be the next important computing platform. Amazon is also streamlining the brick-and-mortar shopping experience through its Seattle-based Amazon Go convenience store. Customers simply enter the store, scan an app on their smartphones, and walk out with the items they wish to purchase. Amazon uses AI, cameras, and sensors to identify the products they have selected and bills them automatically—no lines or checkouts necessary.

12,000: number of programs that software developers have published for Alexa with Empathy

4.23andMe:- Headquarters Mountain View, California◆Industry Biomedicine◆Status Private◆Valuation $1.1 billion

A pioneer of direct-to-consumer genetic testing since its founding in 2006, 23andMe ran into trouble in 2013 when the FDA barred it from distributing health information. But this year the regulator changed course and reopened a major business line for the company, permitting it to market genetic reports on risks for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and eight other conditions. After extracting DNA from the cells in saliva samples sent in by customers, the company uses a DNA-genotyping chip made by Illumina (No. 22) to capture features related to health and ancestry—information customers are then able to access online. 23andMe now has more than two million customers worldwide, and its products have been used in a number of research projects, including studies of female fertility, depression, Parkinson’s disease, and even nail biting.

1 million plus: number of customers who have consented to have their genetic information used for scientific research.

5.Alphabet:- Headquarters Mountain View, California ◆Industry Connectivity◆Status Public◆Valuation $673.9 billion

Alphabet’s subsidiaries are technology leaders in AI, autonomous vehicles, and AR and VR, among other areas. Its DeepMind division keeps devising new ways for AI systems to mimic human intelligence and learn more quickly. Its self-driving-car project, Waymo, continues to improve performance and has aggressively defended its intellectual property by suing rival Uber after a top engineer switched teams. Google, Alphabet’s best-known and largest subsidiary, is collaborating with hardware makers to create standalone VR headsets for its Daydream VR platform. The new models will have built-in displays and processors rather than relying on users’ smartphones, and will use sensors to better track peoples’ movements in virtual worlds.

40 percent: amount of energy the company says it saves applying machine-learning algorithms from its DeepMind subsidiary to cooling its data center.

6.iFlytek:- Headquarters Hefei, China◆Industry Intelligent machines◆Status Public◆Valuation $6.8 billion

iFlytek already dominates China’s voice recognition market and is now expanding into voice-activated command systems for cars, homes, robots, and schools. In the past year, it launched systems that enable people to control their cars, TVs, and home appliances via voice; invested in a startup that makes home robots; and established a joint venture to develop educational products that incorporate its instant translation features. It also established a multimillion-dollar fund to invest in AI-related startups around the world. It says that more than 160,000 developers use its software and more than 400 million people use its products.

70 percent: iFlytek’s share of China’s market in voice-based technologies.

7.Kite Pharma:- Headquarters Santa Monica, California◆Industry Biomedicine◆Status Public◆Valuation $5.7 billion

This immunotherapy company is taking the body’s T cells, which naturally fight infections, and engineering them to fight cancer. It is farthest along with its therapy for aggressive non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, with more than a third of one study’s participants showing no sign of disease six months after treatment. There were two deaths associated with the therapy based on its known side effects—approximately 2 percent of study participants—but it seems to be nearing FDA approval.

39 percent: proportion of study participants very sick with lymphoma who showed no sign of the disease six months after a single treatment with Kite’s therapy.

8. Tencent:- Headquarters Shenzhen, China◆Industry Connectivity◆Status Public◆Valuation $350 billion

It’s been a blowout year for Tencent, which owns China’s biggest social network, WeChat, and is also the world’s largest video-gaming company. Though WeChat already boasts more than 900 million monthly active users, Tencent keeps expanding the mobile app so that it now offers messaging, online gaming, shopping, music, videos, and peer-to-peer payments. The breadth of features attracts new users and keeps existing ones active inside WeChat, which enables Tencent to sell more ads and services. In April, the Internet giant passed Wells Fargo to become one of the world’s 10 most valuable companies by market capitalization, thanks to growth in its gaming, online advertising, and payments businesses.

50 percent: proportion of WeChat’s 770 million daily users who are on the service at least 90 minutes a day.

8.Regeneron:- Headquarters Tarrytown, New York◆Industry Biomedicine◆Status Public◆Valuation $55.5 billion

A well-established biotech with a track record in treating eye and other diseases, Regeneron emphasizes the use of genetic information to focus its drug development efforts. In March it announced that, along with the U.K. Biobank and pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, it would be sequencing genetic data from 500,000 volunteers to help support research into drug development and the connections between DNA and disease. It’s also put a focus on creating “off-the-shelf” engineered T cells to target tumors without requiring a patient’s own immune cells to be used, an approach that could make this field of treatment much easier to scale. Company revenue for calendar year 2016 was $4.9 billion, net income nearly $900 million.

500,000: number of U.K. volunteers whose genetic data it is helping sequence

10.Spark Therapeutics:- Headquarters Philadelphia, Pennsylvania◆Industry Biomedicine◆Status Public◆Valuation $1.9 billion

In addition to its treatment for a progressive form of blindness, the company has also been testing a way to combat hemophilia B, a blood clotting disorder, by intravenous treatment with viruses carrying a corrected version of the gene that codes for a blood-clotting protein called factor IX. This is one to watch because the disease, which affects one in 5,000 men, is expensive to treat conventionally.

1 in 30,000: estimated number of individuals affected by the disease, Leber hereditary optic neuropathy

11.Face ++ :- Headquarters Beijing, China◆Industry Intelligent machines◆Status Private◆Valuation $1 billion

Facial recognition services are prevalent in China, and Face++’s software powers many of the country’s most popular applications. Alipay, the popular online payment platform, uses the technology to let users log in and make payments using their face as ID; ride-sharing provider Didi Chuxing uses it to verify the identity of its freelance drivers; and smartphone app maker Meitu uses it to offer highly detailed photo-retouching features. The five-year-old startup is believed to be the first facial recognition “unicorn,” having raised at least $145 million in recent years, including at least $100 million in December 2016.

