Beijing-backed Fund Gets $500 m for US, EU · PDF filevision and Administration Com-mission of...

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Nate Lanxon London: A venture capital firm, backed by the Chinese government, is aiming to invest up to $500 million into US and European technology startups. Silk Ventures will put a particular focus on fintech, artifi- cial intelligence (AI), medical tech- nologies and startups specialising in related sciences. “The mission is to connect technol- ogy companies from Europe and the United States, Israel as well, to the Chinese market,” said Silk Ven- tures founding partner Angelica Anton in an interview. Silk Ven- tures joins a bevy of Chinese funds seeking stakes in Western startups. In February 2016 Cocoon Networks Ventures launched a £500 million ($720 million) venture fund targeted at UK startups in fields from hard- ware to biotechnology. The China- backed CreditEase Fintech Invest- ment Fund in March announced three investments in US fintech firms. Of the $500 million raised by Silk Ventures, half comes from SA- SAC, the state-owned Assets Super- vision and Administration Com- mission of the State Council, which supervises and regulates state-own- ed enterprises in China. The re- maining half of Silk’s fund has been raised from a group of investors the company declined to identify. It said in a state- ment that it will announce its first invest- ments in July. In 2015, the company launched an accel- erator, based in Lon- don’s Canary Wharf, which provides support to China-focused startups. Breaking ways been,” said Anton. “You’ve got startups here who need to access the market, you’ve got corporates there who are very inefficient, very old fashioned. They need to innovate, they need to compete globally, and they do that by collaborating with startups who bring the technology.” Silk Ventures will consider individ- ual investments as much as $50 mil- lion, or 10% of the fund’s total. The firm will be partly focusing on fin- tech investments, highlighting blockchain, currency exchange and ‘regtech’ as key sectors of interest. Regtech is the growing branch of IT that aids regulation, due diligence, financial security and risk manage- ment. — Bloomberg into the Chinese market is a chal- lenging prospect for a startup in part due to strict governmental reg- ulations, as well as enormous exist- ing competition in many sectors, or simply the difficulty of winning over locals. Airbnb, in March, at- tempted to tackle this by adopting a new brand name in China: ‘Aibiy- ing’. Silk Ventures aims to match Chinese corporates with European and American startups producing technologies that can fill the re- gional demand. The group’s VC partners in London and Silicon Valley will focus on sourcing those startups for potential in- vestment. “It’s definitely a pull- based relationship and it’s al- Beijing-backed Fund Gets $500 m for US, EU Startups MAO’S SHADOW Silk Ventures aims to match Chinese corpo- rates with European and Amer- ican startups producing tech that can fill the regional demand

Transcript of Beijing-backed Fund Gets $500 m for US, EU · PDF filevision and Administration Com-mission of...

Page 1: Beijing-backed Fund Gets $500 m for US, EU · PDF filevision and Administration Com-mission of the State Council, which supervises and regulates state-own-ed enterprises in China.

MAKING MONEYNikhil Vora made more

than75 times in re-turns from the sale of the

0.35% stake in One97

He continues to hold shares in Paytm E-com

$7bOne97’s pre-mon-ey valuation during secondary sales

Alibaba and its payment affiliate Alipay together now own about 45% in One97 Communications

Nate Lanxon

London: A venture capital firm,backed by the Chinese government,is aiming to invest up to $500 millioninto US and European technologystartups. Silk Ventures will put aparticular focus on fintech, artifi-cial intelligence (AI), medical tech-nologies and startups specialisingin related sciences.

“The mission is to connect technol-ogy companies from Europe and theUnited States, Israel as well, to theChinese market,” said Silk Ven-tures founding partner AngelicaAnton in an interview. Silk Ven-tures joins a bevy of Chinese funds

seeking stakes in Western startups.In February 2016 Cocoon NetworksVentures launched a £500 million($720 million) venture fund targetedat UK startups in fields from hard-ware to biotechnology. The China-backed CreditEase Fintech Invest-ment Fund in March announcedthree investments in US fintechfirms. Of the $500 million raised bySilk Ventures, half comes from SA-SAC, the state-owned Assets Super-vision and Administration Com-mission of the State Council, whichsupervises and regulates state-own-ed enterprises in China. The re-maining half of Silk’s fund has beenraised from a group of investors thecompany declined to identify. It said

in a state-ment that itwill announceits first invest-ments in July.

