Overwhelmed by the start-up culture in India, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella today said the tech giant will fund hundreds of new generation entrepreneurs in India's 'smart cities' space. <br/><br/>Unveiling the new cloud start-up initiative to empower the smart cities, Nadella said start-ups can apply for individual access up to Rs 80 lakh worth of Azure computing to help India's smart cities explore solutions and run smart city digital pilots. <br/><br/>He explained start-ups aligned to smart cities will be able to use Microsoft Lumia 950 and 950 XL and also Microsoft Surface Pro 4 to develop solutions for farming, healthcare and education.<br/> <br/>Describing the pace of growth of eCommerce and start-up ecosystems as "pretty mind boggling", Nadella said most of these start-up ideas are pretty good and seriously innovative. <br/><br/>The Microsoft CEO said he is extremely impressed with the adoption level of cloud computing in the country since it opened three data centres in Pune, Mumbai and Chennai 12 months ago.<br/><br/>According to Microsoft, this initiative is anticipated to impact over 50 smart cities in the next year through a catalogue of over 50 start-ups and ISV solutions. <br/><br/>Meanwhile, Nadella informed that 2 pilots are already running in Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh since the past few months.<br/> <br/>Addressing growing concerns over security of emails and mobile phones, Nadella said that Microsoft is working on ways to rid tech users of their worries over passwords. <br/><br/>He said that efforts are on to have other biometrics that really help users secure their computing interfaces. <br/><br/>Nadella suggested that all leaders should use digital tools to augment judgement, ingenuity and productivity.