Startups, IBM - Current Affairs Questions and Answers

ANSWER: Both a and b

Explanation:
Union Cabinet on 22^nd March 2017 approves the proposal to establish the Fund of Funds of Startups or FFS.

Union Cabinet in 2016 approved the proposal to establish a Fund of Funds for Startups with total corpus of INR 10,000 crore.

AIFs supported by FFS should invest at least twice the amount of contribution received from FFS in Startups.

If the account committed for a startup has not been released before a startup ceases, the balance funding can continue thereafter.

Operating expenses out of the FFS to the extent of 0.50 percent of the commitments made to AIFs and outstanding.

Operating expenses include carrying due diligence, legal and technical appraisal, meeting of Venture Capital Investment Committee etc.

Operating expenses will be debited to fund at the beginning of each half year on April and October 1.

Fund of Funds for Startups was approved by Union Government in 2016.

Fund of Funds for Startups is being managed by SIDBI.

FFS contributes to SEBI registered Alternative Investment Funds that may go up to a maximum of 35 percent of the corpus of the AIF concerned.

ANSWER: Lyft

Explanation:
Ride sharing app aggregator Lyft has acquired Pune based FinitePaths for an undisclosed amount.

Trail Answers, the app created by FinitePaths will be shut down and cofounders will join the Lyft team.

FinitePaths was set up in November 2015 with the move to leverage technology to enable people to take better decisions.

The app Trail Answers enabled answers to questions using social, contextual and local signals.

The company has been founded by Vinay Kakade and Balaji Raghavan, who worked with Amazon and Google respectively before setting up the firm.

The cofounders will now work with Lyft to help in expanding its infrastructure and services.

Following this acquisition, the company has stopped signing up new users and will shut down the app over the next two weeks.

Lyft: Know More

• Founded: 2012
• CEO: Logan Green (Jun 2012)
• Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
• Founders: Logan Green, John Zimmer

ANSWER: All of the above

Explanation:
IBM has worked on cognitive computing. Already, the President and CEO of IBM Ginni Rometty indicated that digital is the foundation and cognitive computing is next on the anvil for India.

This should involve building abilities on natural language processing, machine learning, deep learning, image and vision, she said.

By 2020 the country will be home to the largest developer population in the world and 3 million programmers will be helping develop at least ten per cent of the apps this year.

IBM plans to open first blockchain innovation centre in Singapore

The company's artificial intelligence platform Watson will be touching the lives of 1 billion people across the world including 200 million people each in the fields of healthcare and education.

Watson can be very helpful in a country like India which has only 1 oncologist for 1,600 cancer patients.

IBM: Know More

• Headquarters: Armonk, North Castle, New York, United States
• Founder: Charles Ranlett Flint
• Founded: 16 June 1911, New York City, New York, United States
• Revenue: 79.92 billion USD (2016)
• Number of employees: 386,558
• Subsidiaries: SoftLayer, FileNet, Kenexa, Trusteer, Emptoris, more

ANSWER: Hubballi

Explanation:
The Deshpande Foundation, the philanthropy arm of Silicon Valley entrepreneur Gururaj ‘Desh’ Deshpande, will launch the country’s largest start-up incubation centre at Hubballi.

The foundation aims to promote entrepreneurship in India’s tier-II and tier-III cities.

It is investing INR 30 crore in the centre, to be opened this September and able to seat 1,200 people at any point.

Housing a makers lab, a 3D printing lab, hardware labs and an IOT lab, the centre will try to attract entrepreneurs from across sectors and any background, to build new-age solutions.

A ‘sandbox’ location has been created to allow entrepreneurs to test and nurture their ideas into businesses.

His foundation has set up two more sandboxes. One is in Varanasi, the constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and another in neighbouring Telangana.

The Hubballi centre will continue to be funded by the Deshpande Foundation.

About Deshpande Foundation

• Deshpande Foundation is a non-governmental organization founded in 1996 by Gururaj and Jaishree Deshpande.
• Founded: 1996
• Headquarters: Massachusetts
• Type: Non-governmental organization

ANSWER: Indore

Explanation:
In a first, a special incubation centre for start-ups working on environment conservation is being set up in Indore.

Three entrepreneurs each from Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Indore have been finalised to start operations at the centre from December 22.

Located at the Govindram Sekseriya Institute of Management and Research premises, it aims to provide a platform to budding entrepreneurs working in the field of solar energy, biogas, biomass and other environment related subjects.

This incubation centre is part of the MP Incubation and Start-up scheme 2016. We have not taken any fund from the government.

The incubation centre will not only help the entrepreneurs but also inspire the existing college students to come up with their ventures.

Out of the 62 applications from across the country a special panel of 50 mentors specialised in the fields of energy conversation, three projects were selected after analysis and evaluation.

The mentors will have 6 - 8 per cent equity share in the startups.

The incubation centre has tied up with 10 investors across the country. The team of experts include solar energy specialist Deepak Gadhia, Ganjana Joshi and Dipal Chandra Barua among others.

ANSWER: IBM

Explanation:
General Electric on 15th Nov 2016 acquired two tech startups to build the AI capability to compete with IBM’s Watson product

• Acquisitions of Bit Stew Systems and Wise.io will expand its Predix platform for industrial internet applications, which connects big machines such as power plants and aircraft engines to databases and analytical software.
• Terms of the deals weren't publicly disclosed.
• Wise.io is based in Berkeley California and has advanced machine learning technology
• AI has a branch called machine learning which allows computers to adapt to new data without fresh programming
• Bit Stew is a Vancouver based Canadian firm backed by GE’s venture capital arm
• It applies machine learning to large data sets associated with utilities, aviation, oil and gas production and manufacturing, according to the company's web site.
• IBM’s Watson is among the better known AI systems which enables computers to perform intelligent actions such as recognising voices and making decisions

ANSWER: WorkDay

Explanation:
WorkDay has inked a deal with IBM to adopt the company’s cloud solution as part of a multi-year strategic partnership.

• Solution called IBM Cloud has become a foundation for WorkDay’s development and testing environment boosting the efficiency, flexibility and global scale of the company.
• WorkDay will access transformative apps and services in cloud.
• IBM’s quarterly revenue beat analyst expectations as company shifted to high growth areas like cloud based services to get good results

ANSWER: IBM

Explanation:
Kstart has partnered tech giant IBM to foster the startup ecosystem in India. This is a initiative of venture capital firm Kalaari Capital along with IBM offering training and mentoring sessions to startups.

• According to a Nasscom and Zinnoy 2015 report, India is third in the world in terms of number of startups
• It also has the fastest growing startup base internationally.
• Kalaari Capital has fund value of USD 650 million and has invested in companies like Myntra, Snapdeal and Urban Ladder.

ANSWER: Avagmah

Explanation:
Kris S Gopalkrishnan has invested a non disclosed amount in Avagmah, an educational technology start up associated with higher education along with Aptech co-founder Atul Nishar. The two-year-old startup works with Pondicherry University, Bharathidasan University and Loss-Angles-based UCLA Extension. Its investors include Singapore-based Lionrock Capital, serial entrepreneur Ganesh Krishnan and Mumbai-based investment firm Zodius Capital founder Neeraj Bhargava. NIT Kurukshetra alumni KS Karthik has founded the startup.

ANSWER: All of the above

Explanation:
Teabox, the international speciality tea company, is the latest to received funding from Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons. This is the 4th start-up in 2016 to receive the attention of Tata, after Tracxn, Dogspot and Cashkaro.