New Microsoft programme to nurture health tech startups in India

 

Microsoft on Thursday dispatched a devoted program to help healthtech new companies prosper in India, as the pandemic effects each part of the medical services framework in the nation.

Microsoft educated that it has worked together with startup hatchery Social Alpha to quicken the development of taking an interest new businesses.

"Innovation development with cutting edge information and investigation abilities is a basic empowering influence as we fabricate trusted and solid arrangements at scale. The Microsoft for Healthtech Startups program develops our attention on explicit enterprises and is intended to quicken the development excursions of new companies with the best tech enablement and business assets," clarified Sangeeta Bavi, Director-Startup Ecosystem, Microsoft India.

The program plans to assist business people with specialized help just as assets for co-selling and co-building tech apparatuses to accomplish better results across medical services.

The Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare opens the intensity of Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Power Platform, and empowers new companies to get to an arrangement of delivered and new medical services capacities custom-made to the interesting prerequisites of wellbeing information in the cloud, the organization said.

"As we keep on developing the lab to showcase biological system for high effect new businesses in India, our portfolio organizations need admittance to top notch innovations remembering for the territories of cutting edge distributed computing, information science and investigation," said Manoj Kumar, Founder and Chairperson of Social Alpha.

"Our association with Microsoft for HealthTech new businesses will zero in on empowering these organizations to quick keep tabs on their development with the absolute best innovation assets and quicken their advancement pathways.".

The Microsoft program offers a scope of advantages.

Qualified Seed to Series C new companies can help their business with Azure advantages (counting free attributes), limitless specialized help and go-to-advertise assets with help for Azure Marketplace onboarding.

Venture capital firm Lightbox invests $4 mn in female wellness startup Nua

Companies News

Venture capital firm Lightbox has made its first investment from its $200 million third fund. It has invested $4 million in Nua, a female wellness brand. Existing investor Kae Capital has also participated in this Series A funding round. Nua, operated by Lagom Labs, creates products and services revolved around women’s health and wellness.

Currently, the firm makes sanitary pads and sells them online. After listening to hundreds of women, Nua co-founders Ravi Ramachandran and Swathi Kulkarni created a solution that is configured to a woman's individual cycle, delivered directly to her home, every month.

“I think in Nua, we found a team that has thought through how to create an amazing experience for women and do it in a manner that is delivering massively amazing value,” said Prashant Mehta, partner at Lightbox, in an interview.

With international brands like Whisper and Stayfree taking up the bulk of the market share in India, Nua is a newcomer in the space. But what differentiates the company is that it works on an innovative direct-to-consumer model where women are able to customise sanitary pad boxes based on their individual needs. It delivers the products to their doorstep on a subscription basis. The firm has also built a strong community of nearly 1 lakh women. Nua said it delivers the easy-to-store and dispose sanitary pads across the country, with tier 2 and tier 3 cities accounting for 50% of sales.


 “If you think about fem-care, there are already companies at the high end of the spectrum, you can always get very high-end products, but this team (Nua) really felt that it was important to bring care and wellness ideas to millions of women and not just the top echelon of women group,” said Mehta of Lightbox--which has backed ventures such as tech company InMobi, Rebel Foods (Faasos) and online travel firm Cleartrip.

A $23 bn manager is betting on India's struggling real estate sector

Companies News:

A Bahrain-based investment manager wants to fill a vacuum in lending to Indian property developers that have $18 billion of debt to repay, aiming to capitalise on a credit crunch that’s narrowed their borrowing options.

Investcorp Bank BSC, which manages about $23 billion of assets, plans to provide structured lending to developers faced with borrowing constraints, Executive Chairman Mohammed Mahfoodh Alardhi said in an interview in Mumbai. The company started its India operations in January after acquiring the private equity and real estate funds of IDFC Alternatives Ltd.

Investcorp’s push isn’t without risks. Developers are struggling as loans become harder to get from non-bank lenders whose own funding is drying up. The sector is trying to shrug off sluggish sales and price declines that followed a 2016 crackdown on cash as well as new consumer protection and tax policies. Annual debt repayments for developers stand at about Rs 1.29 trillion ($18 billion) against disposable income of Rs 570 billion, according to research firm Liases Foras.

“Real estate in India has headwinds but that’s where the opportunity set also stems from,” Alardhi said. “Core demand from end-users is there, developers need financing and there is limited supply.”

 The alternative investment manager aims to lend to residential developers even as other overseas investors from New York-based Blackstone LP to Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management Inc. have focused on office space and commercial properties. That decision is a bet on housing demand from more than 400 million millennials in the world’s second most-populous nation, said Rishi Kapoor, co-chief executive officer at Investcorp.