10th Indian Delegation to Dubai, Gitex & Expand North Star – World’s Largest Startup Investor Connect
Artificial Intelligence

Techstars Startup Weekend 2024: Igniting Innovation and Entrepreneurship at E-Cell, IMT Ghaziabad


News Update

E-Cell, IMT Ghaziabad, recently witnessed the culmination of a dynamic journey as Techstars Startup Weekend 2024 concluded its thrilling 54-hour exploration into the realms of innovation and entrepreneurship. Fueled by the support of tech giants Google and GoDaddy, the event became a melting pot of creative minds driven by a collective passion to turn ideas into reality.

The opening day set an energetic tone as participants fervently pitched their innovative concepts, laying the foundation for collaborative team formations. Day two saw these ideas take shape under the careful guidance of industry experts during mentorship sessions, ensuring teams were finely tuned for the climactic final pitches.

As Judgment Day arrived, teams presented their refined pitches to a distinguished panel of judges, each competing for the coveted prizes. The spotlight fell on the winning ideas, showcasing not only their market potential but also the exceptional teamwork and execution strategies that defined these entrepreneurial endeavors.

In recognition of their outstanding efforts, the winning teams emerged as follows:

First Place: Pic-a-Pool( geo-location-based pooling platform that connects like-minded individuals within their vicinity.)
Second Place: Stylin(aims to transform the salon booking experience through personalized styling, offering virtual experiences that lead to real transformations.)
Third Place: Teific( crafting personalized electrical and electronic solutions, seamlessly integrating innovation into the fabric of daily experiences.)

Additionally, all winners had the chance to claim exciting prizes, including goodies, great startup credits, certificates, and credits from Google and other partners, collectively valued at over INR 1,00,000+.

The success of Techstars Startup Weekend 2024 was made possible through the generous support of sponsors. Gratitude extends to our valued partners:

Technology Partner: Open Weaver
Merchandise Partner: Blue Roar Merch
Growth Partner: Growth Wheel
Cosmetic Partner: Syre
Nutrition Partner: Origins Nutra
Beauty Partner: Breeze Beauty
Gifting Partner: Moksa
Media Partner: Startup Story
Sustainability Partner: Earthex.in

As the curtains fall on Techstars Startup Weekend 2024, it signifies not just the end of an event but the commencement of a transformative journey for participants, mentors, judges, and sponsors alike. A sincere thank you resonates with all involved, contributing to the success and vibrancy of this entrepreneurial community. The momentum generated during this event promises exciting prospects for the continued growth and success of innovative ventures. Here’s to the collaborative spirit that defines Techstars Startup Weekend, echoing far beyond its conclusion. Cheers to a future marked by innovation and entrepreneurial excellence.

Follow Startup Story





Source link

by Team SNFYI

Facebook is testing a new feature that invites some users—mainly in the US and Canada—to let Meta AI access parts of their phone’s camera roll. This opt-in “cloud processing” option uploads recent photos and videos to Meta’s servers so the AI can offer personalized suggestions, such as creating collages, highlight reels, or themed memories like birthdays and graduations. It can also generate AI-based edits or restyles of those images. Meta says this is optional and assures users that the uploaded media won’t be used for advertising. However, to enable this, people must agree to let Meta analyze faces, objects, and metadata like time and location. Currently, the company claims these photos won’t be used to train its AI models—but they haven’t completely ruled that out for the future. Typically, only the last 30 days of photos get uploaded, though special or older images might stay on Meta’s servers longer for specific features. Users have the option to disable the feature anytime, which prompts Meta to delete the stored media after 30 days. Privacy experts are concerned that this expands Meta’s reach into private, unpublished images and could eventually feed future AI training. Unlike Google Photos, which explicitly states that user photos won’t train its AI, Meta hasn’t made that commitment yet. For now, this is still a test run for a limited group of people, but it highlights the tension between AI-powered personalization and the need to protect personal data.