In 2015, thecompanylaunched an accel-erator, based in Lon-don’s Canary Wharf,which provides support toChina-focused startups. Breaking

ways been,” said Anton. “You’ve gotstartups here who need to access themarket, you’ve got corporates therewho are very inefficient, very oldfashioned. They need to innovate,they need to compete globally, andthey do that by collaborating withstartups who bring the technology.”

Silk Ventures will consider individ-ual investments as much as $50 mil-lion, or 10% of the fund’s total. Thefirm will be partly focusing on fin-tech investments, highlightingblockchain, currency exchange and‘regtech’ as key sectors of interest.Regtech is the growing branch of ITthat aids regulation, due diligence,financial security and risk manage-ment. — Bloomberg

into the Chinese market is a chal-lenging prospect for a startup inpart due to strict governmental reg-ulations, as well as enormous exist-ing competition in many sectors, orsimply the difficulty of winningover locals. Airbnb, in March, at-tempted to tackle this by adopting anew brand name in China: ‘Aibiy-ing’. Silk Ventures aims to matchChinese corporates with Europeanand American startups producingtechnologies that can fill the re-gional demand. The group’s VCpartners in London and SiliconValley will focus on sourcingthose startups for potential in-vestment. “It’s definitely a pull-based relationship and it’s al-

6 �THE ECONOMIC TIMES | BENGALURU | TUESDAY | 16 MAY 2017Disruption: Startups & Tech

Uber Races Past Ola in Stickiness It’s true that homegrown cab-hailing platform Ola is oper-ating in more cities compared to its American competitor, Uber. However, Ola customers use the application just 2.5-3.5 times a month, which is 1.5 times lower than Uber’s 3.9-4.9 times a month, indicating a higher stickiness among customers of the US cab-hailing giant

Presence in Cities…

102Ola

29 Uber

This trend points out the pos-sibilities of Uber’s pricing be-ing lower than that of Ola’s or customers using Uber for shorter trips when compared to Ola

Average fare

`135Ola

`127Uber

OLA UBER OTHERS*

* INCLUDE: JUGNOO, MERU CABS AND IXIGO CABS

Market Share as Per Mobile App Downloads (% in Metros)

Jan 2016

Aug 2016

Mar 2017

55.5

52.6

43.7

34.2

35.9

47.3

10.3

11.5

9

Average Fare from December 2016 to April 2017 (%)

Ola

Uber

When you do a survey analysis, Uber is a more

popular option specifically among service and industry professionals across metros, as compared to Ola. This includes service professionals in cities like Hyderabad, Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai and Bengaluru

SOURCE: KALAGATO, TEXT: VARSHA BANSAL, GRAPHIC: GEETANJALI

0-100Ride fares (`) 100-150 150-200 200-250 250-300 300+

JASPAL SINGH, Partner, Valoriser Consultants

4.431.4 25 15 8.5 15.8

5.440.9 22.8 11.7 6.8 12.5

Data also reflected shift in market share as per app downloads

These numbers have rearranged them-selves in one year

Uber has seen a spike in app downloads

For comprehensive and insightful stories about all things startups and technology, log on to www.ettech.com

a

Congrats @JeffBezos & @ama-zon team on 20th anniv of IPO! Those who bought $AMZN on IPO are up 641x, 38% per year CAGR. And still only Day 1!

