Microsoft ties up with Snapdeal, PayTm, Justdial

Microsoft chief Satya Nadella on Thursday said the tech giant will fund hundreds of new generation entrepreneurs in India's 'smart cities' and is overwhelmed by the start-up culture in the country, especially in e-commerce.

Delivering the keynote address at 'Future Unleashed: Accelerating India' in Mumbai, Nadella also announced new partnerships with e-commerce leaders such as Justdial, PayTm and Snapdeal. Under the partnership, Microsoft will offer a special cloud initiative for start-ups aligned to smart cities, and make available its flagship devices such as the Microsoft Lumia 950 and 950 XL, and also Microsoft Surface Pro 4, which is its flagship computing device, in December and January respectively.

Microsoft will also provide individual fundings worth $120,000 (Rs80 lakh) worth of Azure computing, so that these entrepreneurs can explore solutions and run smart city digital pilots (Also see :Microsoft and Red Hat join hands for Linux on Azure).

This initiative is anticipated to impact over 50 smart cities in the next year through a catalogue of over 50 start-ups and ISV solutions.

"Our objective is to enable everybody in the ecosystem, especially the sellers on these platforms, and not just these front-end players become more productive," Nadella said.

He added that the company has already been running two pilots in Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh for the past few months.

Justdial, PayTm and Snapdeal will use a range of cloud and mobile technologies from Microsoft including advanced cloud services like machine learning, Bing, Skype and Microsoft's digital assistant, Cortana, to drive business innovation and customer delight, the company said.

(Also see: Microsoft working to make passwords redundant: Nadella)