Microsoft to support Indian start-ups to drive growth

Will also provide financial assistance of Rs 80 lakh to startups who create smart solutions on its Azure cloud platform

Information and technology giant Microsoft today announced partnerships with major Indian startups such as Paytm, Justdial and Snapdeal to offer its services through their platforms. The company also said that it would provide financial assistance of Rs 80 lakh to startups who create smart solutions on its Azure cloud platform.

Paytm will integrate with Microsoft’s personal assistant software Cortana to make users pay utility bills conveniently and will facilitate Microsoft device sales via its platform. In exchange  Paytm will use Office 365 for merchants’ inventory and account.  Snapdeal and Justdial will use Microsoft's’ search engine Bing to enhance customer experience and in return would use cloud services of the technology major.

As the company sees bright future in cloud and mobility, it is interested to create more newage software and hardware solutions.   

“Today we all use computer as desktop or laptop, tomorrow you will have a computer on your wrist. So we want to create new type of computing and new type of computers,” said Satya Nadella, Microsoft chief executive officer at an event here to highlight products and offerings from the Washington-based firm.

The company is already offering a host of software applications suited for mobile phones and is gearing up to create software platform to build solutions for internet of things (IoT) and other connected services. For hardware, it has already launched its own branded laptop called Surface.

It is showing flexibility for creating software application which can be made available in platforms such as Apple iOS and Android. It is also launching laptops with added features such as digital clipboard and facial recognition applications that automatically logs in to mails after face detection.

But cloud and mobile device is the area the company is focusing more to earn revenue.

“We have to realise our vision in a mobile-first, cloud-first world. (To grow), cloud and mobility is the way,” he added during the event.

It is already targeting small business, primarily startups to use its data centres and cloud platform. It also aims to create solutions for mobile platforms such as creating an application that would work as a hub for all other key applications frequently used by a user over a mobile phone.

Microsoft today also announced that its Lumia 950 phones would be available from December onwards while Surface laptops would hit the Indian market from January onwards. The company, however, did not disclose Indian pricing details of the devices.