Edtech's winning streak in 2020; Indian Startups solving for Covid-19

COVID-19 has served as an inflexion point for Indian edtech startups. The industry reckons that the pandemic has been to edtech what demonetisation was to fintech in 2016.

Indian startups continue to innovate to help the country fight the pandemic. Chennai-based Modulus Housing is solving the hospital bed problem and developed a plug-and-play ‘hospital-in-box’ solution, which includes an isolation ward, screening centre, and an intensive care unit, and can be set up in two hours.

Bengaluru-based Integration Wizard’s flagship product IRIS is using deep neural networks to process data from a camera’s video feed to identify people as well as masks and PPE kits in real-time. Ahmedabad-based security startup Sunbots Innovations has developed Sterilite, a UV-C tower device with a foldable arm, which can be used to disinfect hospitals, dental clinics, offices, hotels, and homes.

On India Internet Day, TIE Delhi organised a panel discussion of brands and tech companies to understand how the next billion will access commerce. In a fireside chat with Mohit Bhatnagar, Managing Director of Sequoia Capital India, Doug Leone, Global Managing Partner at Sequoia Capital, called India an attractive market for investment, thanks to the rapid changes in the business landscape, where greater emphasis is being placed now on product engineering and research and development (R&D), as compared to that on engineering services 20 years ago.

At the same event, in the keynote session, Zoom Founder and CEO Eric Yuan told Sequoia India Managing Director Rajan Anandan that India is the company's second-largest market in the world (largest outside the US). Earlier in the week, Aparna Bawa, COO of Zoom, and Abe Smith, Head of International Markets at Zoom, told YourStory Founder and CEO Shradha Sharma how the company dealt with security challenges and questions about its data privacy policies, while remaining the most talked-about brand amidst the pandemic.

Last but not least, actor-turned-entrepreneur Kunal Kapoor spoke to YS Weekender about his acting career, turning to entrepreneurship with Ketto.org, and what lies ahead.

Apollo Hospitals Founder Chairman Prathap C Reddy went on to revolutionise India’s healthcare. He is often referred to as the architect of modern healthcare in India.

Apart from loss in crops, restrictions in logistics during the lockdown caused difficulties for transportation of the produce from farm to warehouses, disrupting the supply chain.

The man who built Indic language email IDs

Ajay Data built Datamail, one of the world’s first linguistic email address mobile apps for IDN, and recently launched VideoMeet, a made-in-India video conferencing platform.