Archives
NEWS 
March 30, 2016 Why Saama sold its Snapdeal stake
Photo: Pradeep Gaur/Mint How do you like the view?” asks a beaming Ash Lilani as he strides into the conference room at Saama Capital India Advisors’ Bengaluru office on a February afternoon. The “view” Saama’s co-founder is asking about is a trophy wall of sorts adorned with plaques that sport the logos of the venture […]
COMPUTERS 
March 28, 2016 Why Google’s New Quantum Computer Could Launch an Artificial Intelligence Arms Race
Ever since the 1980s, researchers have been working on the development of a quantum computer that would be exponentially more powerful than any of the digital computers that exist today. And now Google, in collaboration with Nasa, says it has a quantum computer – the D-Wave 2X – that works. Google claims the D-Wave 2X […]
ALL DEALS 
March 16, 2016 Scale – Here’s Why You Need To Scale or Go Out of Business
You’ve worked hard to get your business where it is, and maybe you’re okay staying small. But I encourage you to consider what your brand would look like if it did grow. Maybe you could afford to hire more employees, taking a lot of the workload and stress off of your own back. Maybe you […]
ALL DEALS March 15, 2016 Why University Spin Offs Need Engineers on the Founding Team
Recently a team of graduate students came to me to talk about a company they were planning to start. They had an option to license a university invention that used would detect heavy metal ions in water. They had clearly researched the idea and had identified a market. They would sell sensors to companies required […]
ALL DEALS March 15, 2016 Why Angel Backed Companies are Raising Less Money
The average angel-backed company receives much less capital today than it did in the early 2000s, data from the University of New Hampshire’s Center for Venture Research (CVR) reveals. The CVR’s numbers — which come from surveys of individual angels and angel groups — show that the dollars that the average angel-backed company received dropped […]
NEWS March 4, 2016 Here’s why Microsoft bought SwiftKey for $250 million—artificial intelligence
Photo: Bloomberg New Delhi: On Tuesday, London-based predictive technology company SwiftKey said it has joined the Microsoft family. The deal, first reported by the Financial Times, is believed to be around $250 million. SwiftKey, for most smartphone users, comes through as just another third-party keyboard app, an upgrade on the default keyboard that most platforms […]
NEWS March 4, 2016 Why Morgan Stanley’s action on Flipkart is bad news for Indian unicorns
Given that Flipkart is expected to list its shares in the US at some point over the next few years, the valuation estimates of the mutual funds will be an important indicator of how stock market investors will value the company. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint Bengaluru/New Delhi: Late last month, Flipkart India Pvt. Ltd, the country’s […]
ALL DEALS March 3, 2016 Why investors are interested in CarDekho
CarDekho.com boasts of investors such as Ratan Tata, Times Internet, Sequoia, Hillhouse Capital, Tybourne Capital and HDFC Bank, and is valued at $300 million. Clearly, it has no dearth of investors or money. New Delhi: The presence of CarDekho.com, promoted by Jaipur-based IT firm Girnar Soft, at the recently-concluded Delhi Auto Expo was intimidating. The […]
ELECTRONICS February 25, 2016 Why would Foxconn buy Sharp? It’s all about the iPhone
Japanese electronics maker Sharp has accepted a bid from Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group for it to buy a majority stake in company for ¥489 billion ($4.4 billion), the Japanese firm announced today (Feb. 25). Shortly thereafter, however, Foxconn put the deal on hold “after receiving new material information from Sharp,” it said in a statement. […]
ALL DEALS February 25, 2016 Why the US Government and Tech Firms Can’t Agree About Encryption
Your phone is getting better and better at protecting your privacy. But Uncle Sam isn’t totally comfortable with that, because it’s also complicating the work of tracking criminals and potential national-security threats. For decades, tech companies have steadily expanded the use of encryption – a data-scrambling technology that shields information from prying eyes, whether it’s […]
NEWS 
February 18, 2016 Indians think Africans are ‘frauds and prostitutes’ ‒ so why do they still come to India to study?
Photo Credit: Noah Seelam/AFP 21.8K Total Views On the morning of February 6, a few hundred African students gathered on the steps of Bengaluru’s Town Hall, a striking, colonnaded building at the heart of the sprawling metropolis best known as India’s Silicon Valley. Holding posters, some printed and most handwritten, and shouting slogans, they were […]
ALL DEALS February 18, 2016 TN polls: Why almost all political parties want this Captain on board
Photo Credit: Youtube.com 13K Total Views When Opposition leader, Vijayakanth, also known as Captain, congratulated Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah on his re-election as party president last month, tongues began wagging furiously in Tamil Nadu. “This means he is going to come with the NDA,” said an elated BJP leader. Captain, who leads the […]
