Thank You To Our 2014 Sponsors

The blog entry was published in Medianama on December 22, 2014.

From the business side, it’s been a great 2015 for us, and we really appreciate the support we received in 2014 from all our sponsors, especially Spice Digital, our annual sponsor, and Antfarm, which supported us for almost the entire year. We’re still working, for an idea of our 2015 plans and editorial calendar, please see the presentation here.

Annual Sponsor:

- Spice Digital Ltd: a part of Spice Global Group – US$2 Billion conglomerate promoted by Dr. BK Modi, is one of India’s leading Mobile Value Added Services company and offers innovative solutions for Telecom Operators, Enterprises and Government using mobile connectivity media – Voice, SMS, USSD, WAP & 3G. We are preferred partner of all major telecom service providers in India and providing services to international telecom players in over 20 countries across the globe. We are pioneers in innovation and technology and committed to deliver excellent Award winning products and services to the customers.

We have exclusive tie-ups with Hungama and PPL for music streaming services.
We have acquired two leading international VAS players, MMS (Indonesia) and Beoworld (Malaysia).
Recently, we had a major financial investment from MediaTek (Taiwan).

Our sponsors during 2014:

- Antfarm is an innovation sandbox based out of Mumbai. It is led by a team of blue sky thinkers, entrepreneurs and professionals. The company takes great ideas with disruptive potential, puts together all the key ingredients of people, technology, strategy, marketing and capital to build these into scalable companies. The ultimate aim is to create global businesses that are ideated and built out of India. The first set of companies launched are Stylista.com, Arrive.com, Fork Media, and the farm is currently scaling up ideas in education, travel & leisure, retail, ad-tech and healthcare.

- Astro-Vision is a name easily recognized and held in great esteem in the world of astrology services. Its products range from software that run on the latest operating systems to web based solutions for major portals and the latest range of mobile phones. Astro-Vision’s focus has always been on providing innovative astrology solutions using the latest technologies in the field of IT and communications. From Desktop PCs to internet portals and mobiles phones, Astro- Vision’s range of solutions includes stand alone applications, online apps and astro content services. The company has strategic tie-ups with major IT enabled service networks like Suvidhaa, Reliance world, One stop shop and many networks under the Government of India’s CSC scheme, including Spanco and GNG. Many popular Indian websites today are powered by Astro-Vision’s web based astrology solutions and astrology content.

– Bruce Clay

- Buongiorno, founded in 1999, is known in the worldwide mobile commerce ecosystem for developing and managing paid apps and content that help consumers get greater enjoyment from mobile devices. On July 2012, after the settlement of a successful public tender offer, Buongiorno became a wholly-owned subsidiary of NTT DOCOMO – a global leader in mobile telecommunications technologies and services.

With direct connections to more than 130 telecom operators in 25 countries, over 10 years’ experience and a team of 600 professionals, Buongiorno makes the mobile internet experience happen for consumers globally.

- CCAvenue is India’s largest payment gateway solution powering 85% of the eMerchants in India across all verticals & has played the role of a catalyst to the growth of ecommerce with real time, multi-currency, multiple payment options online payment processing services. The solution is powered by proprietary technology that integrates transaction-processing, advance shopping cart, Invoicing, mobile page, risk assessment and fraud control, smart analytical dashboards, live monitoring of bank gateways, financial reporting etc. CCAvenue is the only complete PG solution in the country that has the unique ability to offer the full spectrum of 100+ Internet payment options.

• 5 Credit Cards
• 50 Debit Cards
• 6 ATM cum Debit Cards
• 50+ Netbankings
• Mobile Payments
• 4 Cash Cards
• CCAvenue PhonePay IVRS Based Payment Systems.

– The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government data, free/open source software, open standards, open access to scholarly literature, open educational resources, and open video), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

CIS critically engages with concerns of digital pluralism, public accountability and pedagogic practices, in the field of Internet and Society, with particular emphasis on South-South dialogues and exchange.

Hosting and Support

- E2E Networks: India’s most clued in dedicated hosting company founded by geeks. E2E Networks Private Limited has been into the business of providing Low latency Dedicated Servers and VPS Servers in India since 2009. E2E Networks goes way beyond merely provisioning servers/cloud infrastructure. Our expertise includes strategies and managed services help for implementing the most suitable cloud architecture based on public, private or hybrid cloud platforms for your web facing or enterprise applications.

- Fortumo allows any developer to set up payment processing for web and mobile services, games or apps using carrier billing. Payments work for PC applications, web services and HTML5, Android, Windows Phone & Windows 8 apps. Fortumo supports payments in 81 countries through 300 mobile operators. Get started with our self-service setup (no monthly fees or minimum volume commitments) at http://fortumo.com.

