The world runs on technology solutions and specifically apps that exist around the world. However, development is just part of the issues when it comes to building these apps, while deployment and maintenance is a separate and equally difficult challenge most people face.
We speak to Nida Sahar, CEO and Founder of Nife, a unified public cloud edge platform that helps developers manage, deploy and scale any application securely on a global scale. This helps simplify the entire process, helping developers bring their projects to life.
We speak to lawyer and new entrepreneur Rachel Wong about her legaltech startup, Founders Doc
Nida is an entrepreneur, a writer, a coder, a community builder and a supporter of woman in engineering and entrepreneurship. She has mentored young girls and women to upskill them in technology. She built women-centric technology and start-up communities.
Nida currently runs her second start-up – Nife, focused on building the future of Realtime computing Nida is also a published poet with 5 Anthologies, curates a literary magazine and volunteers with communities building start-up ecosystem.
If you can’t find Nida in the office, she’s reading poetry or spending time with her cat and adopting strays.
Sell us your company/service in 300 words?
Nife is an amalgamation of Nickel and Ferrous, found in earths core. The core is said to be superionic and has a finite mesh. We are amalgamating Public and Telco Infrastructure to form the vital centres of hosted products giving dynamic accessibility forming a core in the sky. Nife is a sky computing platform.
We are a Unified Public Cloud Edge Platform that simplifies the complexity of 5G, edge computing and cloud through a suite of APIs and tools to rapidly empower enterprises and developers to launch their applications globally, scale to any region with ZeroOps and Zero Trust Provisioning.
Nife works with a variety of new age technology companies working on infrastructure of data centres, stateless microservices architectures to help engineers and customers to make deployment, management and scaling of their technology easier.
We deploy their applications in 5 minutes and scale them up in 3 minutes with three clicks. We do this keeping in mind customers and applications needs of cost performance, latency and data. Applications on Nife can have latencies between 20 – 250 milliseconds and an overall cost reduction of up to 20% in comparison with legacy infrastructure. We can move applications and deploy them close to the customers end users, helping them with application latencies. All applications have security and privacy of Infrastructure by default.
Overall we reduce the need for custom roles of DevOps, CloudOps, InfraOps and Infrastructure compliances – Security and Privacy. To help our customers scale, as a part of the Nife Grid, we have access to over 500 regions across the globe.
To help start-ups add features faster, Nife Launchpad has applications internally that can be deployed in a single click. We also have Integrations with GIT and are on GIT marketplace and our customer base includes some top MNCs and we are trusted by many developers and engineers. We are members of Kinetic Edge Alliance and founding members of Open Grid Alliance, the only company from Singapore.
What is stopping you from having the largest company in the world?
We are tech built in Asia for the world, deep-tech focussed and superlative.
We are on top with passion, determination and customer first principals. We have stellar technology with magic and an easy solution.
At this point all we need is Resources – namely, People and Money. We were miser in spending our pre seed fund, so much so that we launched our product.
We are revenue generating in a deep-tech space and now, we need more people to accelerate the growth, hence the need for money.
When I initially started working on Nife, I actually spent a little more than 15% of my savings before we were granted pre-seed. At one point in time, I borrowed money, lived poorly and I still don’t draw a salary.
In a short span, Nife has made so much process, delivering partnerships, working with a veteran industrial technology leader, working with customers, incorporating reviews on usability, adding feature set and even generating revenue.
The segment we work in has a 50B market as well. We are at a 20% month over month growth with customer acquisition and with partnerships and tie-ups.
At the juncture, we are in need to scale our team, to take more risks, to serve more customers and make the vision of being a global leader in the world a reality.
If you could change one thing about the tech industry in Southeast Asia, what would it be?
The tech industry in Southeast Asian region tends to be a follower, not a leader. Its very alarming and something that should be a norm like that. I sometimes wonder, why should technology be dictated by a few regions. It makes us feel as little powerless.
Let me give you an example of what is happening with 5G, Infrastructure rollout and edge computing. The number of locations for infrastructure(5G, Cloud) will increase based on the population of the region. But the other parts of the world have progressed a lot more than our region.
There is enough talent and enough resources in this part of the world to stir a new narrative, but we are slow on adopting “the latest” and more importantly taking risk. I agree that the factors could include expenses, but we have always been looking at other countries for inspiration. I think it’s time to change this story.
Over all I feel that there is hesitation in Technology investment, some sort of a fear around it – fear of failure or maybe not knowing enough. Given a choice, I would like to change that about the Tech Industry in general, here and work towards making us leaders and others followers.
Name one person in the region, who is making a difference in Technology?
Nida Sahar, that me.. I think I am working on a Stellar technology and definitely, would deserve a shout out.
However, “difference in Technology “ comes from both – ends leading from front as well as at the grass root level.
Actually in today’s day and age, there are quite a few names and its really a difficult to choice to choose one over another. I spent some time choosing from a list of people.
When it comes to grassroot level and helping more careers in technology, Neha Agarwal from IT audit team in Citibank is one name that comes to my mind, especially with all the mentoring that she has done. She has also been an advocate for women in technology both internal to her organization and externally. I think we need more role models like her.
For leading from front point of view, at a leadership position. I especially admire the work Amit Midha is doing in South East Asia, namely the inauguration of Dell-EMC 5G lab. He is President of APJ and Global Digital cities at Dell-EMC. Though a familiar name from my past life, his innovative mindset is an attribute I would love to have. He is also very well spoken.
5. What would you want people to remember you for, 100 years from now?
My name means morning’s first voice, the one that breaks the night, opens up the dawn. I cannot be more poetic. I was born exactly at that time so the name. I am a reasonable voice.
I would like to be remembered as that symbol- Breaking Barriers, Perseverant and a Shape-changer.
Also, one hundred years from now, like the compounds clustering through the earth’s core, I want to be remembered as a person who built a deep-tech unicorn out of Singapore.
More often than not, I have to remind myself that I am doing a lot of shape-shifting. I belong to a Muslim business family in India. I grew up hearing about profit and loss numbers at home, studied well, only to be told that girls shouldn’t take part in the family business. In my community, wedding planning starts when a girl reaches her puberty and the expectations are simple – to take over a household.
Though I don’t think labels are that important but my friends have to remind me that I am changing a lot of things while doing what I do. It’s been a struggle at times, “miles before I sleep” moments, and a lot of self-motivation. But frankly, I believe, we can only break barriers by building bridges and bridges were not built overnight.
I would like to be remembered as reasonable voice who built and travelled through the bridges she built so that others could use it as a road.