Fresco Capital, e-Zest Solutions team up for hackathon in Pune

PUNE: Fresco Capital is organising a hackathon in Pune on Friday in collaboration with e-Zest Solutions Limited, an unusual exercise for a venture firm that managing partner Stephen Forte attributes to a desire to get a better sense of the developer system in India.

“The way the developer talent in the country has evolved is tremendous. In the last 15 years I've seen it go from being a cheap alternative to being fullfledged partners on a par with the best,“ said Forte, who has been visiting India often as part of the five startups he has hel med so far. It's partly to tap into this talent that Menlo Park, California-based Fresco Capital is conducting the hackathon, with a firm focus on bots.

“The key reason is to learn more about the Indian market and developer system, as well as gain expertise in bots,“ said Forte, who is also a mentor and on the selection panel for the Thiel Foundation's 20 under 20 programme.

Forte said that the industry has just scratched the surface of the potential of bots, which are largely restricted at present to replacing the chat function in messengers or customer service inter faces.

About 300 developers are expected to build bots on the Facebook, Slack and Microsoft platform, giving both Fresco Capital and eZest Solutions access to some new ideas in machine learning, artificial intelligence and bots.