Nasscom to set up Rs 100cr fund for innovation

In a bid to promote innovation in information technology, Nasscom, the representative body of IT services in India, is planning to set up a Rs 100 crore fund.

"The first-of-its-kind initiative by the apex body, the fund would be supported by the industry and would be for driving innovation by IT companies," Kiran Karnik, president of Nasscom, said here in a statement.

Innovation at various levels has been identified as the next imperative to sustain growth and maintain the edge of Indian IT industry in global markets, he added.

Meanwhile, seven companies would be awarded for their innovation in information technology by the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on February 9.

The seven finalists, selected from a shortlist of 18 companies are Bharti Airtel & IBM India, Evalueserve.Com, HP Labs India, Ittiam Systems, Kale Consultants, Strand Lifesciences and Monsoon Multimedia India.

Bharti Airtel and IBM India were selected for the business model under which the telecom major outsourced all of its IT operations to IBM, while Evaluserve.Com was selected for its business intelligence services, customised reports and value-added research catering to different industry verticals.

HP Labs India was shortlisted for its Gesture Keypad, which is a pen-based input device for phonetic scripts and Ittiam was selected for its advanced digital audio and video signal processing.

While Kale was selected for its BPO product Revera, Strand Lifesciences was chosen for its comprehensive and modular data mining and predictive modelling platform.

Monsoon Multimedia was shortlisted for `Hava', the world's first integrated video 'time-shifting' and 'place-shifting' product.