by Team SNFYI

News Update Bymridul     |    March 14, 2024 Meesho, an online shopping platform based in Bengaluru, has announced its largest Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) buyback pool to date, totaling Rs 200 crore. This buyback initiative extends to both current and former employees, providing wealth creation opportunities for approximately 1,700 individuals. Ashish Kumar Singh, Meesho’s Chief Human Resources Officer, emphasized the company’s commitment to rewarding its teams, stating, “At Meesho, our employees are the driving force behind our success.” Singh further highlighted the company’s dedication to providing opportunities for wealth creation despite prevailing macroeconomic conditions. This marks the fourth wealth generation opportunity at Meesho, with the size of the buyback program increasing each year. In previous years, Meesho conducted buybacks worth over Rs 8.2 crore in February 2020, Rs 41.4 crore in November 2020, and Rs 45.5 crore in October 2021. Meesho’s profitability journey began in July 2023, making it the first horizontal Indian e-commerce company to achieve profitability. Despite turning profitable, Meesho continues to maintain positive cash flow and focuses on enhancing efficiencies across various cost items. The company’s revenue from operations for FY 2022-23 witnessed a remarkable growth of 77% over the previous year, amounting to Rs 5,735 crore. This growth can be attributed to Meesho’s leadership position as the most downloaded shopping app in India in both 2022 and 2023, increased transaction frequency among existing customers, and a diversified category mix. Additionally, Meesho’s focus on improving monetization through value-added seller services contributed to its revenue growth. Meesho also disclosed its audited performance for the first half of FY 2023-24, reporting consolidated revenues from operations of Rs 3,521 crore, marking a 37% year-over-year increase. The company achieved profitability in Q2 FY24, with a significant reduction in losses compared to the previous year. Furthermore, Meesho recorded impressive app download numbers, reaching 145 million downloads in India in 2023 and surpassing 500 million downloads in H1 FY 2023-24. Follow Startup Story Source link

by Team SNFYI

You might’ve heard of Grok, X’s answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It’s a chatbot, and, in that sense, behaves as as you’d expect — answering questions about current events, pop culture and so on. But unlike other chatbots, Grok has “a bit of wit,” as X owner Elon Musk puts it, and “a rebellious streak.” Long story short, Grok is willing to speak to topics that are usually off limits to other chatbots, like polarizing political theories and conspiracies. And it’ll use less-than-polite language while doing so — for example, responding to the question “When is it appropriate to listen to Christmas music?” with “Whenever the hell you want.” But Grok’s ostensible biggest selling point is its ability to access real-time X data — an ability no other chatbots have, thanks to X’s decision to gatekeep that data. Ask it “What’s happening in AI today?” and Grok will piece together a response from very recent headlines, while ChatGPT, by contrast, will provide only vague answers that reflect the limits of its training data (and filters on its web access). Earlier this week, Musk pledged that he would open source Grok, without revealing precisely what that meant. So, you’re probably wondering: How does Grok work? What can it do? And how can I access it? You’ve come to the right place. We’ve put together this handy guide to help explain all things Grok. We’ll keep it up to date as Grok changes and evolves. How does Grok work? Grok is the invention of xAI, Elon Musk’s AI startup — a startup reportedly in the process of raising billions in venture capital. (Developing AI’s expensive.) Underpinning Grok is a generative AI model called Grok-1, developed over the course of months on a cluster of “tens of thousands” of GPUs (according to an xAI blog post). To train it, xAI sourced data both from the web (dated up to Q3 2023) and feedback from human assistants that xAI refers to as “AI tutors.” On popular benchmarks, Grok-1 is about as capable as Meta’s open source Llama 2 chatbot model and surpasses OpenAI’s GPT-3.5, xAI claims. Image Credits: xAI Human-guided feedback, or reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), is the way most AI-powered chatbots are fine-tuned these days. RLHF involves training a generative model, then gathering additional information to train a “reward” model and fine-tuning the generative model with the reward model via reinforcement learning. RLHF is quite good at “teaching” models to follow instructions — but not perfect. Like other models, Grok is prone to hallucinating, sometimes offering misinformation and false timelines when asked about news. And these can be severe — like wrongly claiming that the Israel–Palestine conflict reached a ceasefire when it hadn’t. For questions that stretch beyond its knowledge base, Grok leverages “real-time access” to info on X (and from Tesla, according to Bloomberg). And, similar to ChatGPT, the model has internet browsing capabilities, enabling it to search the web for up-to-date information about topics. Musk has promised improvements with the …