There will be numerous business investments between NRIs and technology entrepreneurs in India to support mobile app startups
technology. Its basic needs — from meals at home, transportation to work, management of their schedule, communication, education and money management — is now just a click away. This has been made possible by mobile applications developed globally for all consumer sectors. India has been the brainchild for most creative mobile applications, few of which have been supported by large venture capitalists and in our hands today.
The UAE is a fast-paced country, which is building all its new platforms — from infrastructure, living, business — on new innovative technology. The country is promoting new business ideas and ventures through trade fairs for all consumer segments. These fairs have encouraged various venture capitalists to set up their operations in Dubai. The growing NRI population in Dubai also promotes a lot of intellectual property exchange between the two countries. In the past few years, we have seen various property developers exhibiting and holding business meetings in Dubai to raise funds for their innovative projects in India. However, since the past three years, various technology startups in India have now started visiting Dubai to raise money for their projects to launch new mobile applications. Such projects are being developed by students, innovators, new-age firstgeneration entrepreneurs, researchers, educational institutes and their faculty members in India.
I believe it’s now the new mobile application era; consumers need everything to be a click away on their mobile, which is only possible by the development of new mobile software. Based on my recent meetings with various fund management firms, venture capitalists and business setups in Dubai, it is evident that there will be numerous business investments between NRIs and technology entrepreneurs in India to support such startups. Once this trend is capitalised on in the next few years, numerous billion-dollar businesses are expected from this phenomenal growth. As we all know there is a lot of growth and opportunity in private equity, but the real gap is in continuous funding of such projects until they can function independently. Technology startups always have a high risk factor involved due to continuous evolution and innovation. Therefore, India has always had the advantage on surplus talent with a lower cost that allows NRIs to gain a good return on their investment in such ventures.
I am currently working on a mobile application development with various technology companies in India and ventures capitalist in West Asia, which will allow everyone to manage their medical records online through this application. Most of the aging population needs to maintain hard copies of their medical records during their travel or have to send special requests to their doctors to share it within the medical network. This application has already been shared with various hospitals in West Asia and Africa, and they have started downloading this application to store medical records and also pull medical records of their patients for review.
If any customer has an account with this application, they can view various hospitals and private doctors that are registered on this application, share their records with them and get medical opinions and cost of procedures. This application would allow patients to get global medical opinions from various doctors, compare prices and then select their place of treatment. The further expansion of this application requires approximately $10m to be launched full-scale. Currently, it has tie-ups with only few hospitals in West Asia and Africa. Africa is the testing platform and once revenue is generated on this platform the application will be further advertised and marketed. This will also help to increase medical tourism in India as lot many global patients prefer to have highly qualified Indian doctors.
This supports the opinion that India today needs NRIs to start flowing funds back to their home country. Few good mobile applications that have been recently developed in India and rolled out globally include, advanced retail shopping platforms, taxi services, and air travel applications. The concept of banking services has also become virtual for all global banks, with technology platforms formulated in India. Recently, there have been many articles on centralising medical services for patients on a virtual platform, which allows patients to research doctor’s globally according to their qualifications, services offered, fee structures and also share medical records with hospitals. In summary, the focus is now to assist the consumer conduct better research.
The question is whether this trend can now be maintained; can we have the NRIs and venture capitalists help this growth in India? Can the technology hubs in India be further supported? Is Dubai one of the neighboring hubs to support India? I look forward to seeing more articles on this subject in the media and also the development of more mobile applications in India in the years to come.