106: maximum number of points on a person’s face that its technology tracks

12.First Solar:- Headquarters Tempe, Arizona◆Industry Clean energy◆Status Public◆Valuation $4.3 billion

Landed some of the biggest solar-plant deals in the world last year, including a 140-megawatt solar farm in North Queensland, Australia, the largest in that country. The company, which develops, constructs, and operates photovoltaic power plants connected to the electric grid, also continues to invest heavily in its cadmium telluride cells, a promising alternative to silicon solar cells that are making big advances. This year is off to a good start too, with the company reporting better-than-expected results in the first quarter of 2017 and raising expectations for its current quarter as well.

$2.9 billion: estimated 2017 revenue

13.Intel:- Headquarters Santa Clara, California◆Industry Intelligent machines◆Status Public◆Valuation $160 billion

Intel is benefiting from a series of AI-centric investments and acquisitions it made to offset the decline of its main market, chips for personal computers. In the past year, it bought the deep-learning startup Nervana, the computer-vision chipmaker Movidius, and Mobileye, a supplier of assisted-driving systems. The Movidius purchase enabled Intel to sell chips to drone giant DJI, while the Mobileye acquisition brought it autonomous-driving partnerships with BMW and Delphi Automotive. In March, Intel launched an AI products group to further accelerate its AI efforts.

46 percent: portion of revenues derived from areas beyond PC chips

14.Quanergy Systems:- Headquarters Sunnyvale, California◆Industry Intelligent machines◆Status Private◆Valuation $1.6 billion

There are many startups trying to create compact, low-cost, high-quality lidar systems for autonomous vehicles, but Quanergy was the first to develop one using solid-state technology, which increases the reliability of the laser-scanning radar. The startup’s lidar is also relatively cheap to make because it uses some of the same materials and manufacturing processes as computer chips. The sensors, which are small enough to be embedded in car headlights, can be used in advanced driver-assistance systems and will be integrated into autonomous vehicles by 2021.

$250: price of its S3 Lidar sensors for autonomous vehicles

15.Apple:- Headquarters Cupertino, California◆Industry Intelligent machines◆Status Public◆Valuation $761.4 billion

Derided of late for a lack of innovative new products and tepid customer response to Apple Pay and the Apple Watch, Apple has launched a Siri-enabled speaker called HomePod to compete with Amazon’s Alexa-equipped Echo speaker. It’s also begun to tout its AI chops, including acknowledging its work on autonomous-driving systems. For some time Apple has been quietly hiring some impressive robotics and AI talent for its project, and its history of smart design and smooth integration of hardware and software may prove valuable assets.

$257 billion: cash on its balance sheet, more than the entire market value of General Electric.

Hope you enjoy.

1. Chenani-Nasri Tunnel (aka Patnitop Tunnel)- Longest Road Tunnel in India

The Patnitop tunnel is a part of the planned four-lane widening of the National Highway 1A (NH1A) between Srinagar and Jammu. The tunnel will act as an alternative to the existing NH1A section which faces geometric and safety concerns as it passes through steep mountain terrains.

The two-lane bi-directional traffic tunnel will be an all-weather and reliable road throughout the year.It will reduce the travelling distance from 41km to 10km.

The tunnel is constructed using the New Austrian Tunnelling method (NATM technique). The construction is done by M/s Leighton Contractors (India) Pvt. Ltd. for National Highway Authority of India.

When we visited the site on April, 2014, the excavation was on the verge of completion, only about a kilometer of excavation being left. The tunnel is expected to begin operations by 2017.

Shotcreting of Tunnel Lining- The shotcreting is done in two layers to fill in the cracks and fissures in the tunnel wall after blasting and excavation and to maintain the overall structural integrity of the tunnel wall.

Waterproofing of Tunnel Walls- It is the first fully water-proofed Road tunnel in India. The water from the seepage is not allowed to enter the tunnel by providing these PE sheets. The water is carefully drained out using a network of porous concrete drains.

Gantry Structure for Concreting of Tunnel Lining- This metallic structure enables concreting of the tunnel wall 30m at a time.

Okay, that's just me (third from left) and a few of my buddies on our site visit. You can see the concreting of this part of the Tunnel is complete.

2. Signature Bridge- New Delhi: Unsymmetric cable-stayed bridge

Representative Photo of the Bridge showing view of the bridge upon completion. Expected date of completion is by 2016. (Though I highly doubt they will be able to do so).

This will not only serve as a connector between the two banks of Yamuna but will also be a major tourist destination. The area around the bridge which looks like a urban slum now will be developed into a eco-park. This will involve closing/ detouring of streams with industrial wastes which flows into the Yamuna near the site. The superstructure was a steel-concrete composite structure. Sorry, I do not seem to have any photos of it. The best I have is a pic of the deck with a part of the pilon to be constructed monolithic-ally with the deck (pic below).

Another interesting part of this bridge is the pile-cum-well foundation (pic below) supporting the two pylons. It consists of a well foundation of 17.5m diameter and 19m deep deep with 16 piles 40m deep connected to it by shear connectors. This will take the huge tensile force coming from the pylons.

3. Gandhi Setu rebuilding to start within 4 months: Gadkari - Times of India

Construction of a new bridge parallel to the existing Bridge is also under consideration. Appointment for consultants for the design of the bridge is under process. I am lucky to be a part of the team overlooking the appointment of the consultants.