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NetApp, a global cloud-led, data-centric software company, announced the graduation of its eighth cohort of the flagship startup accelerator program, NetApp Excellerator. The eight business-to-business [B2B] tech startups, which all share a focus on deep tech, including Artificial Intelligence [AI], Machine Learning [ML], cloud, and data, graduated via a virtual demo.

Data Sutram, FireCompass, Metabob, Maxbyte, Nife, Snapblocs, State of Mind, and Tongadive delivered pitches relating technologies such as security, location intelligence, smart manufacturing, and employee experience, to a live digital audience of venture capitalists, investors, and NetApp leaders.

Read – NetApp announces graduation of first startups from the NetApp Excellerator Program

Speaking about the graduation, Ravi Chhabria, Managing Director, NetApp India said

Events from 2020 have emphasized the importance of developing equitable, sustainable, and scalable businesses, with a people-centric approach. One of our participating startups, State of Mind, an AI-driven conversational intelligence platform, is working with our HR team to improve employee experience and well-being. This is yet another example of data providing business value, in this case improving employee experience and increasing engagement and retention of talent.

Paid proofs of concept have been an integral part of the program in fine-tuning the startup offerings and technology. Emphasizing this aspect in delivering customer-centricity, Chhabria further said

Another topically relevant startup, FireCompass, is working with our Information Security team to test the resilience of their threat-detection tool. Today, digital transformation is driving the future of work, and having worked with 50 startups, we are able to amplify our ability to innovate.

As proof of the growing global reach of the program, five of the eight startups- Metabob, Snapblocs, Nife, FireCompass, and Tongadive, are spread across three countries – the United States, the United Kingdom, and Singapore. All of these startups are being mentored by tech leaders from NetApp India, further establishing the center as a hotbed of innovation and technology growth for globally relevant solutions.

Madhurima Agarwal, Director of Engineering Programs and leader of NetApp Excellerator, said

Solving real-world challenges with data is built into our DNA. The need for business resilience and digital transformation has brought out the best in this cohort of startups to tackle the most pressing problems. We couldn’t be more proud of the founders, who are unrestrained in their ability to transform and modernize across industries, despite the obvious constraints brought in by the pandemic.

Alluding to the broad reach of the accelerator program beyond the participating startups, Agarwal added

We are associating with prestigious industry bodies to invest in the rapid transformation of the startup ecosystem. As an exciting opportunity to harness our cloud expertise, we have partnered with NASSCOM Deep Tech Club 2.0 to elevate India-based pioneering startups in this space.

Through this association, NetApp will lend its cloud-and data-related technology leadership to the startups that NASSCOM and other industry partners are seeking to mentor.

NetApp ExcellerateHER, a core diversity-driven initiative, engaged the second collective of women-led startups, FireCompass, Tongadive, and Nife. NetApp ExcellerateHER taps the power of the accelerator network to further women entrepreneurs in this digital-first world.

Details of the eighth cohort of the NetApp Excellerator program:

Since its inception in 2017, the award-winning NetApp Excellerator program has received over 1,700 applications. Applications are now open for the ninth cohort, with focus areas including cloud, Internet of Things, big data and analytics, ML, virtualization, data security, data management, and storage.

To apply, visit http://startup.netapp.in/ and look for #NetAppExcellerator on social media.

|In: Accelerator|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

The CoWrks Foundry, a premier acceleration program, announced the completion of its first cohort, comprising of five innovative startups. The CoWrks Foundry is an initiative by CoWrks, one of India’s largest shared office space providers. The program is designed to nurture early-stage startups in the field of Urban Tech, Enterprise Tech, and Social Impact Enterprise, through a rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum, designed by industry veterans & experts. The Foundry’s well-architected framework nurtures durable and scalable businesses by investing in the ideas and the minds behind them.

Image Source

Out of the 350+ startups that applied to the program from across India and some even international, the final five that were selected to be a part of the accelerator are Wagonfly, Understand Better, Ayasta, Betterly and T-Scale Hub. These companies were assisted with everything from initial seed capital and client acquisition to the art of crafting a stellar pitch.

The 24-week intensive program concluded with a Demo Day on November 14. The 5 startups had the opportunity to pitch their products, ideas and business models to venture capitalists, and prominent industry leaders at the city’s newest entrepreneurial hub – CoWrks Koramangala. In order to fuel entrepreneurship and create an environment where innovators and companies thrive, The Foundry also invited applications from the startups housed within the CoWrks community to pitch on Demo Day.

In addition to providing an initial influx of smart seed capital of upto $30K, The Foundry has been instrumental in equipping home-grown businesses with a solid foundation and the resources required to fully equip, refine and fortify their companies. Situated within CoWrks’ HQ in Bengaluru, the startups in The Foundry have been able to access premium workspaces within CoWrks, and the opportunity to work alongside a carefully curated community of startups, freelancers and large enterprises. Each of the 5 startups were assigned dedicated mentors and experts from relevant industries, to provide targeted coaching and guidance.

The First Cohort of Start-ups Graduated from The CoWrks Foundry

As a part of the part of its post-program support, The Foundry will continue to aid these start-ups in terms of mentorship and guidance.

