Microsoft's Cloud Initiatives to Empower Startups in India

Microsoft is on a mission to empower India through technology, and acknowledges the critical role that technology start-ups can play in achieving this objective. The company is committed to fostering innovation among start-ups in India by providing resources, technology and mentoring to drive this innovation. Microsoft aims to provide the right tools, resources, connections, knowledge and expertise that startups need to leverage the full potential of the cloud and create innovative, SaaS solutions built on the cloud. Earlier this month, Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella was in Delhi where he urged Indian developers to use Microsoft platforms to innovate. He had said, "I want us to be the platform to foster the ingenuity of the people of India."

To that effect, Microsoft has launched multiple programs to support startups in the country, acknowledging the emergence of born-in-the-cloud start-ups i.e. new-age start-ups that understand the possibilities and benefits of the public cloud and build their SaaS solutions on the cloud. Its BizSpark Plus program offers free Azure Cloud services to qualified startups to power their business. The program also provides free software, developer tools, and technical support to help startups be successful. Committed to offering support throughout the growth journey, Microsoft has also partnered with 13 startup accelerators to roll out this program. Microsoft Accelerator too works with mature and late stage startups, focusing on their core needs such as guidance on scaling up and customer acquisition. Close to 100 startups have graduated from eight batches of the Microsoft Accelerator program.

Microsoft, showcased some marquee SaaS solutions for enterprises and organizations, developed by born-in-the-cloud startups. The solutions range from technologies for offering better customer experiences, building intelligent infrastructure through cloud, local market on chat and talent management platform. All these SaaS solutions have been built on the Microsoft Azure public cloud platform that offers reliability and scalability and ensures that the solutions built future-proof them, allowing these startups to keep pace with the rapidly changing customer preferences, hardware evolutions and to manage hyper business growth. Indian datacenters provide local customers with data residency and replication in multiple regions for backup and recovery, and the option of a private connection to the cloud.

Harish Vaidyanathan, Director of Independent Software Vendor Programs at Microsoft, said, “Our strategy is to build best-in-class platforms and productivity services for a mobile-first, cloud-first world and we realize the pivotal role that startups, with their ideas and enthusiasm, can play in leveraging those platforms to create newer solutions. We are committed to partner with the startups and provide them with all means necessary to grow while helping India become a more connected and empowered nation.”

Startups displaying their cloud-based SaaS solutions included:

Ameyo offers an Omni-channel platform to streamline customer interaction across all conduits of communication and has helped businesses increase customer conversion by 6% to 15% while reduced cost of sourcing, lower churn and higher customer retention.

Vymo is a personal assistant app for enterprise sales or service teams focusing on schedules, routes, alerts and recommendations that are actionable. Vymo’s solution has helped increase sales productivity by 30% for one of the leading insurance companies in India, and lower TAT by 80% for one of the leading Indian Banks.

FlamencoTech is a cloud solution provider that creates its own 'services layer' customization on top of various technologies that fulfill varied business needs of each customer.

QUSTN (Capabiliti) is a mobile-first talent management platform to Recruit, Onboard, Train and Assess frontline employees has helped companies improve employee engagement index by 65%, with new hires becoming productive team members in less than half the usual time.

Yellow Messenger – a universal messaging platform to Shop, Book, Order anything on Chat. The solution helps reduce marketing and support costs by 30% and increases customer conversion and retention by 20%.