FRANK QUATTRONE@FRANKQUATTRONE

Tweet OF THE DAY

Victoria Hall to Go Live on Google Arts

KOLKATA Come Inter-national Museum Day on May 18, you can vir-tually explore the gal-leries of Victoria Me-morial Hall at the click of a button, courtesy Google Arts and Cul-ture project. The pro-ject, which spans di-verse locations such as the Paris Opera, Smith-sonian National Muse-um of History and Gateway of India, of-fers viewers a 360-de-gree walk through in Google Street View mode. There are so far 354 museum views from India, including those of the Indian Mu-seum in Kolkata, Na-tional Museum and Na-tional Gallery of Modern Art from New Delhi. —IANS

Not one, but nine Mo-torola phones have just been leaked, giv-ing away the firm’s en-tire 2017 line-up with new handsets on the way in the Z, X, G, E and C lines. The info comes from a single photo, which was shared by leaker Evan Blass, and shows a presentation slide, complete with the names and key de-tails of a number of handsets. —TechRadar

Tech Buzz

Moto’s 2017 Smartphone Lineup Leaked

A tool that measures the magnetisation of an item or the force of a magnet.

MagnetometerJargon Buster

1.2 billionMicrosoft Office users across the world

Quick Byte ANIRBAN BORA

[email protected]

Bengaluru: Former IDFC Securi-ties star equity analyst Nikhil Vorahas sold his entire stake in One97Communications, Paytm’s parentcompany, to Chinese ecommerce gi-ant Alibaba Group Holdings, ra-king in about `̀150 crore on his six-year-old investment.

That’s more than 75 times in re-turns from the sale of the 0.35% sta-ke or 1,60,000 shares of One97 Com-munications that Vora owned.

Vora, who quit IDFC Securities in2014 to set up investment firm SixthSense Ventures, continues to holdshares in Paytm E-commerce,which was demerged from One97Communications this year.

The transaction was part of a lar-ger secondary share sale round thathad institutional investors SaamaCapital, Sapphire Ventures and Re-liance Capital also selling their hol-dings in One97 to Alibaba and its pa-yment affiliate Alipay.

The Chinese companies togethernow own about 45% in One97 Com-munications, up from about 41%.

Vora, who confirmed the develop-ment, had picked up the stake inOne97 after its aborted initial pub-lic offering in 2011 as the companysought to transition from a mobile

value-added services provider to amobile internet firm. ET reported in its January 3 edi-

tion that Vora was looking to cash inon the Paytm owner’s rising valua-tion and was in talks with Hero Gro-up’s Sunil Munjal and Saroj Poddar,the chairman of fertiliser and engi-neering services conglomerate Ad-ventz Group.

The secondary sales peg One97’spre-money valuation at about $7 bil-lion. The company is in talks to rai-se $1.4-1.9 billion from Japan’s Soft-Bank at a valuation of $8-9 billion.

Vora now plans to launch a secondventure fund, the size of which hedeclined to disclose, and a `̀250-cro-re public markets fund focused onthe consumer market in two tothree months.

His investment firm’s maidenfund, Sixth Sense India Opportuni-ties-1, has made eight investmentsand counts Small Industries Deve-lopment Bank of India (Sidbi) as itsmain investor. Some of Sixth Sen-se’s recent investments include LE-AP India, a Mumbai-based supplychain solutions company, and Soot-he Healthcare, which makes the Pa-ree brand sanitary napkins.

“Six companies in our portfoliohave already seen a new round at ahigher valuation,” Vora told ET.

The firm’s other investments in-

clude luxury watches retail chainoperator Ethos and Cross Roads In-dia Assistance, which provides ro-ad-side assistance for cars and two-wheelers. While known for closelytracking listed retail and consumergoods companies, Vora also has be-en an active personal investor inprivately held companies over thelast decade.

His personal investments includeVini Cosmetics, a Sequoia CapitalIndia-backed consumer goods com-pany that sells the deodorant brandFogg; online cosmetics retailerPurplle; and Air Works, an aviationmaintenance and overhaul servi-ces provider that is backed by priva-te equity firms New Enterprise As-

sociates and GTI Ca-pital. Pre-scho-ol chain

KangarooKids, anot-her of hispersonal in-vestments,was acqui-red by rivalEurokids.