Nruthya Madappa, Managing Partner, The Cowrks Foundry said

Despite the start-up growth spurt in India, businesses in the Urban Tech, Enterprise Tech and Social Enterprise space, lack the guidance to overcome unique challenges. The CoWrks Foundry is our answer to India’s fractured entrepreneurial ecosystem. In comparison to the sturdy framework and incredible support afforded to thriving startups in Israel, Shanghai and Singapore, India lags far behind.

Therefore, it has been our endeavor to provide them with world-class mentorship and expertise, technology and infrastructure support, as well as access to investors and customers so they can scale from idea to execution at an accelerated speed. It has been a grueling yet amazing journey so far, with like-minded peers interacting and learning from The CoWrks Foundry panel, mentors and each other.

Ravi Teja Avasarala, Co-founder of Ayasta said

What drew us to the Foundry was the team behind it.  They have an inherent understanding of what startups need in order to succeed and what sort of help is required at various stages. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that during the program, the Foundry team worked harder on solving our problems than we did.

The networks we got access to would be invaluable to us in our journey. Foundry put in the effort to understanding our Ayasta’s offerings and then helped remove our biases by identifying where we are underselling ourselves. The Foundry program made us better founders which would eventually lead us to become successful entrepreneurs.

Further to the success of the first cohort, The CoWrks Foundry is inviting applications for the second one by the end of November 2018. The 24 week-long program at the state-of-the-art CoWrks Millenia office in Bengaluru will commence in January 2019.

Startups Graduated from the First Cohort

About CoWrks

CoWrks is India’s largest and fastest growing large-format co-working space provider. Established in 2016, it has quickly become home to several leading entrepreneurs, a launch pad for startups and a work hub for millennials in large enterprises and Fortune 500 companies. Headquartered in Bengaluru, CoWrks currently operates out of four cities, and is spread across 1.5 million sq. ft, with a community of over 15,000 members.

CoWrks caters to all demographics of the workforce with an array of membership options, including flexible and dedicated desks, customizable private studios and even virtual membership. With 24*7 access to select workstations, a sweeping gamut of amenities, and unique networking opportunities, the co-working space is creating a work culture that boosts creativity, productivity, cross-collaboration, knowledge sharing and skill upgradation.

|In: Fintech|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

The accelerator programme in partnership with US Consulate General, Hyderabad; Department of Science and Technology, Government of India and BASIX Sub-K, seeks to support ten growth stage start-ups providing lending, payment and insurance solutions with focus on agriculture, healthcare and energy sectors.

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The unique offerings of this accelerator are access to research and insightful data at ISB and an opportunity to co-innovate with established ventures and organizations.  The Knowledge and Investor Partners will come together to support the selected startups to identify their challenges and provide complementary strengths to scale operations.

ISB is inviting applications from startups to pitch their ventures in the following categories

  • Scale – Early stage startups with solutions in lending, payment and insurance, seeking to accelerate/scale their solution/product to the next level.
  • Co-Innovate – Startups willing to expand or pivot their agritech, healthcare, fintech or energy solution to provide alternate banking solutions by partnering with a well-established organization.

The selected startups will be provided with mentorship, advisory and networking opportunities to meet each of their respective business goals through February 2019 to June 2019.

Interested start-ups can apply at envision.isb.edu. Last date for application – December 15, 2018. For more details about the Envision programme and selection criteria, you can email the team at envision@isb.edu or call (040) 23187032

About DLabs

DLabs is the incubation and acceleration arm of Indian School of Business set up in collaboration with the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. It aims to support the creation of a vibrant and high impact entrepreneurial ecosystem focused on innovation in key sectors including technology commercialization. DLabs leverages the vast resources, expertise and networks of the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at ISB through mentorship, education and investor connect.

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SMARTup is a series of round table knowledge sharing and networking events being organized by ah! Ventures & meetingsandoffices as part of their endeavour to connect the start up fraternity and create valuable business centric conversations between domain specialists and entrepreneurs.

The focus of these events would be to deal with issues and problems that plague young companies and divert their focus from their core competences and business. Issues such as business planning and strategy development, aligning immediate and long term goals, generating investor interest, scaling a business, managing cash flows, building sticky relationships & customer loyalty, getting paying customers, regulations, compliance, understanding term sheets, understanding how to go about building your tech as a non-techie without a tech co-founder, sales and marketing processes, how to focus on and enhance the logic of business, what is the role of IoT in business, when do you need AI and what does Ai mean beyond chatbots for your business etc. will all be amongst the critical topics that would be covered under the series. [Source]

Note – Himanshu Sheth’s Blog is an Outreach Partner for the event !

SMARTup is a focused and enriched networking and knowledge sharing experience that will bring tremendous value to entrepreneurs and young businesses. Each SMARTup event shall have limited seating.

SMARTup has traveled across 10 cities in India and of the 190 startup companies that participated, 10 are already shortlisted for funding on the ah! Ventures Funding Platform. After having taken the SMARTup revolution to 10 Indian cities & Dubai, SMARTup is back at Bengaluru. SMARTup is offering at least 3 1-on-1 Meetings to all Gold Pass Startups at SMARTup Bengaluru with some of the best investors in South India. Book your 1-on-1 Meetings today & take your startup to new heights.

