Global CIOs, India start-ups to trade notes

Senior officials and decision-makers of 25 global companies will come here next week to meet 50 Indian software start-ups and explore business opportunities with them at an event called InTech50.

The event is being organised by software product think-tank Indian Software Products Industry Roundtable (iSpirt) and Terrene Global Leadership Network. It will be attended by Dawn Page, managing director of Citibank; Christopher Hjelm, chief investment officer of The Kroger Co; Piyush Singh, chief information officer (CIO) of Great American Insurance; and Kshitij Mulay, India information technology (IT) leader, Procter & Gamble, among others.

Representatives from Colgate-Palmolive, NYSE-listed Accretive Health, MajescoMastek and Aurea Software Co would also be present.

“It was a real stretch to convince CIOs to come to India to meet product start-ups because globally, India is known only for IT services,” said Sharad Sharma, co-founder, iSpirt. “Indian start-ups today want to sell software-as-a-service to global companies and we are looking to solve this purpose through this initiative.”

The think-tank had applications from 200 Indian software start-up companies which wished to participate. The final 50 have been shortlisted by a panel of selectors.

The start-ups that would showcase their offerings to these multinational giants include customer engagement solutions provider Capillary Technologies, mobile marketing and analytics platform ZipDial, crowd-sourced testing marketplace 99tests, big data analytics platform Cerebra and assessment and campus hiring platform CoCubes. Also, customer support software Freshdesk, search and analytics engine Bizosys, referral hiring system WhistleTalk and web Intelligence application Contify.

“We have selected only start-ups that are ready with their offering to take on a global client,” Sharma said. “Since this event is focused on growing the business, we are only including start-ups ready to sell.

iSpirt has been undertaking several initiatives to showcase Indian product start-ups abroad, not only for business purposes but to facilitate mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Earlier this year, iSpirt hosted a roundtable at Palo Alto in California to showcase some Indian start-ups to top acquirers in Silicon Valley.

Also aimed at understanding the requirements of key companies when they look at M&As, it was attended by corporate development officials and other seniors from Google, Microsoft, Intel, Qualcomm, Groupon, VMWare, Intuit, Box, Cadence, Docomo and LG.

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iSpirt and Terrene Global Leadership Network

It will be attended by

Dawn Page,
MD, Citibank

Christopher Hjelm,
CIO, The Kroger Co

Piyush Singh,
CIO, Great American Insurance

Kshitij Mulay,
India IT leader, Procter & Gamble