Vora Gets `̀150 crore fromAlibaba for His One97 Stake

THE NEXT VENTURE

Vora now plansto launch a se-cond venture

fund and a .̀250-cr publicmarkets fund focused onthe consumer market intwo to three months

Beijing-backed Fund Gets $500 m for US, EU Startups

that payments will be made bySnapdeal or the merged entity. Wewill file a civil complaint asking tostop the sale of Snapdeal till it cle-ars sellers’ dues,” the spokesper-son said. Snapdeal said in a state-ment that, “payments continue tobe made as per defined payment

Vendor’s AssociationSeeks Stay on SnapdealSale Till Dues are Paid

Story So FarEarlier this year, seller asso-ciations had reached out to the government with their concerns that Snapdeal would hold back dues to sellers to the tune of ̀ 300 cr

Some seller associations, such as AIOVA and Ecom-

merce Sellers Association of India, have even

warned their members against selling on Snapdeal

Snapdeal slide also led to some banks and lenders asking for im-mediate repayment of outstanding loans & withdrawal of credit

cycles, with pre-existing robustmechanisms to address escala-tions and grievances.” ETreported last week that Snap-

deal’s investors had agreed for thesale of the Delhi-based firm toFlipkart, following weeks of bo-ard meetings wherein Japan’sSoftBank, the largest stakeholderin Snapdeal, was working to getthe necessary consent from earlyinvestors Kalaari Capital andNexus Venture Partners.

[email protected]

Bengaluru: With the impendingsale of beleaguered ecommerceplatform Snapdeal to Flipkart, se-veral online sellers have raisedconcern about payment of duesfor sales on the platform, pushingonline seller group All India Onli-ne Vendors Association (AIOVA)to seek help from the corporate af-fairs ministry and the commerceministry. The group has also thre-atened to make a civil complaintto bring a stay on the sale.

AIOVA, a body of over 2,000 onli-ne merchants who sell on multi-ple ecommerce platforms,sent a mail to MCA secretaryTapan Ray and commerce mi-nister Nirmala Sithara-man on Monday, statingthat over 500 sellers hadcomplained to the gro-up regarding unsettledfinancial matters withthe current manage-ment of Snapdeal.

“Most of sellers havestopped selling onSnapdeal. But at least500 members still haveuncleared dues frombefore, and they are worried ifthe payments will be made ifSnapdeal is sold,” an AIOVAspokesperson said.

The association has also as-ked the authorities to “hold thewinding down/sale/merger ofabove mentioned company sub-ject to approval by 75% of sellersdoing active business on the plat-form.” They cited the case of onli-ne platform Askmebazaar, whichshut down last year, which repor-tedly left several sellers with un-paid dues. “We need assurance

[email protected]

New Delhi: German multinationalsoftware corporation SAP, whichlaunched its $35-million artificialintelligence-focused fund SAP.iO inMarch, has made its first invest-ment in India in Ratan Tata-backedstartup Niki.ai, according to peopleaware of the matter.

SAP’s chief strategy officer Dee-pak Krishnamurthy refused to com-ment on the deal while emails sentto Niki.ai did not elicit a responsetill the time of going to press.

Niki.ai, founded by four IIT Kha-ragpur alumni in December last ye-ar, raised about `̀3 crore from Ha-resh Chawla, partner at India ValueFund Advisors, with existing inves-tor Ronnie Screwvala’s UnilazerVentures also participating in theround. Earlier, in May 2016, the com-pany had raised an undisclosedamount from Ratan Tata, interimchairman of Tata Sons at the time.

“We want to strategically investand incubate startups around SAP,which has one of world’s largest setof applications for the enterpriseindustry. The fund will make pru-dent strategic investments,” saidKrishnamurthy, who plans to close

five investments by May this yearacross markets such as the US andIsrael.

SAP.iO plans to invest $10,000 to$250,000 in different companies,with a greater focus on drivingSAP’s engagement with startups.The fund made its first investmentin Silicon Valley-based big data andanalytics startup Paradata. It seeksto close 10-15 deals this year whilenext year it will aim for 20-25 deals.

India is an attractive market for

SAP because the company’s invest-ment strategy aligns with startupsdoing well in the business-to-busi-ness software-as-a-service market.

“The Indian market is interestingbecause there are a lot of companiescoming up in the B2B space whichare focused on applications ratherthan infrastructure side comparedto other countries like Israel whichare more focused on building plat-forms. Most of the revenues for SAPcome from the applications, so Indiais a natural fit for us,” said Krishna-murthy. As far as the deal flow fromIndia is concerned, among otherchannels SAP.iO will be sourcingdeals from SAP Startup Studio, setup last year, which operates out ofthe SAP Labs India campus in Whi-tefield, Bengaluru.

