BANGALORE: It took him two years to perfect algorithms that allow rich content to be streamed on low bandwidth. But just twelve weeks into the commercial launch of the product, vMukti, the Ahmedabad-based start-up cofounded by Hardik Sanghvi has raked in eight enterprise customers. “These are customers who have signed on for two to five year contracts,” says Sanghvi who will use this product to beam e-learning content to remote learning centres primarily in Gujarat and Rajasthan.
On the first day of EmTech, the emerging technology conference hosted by Technology Review, published by Technology Review, an independent media company owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Sanghvi emerged as one amongst 20 Indians below the age of 35 who were honoured for their innovations in fields ranging from biotechnology to the arts and entertainment, software development to semiconductors , transportation, energy and new materials research.
The two-day conference traditionally held in the USA is being hosted in India for the second year in a row. And is primarily focused on showcasing technologies that will change the way we live and work in the future. Some of the innovations that were showcased include green computing techniques , clean transport alternatives and smarter energy grid to the role that wireless can play in connecting India.
“In the next year and a half, about 800 million Indians will perhaps be able to access mobile phones across the country,” said professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala, department of electrical engineering, IIT Madras and founder, Tenet Telecom who addressed a session on Wireless India at the conference. He listed funds transfer on the mobile which will power the financial inclusion goal as the next biggest application for mobile phones in India followed by the use of mobile phones to beam education content, deliver health care solutions and provide specific services to farmers.
“Micro finance institutions were the first step in financial inclusion, mobile banking is the next step,” said Jhunjhunwala who feels the creation of call centres which can answer specific queries on agriculture for farmers is a model that will be rolled out across rural India in the near future.
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