Microsoft to fund hundreds of new Indian entrepreneurs in smart city space

Microsoft will fund hundreds of new Indian entrepreneurs in the smart city space but its Hyderabad-born chief executive officer Satya Nadella would love to have less friction in working with the government.

Impressed by the country's start-up culture in e-commerce, Nadella said on Thursday that he is not worried about the valuation part of this segment as Microsoft is not looking at acquisitions, but is looking at the quality of ideas these entrepreneurs have.

Delivering keynote address 'Future Unleashed: Accelerating India', the US-based firm's largest-ever customer conference in Mumbai, Nadella also announced partnerships with e-commerce players Justdial, Paytm and Snapdeal. Unveiling Microsoft's new cloud start-up initiative, Nadella said that the tech giant will work closely with the three firms to develop solutions suitable for smart cities apart from areas such as farming, health care and education.

Microsoft will provide individual funding worth $120,000 (Rs 80 lakh) of Azure computing so that these entrepreneurs can explore solutions and run smart city digital pilots. "The initiative is anticipated to impact more than 50 smart cities in the next year through a catalogue of over 50 start-ups and ISV solutions," Microsoft said.

"At Microsoft, we strive to empower every Indian citizen and every business and government organisation to achieve more," said Nadella. Interacting with a group of reporters, he said that he is extremely impressed with the adoption level of cloud computing in India since the company opened three data centres in Pune, Mumbai and Chennai 12 months ago.

On funding of for local start-ups in the tech space to fasten the development of smart cities, Microsoft said it will make available its flagship gadgets Lumia 950 and 950 XL as well as Surface Pro 4 computing device in December and January respectively.

On projects engaging Microsoft, Nadella said that with growing concerns over security of emails and mobile phones, it is working on ways to rid tech users of their worries over passwords.

"One of the biggest security issues is passwords. One of the things that we are working on is a world where passwords are not going to be the ones that you know can get hacked but you really have other biometrics that really help us secure our computing interfaces," he said.