NYT had an article: Is the next Silicon Valley taking roots in Bangalore?.
This article starts with the story of Tom Binford and Ione Binford. Tom and Ione have been long time friend and I met them in my last visit to Bangalore. Their story is unique because they had no ‘roots’ in India and saw the potential of India as the main reason to settle in Bangalore and build their company.
Tom Binford is an inspiration to Computer Vision researchers. His handwriting recognition technology is using deep technical insights from Computer Vision and related areas to solve a challenging and useful application. It would be nice to see more such efforts in this very promising technical field which has so much potential for solving real problems. Unfortunately, the culture of the field has been to put a self-constraint of using only visual information rather than using visual information as one of the most powerful information source in solving problems.