The 100-seat incubator was laun-ched last year to incubate early-sta-ge startups in the domains of inter-net of things, big data, cloud, retailand healthcare.

Along with the fund, SAP.iO runs afoundry programme to incubateearly-stage startups that build soft-ware applications, including thoseusing frontier technologies such asmachine learning and blockchain.At present SAP.iO foundries are lo-cated in San Francisco and Berlin.

SAP.iO’s First Investment hereGoes to Tata-backed Niki.ai

FUTURE PLANS

SAP.iO plans to invest$10,000 -250,000 in vari-ous cos, with greater fo-cus on driving SAP’s en-gagement with startups

Globe Trotter

LONDON Phil Libin, the cofoun-

der of note-taking app Ever-

note, has launched a new VC

fund called All Turtles in San

Francisco, The Financial Times

reports. The All Turtles fund

will reportedly be used to back

entrepreneurs developing

products that are underpinned

by AI. Instead of backing com-

panies like normal VCs, Libin

wants to back “products” as he

believes entrepreneurs

shouldn't have to start a new

company each time they want

to try a new idea. — BI

Evernote’sCofounder hasaNew AI Fund

GIOR

GIO

MORAN

DI, Natura m

orta

FALLING IN LINE

in both offline and online busines-ses, as they have two different pro-cessing capabilities. The partners-hip with PayU is mutually benefici-al to both companies as it helps usconsolidate our leadership posi-tions in our respective focus areas,”Mswipe CEO Manish Patel said.The partnership will also help re-spective merchants of both busi-nesses transition smoothly to offli-ne or online payments.

“We have over 3 lakh merchants

using our platform and we do comeacross merchants who have a needfor offline payment acceptance. Ha-ving a strategic partner like Mswi-pe allows us to complete our portfo-lio and provide comprehensive pay-ment options to all our merchants,”Rau said.

Given that 80% of Mswipe’s mer-chant base is small and medium en-terprises (SMEs), many of them co-uld move to online payments thro-ugh PayU’s payment gateway. This

association may also help both busi-nesses acquire new merchants andgain wider acceptance across cate-gories as a payment option. “The ad-vantages for Mswipe are clear. Weget more merchants on our plat-form as well as referrals from PayUin the future,” Patel said. ET had re-ported last month that RNT CapitalAdvisors, the investment platformset up by Ratan Tata and Internatio-nal Finance Corp, were in talks toinvest in Mswipe Technologies.

Mswipe Tech PoSes to Buy PayUIndia’s Offline Merchants BusinessMswipe, PayU India partnership will let merchants of both businesses access online & offline payments

[email protected]

Bengaluru: Mobile point of sale(PoS) solution provider MswipeTechnologies has taken over the of-fline merchant acquiring businessof PayU India in a partnership thatwill also allow the merchants ofboth businesses to access onlineand offline payments.

PayU had an offline merchant ac-quisition team and has so far acqui-red over 9,000 offline merchants inthe country. The partnership willsee Mswipe merging PayU’s exis-ting offline PoS division team intoits existing operations. All of Pay-U’s offline merchants along with itsPoS business will also get transfer-red to Mswipe.

“We want to remain focused on dri-ving disruptive payments productin the online payments space anddecided to work with a partner forthe offline side. This partnership al-lows us to work closely with Mswi-pe, which has been making a greatstride in the offline space,” PayU In-dia CEO Amrish Rau said.