– Getit Infomedia is India’s digital supermarket for SMEs to get relevant business leads. We seamlessly deliver excellent value across all media platforms be it Voice, Mobile Applications, Online, WAP, Web chat, Print etc. The services provide presence, enquiries and leads to its advertisers while ensuring end users (consumers) have access to the best information, benefits and offers.

Event Sponsor

- Google is a global technology leader focused on improving the ways people connect with information. Google’s innovations in web search and advertising have made its website a top internet property and its brand one of the most recognized in the world.

- India.com is a joint venture between two media giants – Zee Entertainment Enterprise Ltd (ZEEL) and www.PMC.com is all about the new India that is funny, witty, shocking. It shows the new age Indian in their language. India.com provides a perspective that is reflective of the changing dynamic of the role media plays in India. Find out what the new India is saying only at india.com. Discover India and Indians at india.com for  no one covers the new India as india.com! Get the latest updates follow @indiacom on Twitter.

– Info Edge (India) Limited is among the leading internet companies in India. Info Edge runs leading internet businesses – Naukri.com -India’s no. 1 job site, Jeevansathi.com – one of the leading matrimonial portal,99acres.com – India’s No.1 real estate portal and Shiksha.com – India’s leading education portal. The company also owns Quadrangle – an offline executive search business, and Naukri Gulf (a leading jobsite in the Middle East market). Info Edge also owns Brijj.com, a professional networking site and Allcheckdeals.com, an online real estate brokerage firm which is run as a subsidiary company.

- OnMobile Global Ltd. is a pioneer in white-labelled, Value Added Products and Services [VAS] for mobile, landline and media service providers. The #1 VAS specialist in emerging and high-growth markets, OnMobile touches the lives of over 1500 million mobile users across 55 countries each month. With our diverse product portfolio of Mobile Music, multi-screen Video Gateway and delivery solutions, Phone Backup and Personal Cloud Management solutions, Voice and Video portals, M-Commerce products and services, we generate 2 – 5% contribution for top customers and top line revenues of over US $800 million for over 92 customers globally. We deliver our products by the best combination of a hosted Cloud with on-site operations at the customer premises or through products deployed in customer networks.

Founded in 2000, OnMobile has business spread across India, U.S., LATAM, Africa, Australia, Middle East and Europe. The company was publicly listed in India in 2008. Recent acquisitions include Voxmobili (2007), Telisma (2008), Dilithium Networks (2010) and LiveWire (2013).

OnMobile is the first Indian telecom VAS Company to go public. The company’s shares are listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE) as on March 31, 2010

– Qualcomm Ventures is the investment arm of Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM), a Fortune 500 company with operations across the globe.As the Venture Capital investment arm of Qualcomm, the world leader in next-generation mobile technologies, Qualcomm Ventures has been making strategic investments in early-stage technology companies since 2000. With a $500 million fund commitment, Qualcomm Ventures seeks to make strategic investments in early stage high-technology companies that have the potential to dramatically transform our world.

QPRIZE (www.qprize.com)

QPrize™ is Qualcomm Venture’s Seed investment competition. It’s designed to provide entrepreneurs their first level of funding so they can launch their idea into a successful start-up business. The QPRIZE competition was first launched in 2009 to promote innovation in the technology industry and is designed to identify the industry’s most promising early-stage technology companies. We are looking for bright, energetic and resourceful entrepreneurs who have a passion for bringing new technologies and services to market. Our goal is to have QPrize act as a catalyst for our winners, providing the initial capital to launch their great ideas and support the company to its first institutional funding round.

– Times Internet (TIL) is a premier digital product company and the digital arm of The Times of India Group. It reaches over 100m visitors and serves 2 billion pageviews every month across web and mobile, with businesses across news, entertainment, sports, local, ecommerce, classifieds, startup investments, local partnerships, and more.TIL’s key properties in the news category includetimesofindia.com, economictimes.com and navbharattimes.com. Under its fold are topmost internet entertainment portals in India — Gaana.com – the music broadcasting service and BoxTV.com – the video streaming site. Indiatimes Shopping emerges as one of the top five e-commerce companies in India & TimesCity, a lifestyle destination covering recommendations across Restaurants, Movies, Events, Nightlife in your city. Times Internet has also entered into partnerships with global companies offering them its tremendous reach through online media platforms under its initiative called Times Global Partners(TGP). The TGP portfolio ranges from licensing partnerships to investments and acquisition. In the last year, TGP has made four acquisitions, twelve global partnerships, four minority investments and over 20 investments into start-ups through TLabs in the Indian ecosystem.