point

October - 2014 - issue > CXO View Point

Enabling startups with latest technology to build world class solution/application

By Annie Mathew, Director, Alliances & Business Development, BlackBerry, India
Monday, November 24, 2014
By Annie Mathew, Director, Alliances & Business Development, BlackBerry, India
BlackBerry (NASDAQ: BBRY) is provider of wireless communications solutions. Headquartered in Waterloo, the company has a current market cap of $5.72 billion.

Technological innovation in connectivity and mobility, combined with new Government's 'Make in India' campaign, is giving way to various businesses in India to develop tools that will benefit the world.India is currently the most lucrative market, especially in terms of the Start-Up community. Unprecedented growth in this segment, across verticals, from application development to ICs in the internet of things space has caught undivided attention from VCs and large conglomerates across geographies.

Specifically aiming towards increased development and continuous support in this segment, in May 2013 we partnered with the Start Up village, Kochi to set up an innovation center called Rubus Labs. The aim of setting up the innovation centre was to motivate and assist young Indian entrepreneurs to create innovative applications and provide them with the technological expertise. Most recently, BlackBerry in association with Startup village, organized an online internship which saw more than 1500 student applicants, of which 80 were selected. During this 3-month online internship programme, interns were trained on application development. 40 high quality applications were uploaded to BlackBerry World by the developers. And we are glad that few of these applications are successful, and doing well on BlackBerry World with good number of downloads & associated revenue. Building on the success of Rubus Labs, we have also recently announced out plans to extend the expertise to the Start-Up Village in Vizag.

In addition to the Startup Village, BlackBerry also undertakes various activities across India to strengthen the developer ecosystem. These include:

1. Along with the Kerala Developer Group we have initiated an ongoing internship program called BlackBerry STEP (Student Technical Enhancement Programme). The programme aims at enhancing technical skills of students so they are able to develop and publish high quality BlackBerry 10 applications. As a part of the programme, 50 students participate in regular meetups to learn more about application development for BlackBerry 10 platform
2. Frequently host initiatives like Hackathons, BlackBerry 10 Jam, Developer Group Meetups, BASE (BlackBerry Apps by Student Entrepreneurs) and Hangout Internship Programmes

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