PayU India, which acquired Cit-rus Pay last year, is among the lea-ding online payment businesses inthe country processing onlinetransactions worth ̀̀ 6,000 crore permonth. “It is difficult to be leaders

Mswipe com-petes with busi-nesses such as Ezetap and Pine Labs, each with over two lakh merchants

Amount co has raised from investors such as Falcon Edge Capital, Ma-trix Capital Partners, DSG Partners and Axis Bank

2,20,000 Terminals deployed so far

$32 million

AMRISH RAU,CEO, PayU India

We want to remain focused on driving a disruptive payments product in the onlinespace and decided to work with a partner for the offline side

Nikhil Vora

MAO’S SHADOW Silk Venturesaims to match Chinese corpo-rates with European and Amer-ican startups producing techthat can fill the regional demand

ANIMISHA

Page 2: Beijing-backed Fund Gets $500 m for US, EU · PDF filevision and Administration Com-mission of the State Council, which supervises and regulates state-own-ed enterprises in China.

7�WWW.ECONOMICTIMES.COM

Disruption: Startups & Tech

DIGITALMUSIC REVENUE

MUSIC DOWNLOAD SEGMENT

MUSIC STREAMING SEGMENT

AVERAGE REVENUE PER USER

AVERAGE REVENUE PER USER

2017 2021

$60 m9 million

52.55 million

$0.29

$1.09

Robotic arms that can mix a drink at work on the cruise ship Ovation of the Seas. The ship is operated by Royal Car-ibbean Cruises, at Kai Tak Cruise Terminal in Hong Kong. —Bloomberg

Hand on the Mixer

Indian digital music market is setto grow annually by 5.2%, with

revenues touching $60 m by 2017 end and reaching $73 m by 2021. ‘Music

Streaming’ segment has led the way and is set to touch $57 m by 2017 end.

$73 m

9.2 million

58.03 million

$0.28

$1.22

Number of users

Number of users

Source: Statista (all numbers are estimates)

MUSIC GETS LOUDER IN DIGITAL SPACE

ses that revenue by 30-40% and requi-res 30-40% fewer people to do thework,” Samuel said. He added due tothis, service providers have an excessnumber of employees for the first timesince the global economic crisis andrecession of 2008.

According to estimates, the top fourIndian IT services companies may letgo 12,000-15,000 employees in the co-ming months. “It will not be easy forthe laid-off employees to find new ro-les as they will typically not be the topperformers,” said Ankit Agarwala, di-rector, Michael Page India. He said af-fected employees will need to focus he-avily on upgrading their skills basedon the latest trends to improve theirchances of finding new roles.

nistry of electronics and IT, said as perNasscom, the job losses are a standardpractice and the numbers are not verydifferent from what they were over thepast few years.

“However, the net rate of hiring hascome down marginally since industryhas matured and has a large base nowand won’t be hiring at the same pace.But the net marginal decline is offsetby the number of startups or new jobscreated in other areas,” she said.

She said if 5 lakh jobs were created inthe IT and the ITeS sector, then 1 lakhjobs were added in the electronics andmobile manufacturing industry, BFSIadded another 50,000 jobs and growthin emerging sectors will also absorbsome of those impacted.

However, Rituparna Chakraborty,the cofounder of TeamLease Services,was more positive. “One should re-member that those who are part of thelayoff are those who are backed by hig-her intellectual capacity and exposureand so inherently they are highly emp-loyable,” she said.

Ratna Gupta, director, tech vertical,ABC Consultants, said the spate of lay-offs among tier-1 IT firms will benefitsmaller companies. “Since hiringamong tier-1 firms is slow right now, itmay take time for people to get a goodrole. However, many tier-2 IT servicesfirms are still hiring and opportuniti-es could present themselves to thesecandidates in these organisations.”

Aruna Sundararajan, secretary, mi-

Layoff Crisis in IT may beBigger than 2008 Recession

NIGHTMARE ON TECH STREET

Mark Gurman & Mark Bergen

Android already powers most smartphones onearth. Now, Google is placing its mobile opera-ting system right inside cars, a bid to cement itscore service in the auto industry as more tech-nology sweeps in.

On Monday, ahead of its I/O mobile developersconference, Alphabet’s Google is showing offits next step in automotive software: an Andro-

id version of touch-screen car consolesand infotainment sy-stems. It will host popu-lar applications likeGoogle Maps and Spoti-fy, and also control fea-tures like seat positio-ning and temperature.The new system alsoembeds the Google As-sistant – the voice cont-rol service, for sear-ching on the go, askingfor directions, and ma-

king phone calls – in cars for the first time. At I/O, Google will show off live demonstra-

tions of the OS running on the Audi Q8 and Vol-vo V90 SUVs. Patrick Brady, a vice-president ofengineering for Android, said the system willmake its way to Audi and Volvo’s entire fleet,along with other manufacturers.

