Cloud & Mobility: Two Revolutions Fuelling Startup Growth in India Date:   Monday , November 14, 2016 Headquartered in Kolkata, Indus Net Technologies is an IT Services, outsourcing & internet strategy company with the unique combination of creativity & technology. With in-depth knowledge and expertise across all major business functions, the entity facilitates businesses to be future ready with cloud based custom application development, mobility & digital marketing services. India is an incredibly large country with a rather disappointing number of Internet users. Some of the hurdles that Indian masses experience while connecting to internet are low or poor connectivity to broadband, non-existence of cellular networks in remote regions, slow connections and plain economics: a lot of people cannot afford tablets, laptops and computers. They cannot even afford expensive smartphones. Yet, a revolution is brewing slowly but surely. Mobile internet is taking the country by storm and connecting people where it might not have been possible just a few years ago. Cheap mobile devices have democratized technology and brought Internet or at least limited Internet to people across the country, regardless of how poor they are. It should not surprise you if you find a malnutritioned child holding a cheap Android-based cellphone made in another emerging country to check his or her Facebook updates. Startup Country Takes Notice of Mobile Revolution With technology becoming more accessible and easily available even to the poorest, its commercial aspects have not been ignored either. A number of Indian star-ups today depend on the mobile revolution to start their businesses. While much of this has been B2C services and solutions, there have been innumerable startups that cater to businesses as well. These B2B startups typically make use of both mobile & cloud services to augment their growth. In this article, let us take a look at the silent mobile and cloud revolutions that are fuelling Indian startup growth. As stated above, mobile devices have fuelled a number of industry verticals to sprout start-ups across the country, giving rise to a new social class. Most importantly, this has given birth to mobile e-Commerce, social networking platforms, banking and financial solutions, education and entertainment, and other such services. Most startups in these verticals use mobility to reach audiences in both rural and urban areas. Startups are Sprouting Due to Enterprise Mobility Startups are increasingly making use of mobility in the enterprise arena as well. Most B2B solutions use mobility in one or another to offer their products and solutions. Software as a Service (SaaS) is one area that has particularly adopted mobility at an enterprise level. Indian startups have looked at bringing software solutions using cloud to mobile devices. This trend is being fuelled by an increasing openness at enterprises to allow their employees to bring their own devices to work (BYOD). As security issues are being addressed by IT departments, mobile devices are becoming increasingly secure and safe to use, propelling companies to adopt mobility at work, to reduce costs and enhance flexibility. Another area that has seen B2B mobile solutions grow is Platform as a Service. An increasing number of startups have begun to offer developer kits and tools to budding developers in India over mobile devices. This has helped disadvantaged Indians to master IT and mobile development and become freelancers and entrepreneurs themselves, all thanks to a growth in mobile Internet. To summarize, we can say that mobile growth and mobile adoption is not only limited to rural and disadvantaged groups, but also among medium and large enterprises. This silent revolution has enabled entrepreneurial people to start companies and offer value-based services to both customers and businesses. These B2C and B2B start-ups are only going to grow further with the proliferation of mobile usage in India. What’s the Cloud Revolution Doing to Startups? In parallel, a silent cloud revolution is already underway. Legacy systems are being discarded and companies are beginning to adopt cloud based computing to reduce costs, to access technology that was previously unavailable and also to start companies on their own. In fact, much of Indian startup growth has been made possible, thanks to cloud computing being made available to them by Google, Amazon and other large tech companies. Cloud computing solutions have allowed smaller entrepreneurs to access technology that they never could otherwise. This has allowed them to bring innovative products and solutions to both customers and businesses. In particular, B2C models have benefited from Software as a Solution, which enables them to offer various software solutions to end users. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) have helped startups to create solutions that would appeal to enterprise clients. A curious approach Indian start-ups have started to take is that of the hybrid model. A hybrid cloud computing model allows entrepreneurs to make use of both easy deployment of computing solutions and make them available for end users, whether B2B or B2C. Cloud & Mobility Spurring Startup Activity in India India is a very complex country with various problems. There are infrastructural, financial, educational and various other barriers for entrepreneurs to become successful. However, mobility & cloud computing have democratized technologies for entrepreneurs, who in turn are able to bring valuable solutions to end users, both B2C and B2B. This democratization of technology is what is changing India and other emerging countries so rapidly. Thanks to easily available technology, indigenous talent can make use of available resources to create solutions and products that are unique to a particular geographical location. In fact, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that technology is rapidly changing the social set up of India and eliminating many social problems that were previously rooted in a hierarchical society. With technology forcing the society to get democratized, India’s feudal past is slowly breathing its last breaths.