This isn’t Google’s first stab at software forcars. In 2014, the tech giant introduced AndroidAuto, a system that lets people project contentfrom their Android smartphones to their car’sscreen. – Bloomberg

Google wants toRun your Car onAndroid Tech

Tech Trotter

LONDON People still haven’t learnt

their lesson when it comes to

running Windows XP, it seems.

Attackers took advantage of a

known, major flaw in Windows XP

to launch a cyberattack, which is

still causing chaos globally. But the

operating system still runs on

many PCs around the world, even

though Microsoft stopped pro-

viding security support on April 8,

2014. According to statistics from

Net Applications, it’s the third

most popular OS globally, with

7.04% market share. That means

an out-of-date, unsupported OS is

more popular than any version of

Windows 8, any version of Mac OS

X and Linux. Windows 7 and

Windows 10 are more popular

than XP, with around 49% and 26%

market share respectively. Ana-

lyst house Gartner predicted that

there will be 2 billion PCs in use

globally by 2014, but there have

been no updated figures since

then. If we conservatively take 2

billion as the number, it suggests

there are at least 140 million PCs

still running Windows XP. – BI

Attacks Growas a Third StillCling to XP OS

CO

MP

AN

Y P

HO

TO

Google’s Android OS in Volvo’s new SUV

POWERING UP

Co is partneringwith Audi andVolvo to ship car systemsrunningAndroid OS

IN THE IT INDUSTRY

40 lakhareemployed

12 lakh professionals cannot be re-skilled/up-skilled

6 lakhprofessionals to be laid off

2 lakh professionals to be cut back annually by IT cos both in India and abroad

12,000-15,000:Top 4 Indian IT cos to lay off in the coming months

of key skills may result in be-ing unemployed for a while

to switch indus-tries and look for jobs in non-IT sectors

on upgrading skills based on latest trends to im-prove chancesof finding new roles

FOR THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN SACKED

WHAT’S AT STAKESurabhi Agarwal & Prachi Verma Dadhwal

New Delhi: For the thousands of emp-loyees of the Indian IT industry whohave been handed pink slips over thepast couple of months, the future isbleak. A double whammy of automa-tion and lack of key skills among thosesacked may result in many of them be-ing unemployed for a while.

Recruiters and experts said the num-ber of jobs lost is unprecedented in thehistory of India’s IT industry and per-haps larger in magnitude than the 2008global economic crisis. A small num-ber of people sacked from companiessuch as Wipro and Cognizant may beabsorbed by second-rung firms, butsince the number of resumes in themarket is huge, not all may find jobs.

There are about 40 lakh Indians emp-loyed in the IT industry in India andoverseas and of them, 12 lakh profes-sionals cannot upgrade their skills oracquire new ones, Kris Lakshmi-kanth, founder of Head Hunters India,told ET. “Of this 12 lakh, almost halfwould gradually be shunted out of theIT industry,” said Lakshmikanth.

According to their estimates, close to2 lakh professionals every year wouldbe retrenched by IT companies in In-dia and abroad.

Since the situation may get acute inthe future, professionals may be forcedto switch industries and look for jobsin BFSI, retail or emerging sectorssuch as fintech or ecommerce.

Peter Bendor-Samuel, CEO of con-sultancy firm Everest Group, attribu-ted the churn to the industry’s “arbit-rage-first” or offshoring business,which shrank in the past 12 months,and the shift towards digital models.

“The digital business cannibalisesthe arbitrage business and compres-

RO

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, Th

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Of

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Industry experts say only a small number of people sacked from larger IT firms may be absorbed by the

second rung of companies since there is a rising deluge of resumes in the market and not enough jobsMost Popular OS

WINDOWS 7

48.5%WINDOWS 10

WINDOWS XP 7.04%

WINDOWS 8.16.96%

MAC OS X 10.123.21%

26.28%