The event would be held at 91SpringBoard on the 7th of July. More details about SMARTup, Bengaluru can be found here.

For registration, please click on the link below

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Today, one of the main components of an increasingly digital world is data and with data being collected in heaps, there are thousands of companies working on how to capture, store and leverage it to derive maximum business value. They are on a continuous look out for innovative solutions that will help them change the world with data. NetApp being one of the leaders in the data domain comes with a rich legacy of innovation in the data management space. In June 2017, the company launched the NetApp Excellerator program [information about first cohort here] with an aim to help data driven startups realize their full potential and enable them to build innovative world-class products and solutions that are market-ready.

NetApp had selected six data driven startups for their second cohort of the NetApp Excellerator program. The selected startups had received $15,000 equity free grant and access to NetApp facilities, their technology, HR, Marketing and other functions that would help them scale to the next level. The startups from the second cohort of NetApp Excellerator working in interesting areas [Artificial Intelligence, Analytics, Cloud & Machine Learning] graduated in June, 2018 and are all set to enter the market.

We were invited for the ‘Startup Meet’ that was held at the NetApp Premises in Bengaluru. Ajeya Motaganahalli, Senior Director – Engineering Programs and Leader of NetApp Excellerator walked us through the following

  • Overall selection process
  • Status of the first cohort
  • Learnings from the startup founders [and their team] and
  • How these startups [first and second cohort] are an integral part of the entire eco-system.

They had received close to 450 applications for the first, from around 250 that registered for the first cohort. Of these, 11 were shortlisted to participate in a rigorous boot camp that concluded with the six being selected for the second cohort [the selection was based on their team and technical expertise, product capability, etc.]. He stressed upon how the NetApp Excellerator is more than a startup accelerator and how the startup’s team members are fueling the startup mojo and entrepreneurial culture in NetApp.

The six startups from the second cohort presented their respective ideas along with core differentiators, business potential, funding status, NetApp’s role in helping them with technology; marketing and deep-rooted expertise in building B2B focused products. Below are the startups that graduated from the second cohort

Blobcity

BlobCity provides its customers with end to end data capabilities by making storing and processing diverse data easy. Most analytic products today are required to collectively analyse data of diverse natures, BlobCity offers real-time analytics over this diverse data. For the analysis of transactional data at the speed of transactions, one needs a real-time analytics system. Example in case could be ATM fraud detection, where your analytical algorithm needs to analyse possible fraudulent nature of an on-going ATM swipe, before the machine actually dispenses the cash.

Unlike ATM’s, not all systems need analytics at real-time. If you want to analyse stock market data of the previous day, compare it with a year’s trend and then take a position when the market opens next day, you need a system that can perform this analysis with low-latency to be able to complete analytics for all stock quotes before the markets re- open. Depending on the nature and complexity of the requirement, the term low-latency covers processing times from a few milliseconds to even several hours. BlobCity’s analytics solutions are extremely well suited for such requirements and support high volume of transactions without compromising on analytics speeds. More information about Blobcity can be found here.

DataKen

Dataken’s Data Science Platform with cognitive capabilities provides Ingest, Transform, Visualize and Analyze capabilities to deliver actionable proactive and predictive business insights across segments. With highly scalable computational, storage and machine learning capabilities along with 250+ industry adaptors are designed to deliver results in complex ecosystem. The platform’s capability has empowered business and operations team to extract, configure and analyze data to meet business demand, real-time.

Dataken’s platform provides one-stop solution to meet the future demand of organizations embarking on IoT, SDN, NFV, LTE, Social commerce and data monetization. The business layer provides 100+ out-of-box solutions for Communications, Banking & Finance, Insurance, Health Care and Manufacturing sectors to accelerate their outcome. More information about DataKen can be found here.

SigTuple

SigTuple builds intelligent screening solutions to aid diagnosis through AI-powered analysis of visual medical data. They are building an artificial intelligence (AI) platform called Manthan which helps them analyze visual medical data efficiently for their customers. Manthan enable Sigtuple team to work on five major high-volume, screening processes of the healthcare industry – analysis of peripheral blood smears, urine microscopy, semen, fundus & OCT scans and chest x-rays.

They are working with pathology labs and hospitals to get data for developing our solutions. Each of their solutions is built in partnership with a medical institution and specialists so that the product scope and roadmap are in line with the requirements of the final users. More information about SigTuple can be found here.

Nanobi Data & Analytics

Nanobi delivers analytical insights to clients that help them better understand their customers. Their analytical solutions deliver measurable business impact across revenue upside, cost optimization and end-consumer delight to clients in the Healthcare, BFSI space.

Their powerful LiquiData Platform integrates data warehousing, business intelligence, predictive and prescriptive analytics into a single visual stack thereby allowing their clients the ease, efficiency and flexibility of using a one-stop platform to serve their analytical requirements. With a “nanomart” based data architecture and a rich API framework, solutions are built speedily and in easy to consume modules. Nanobi’s platform has built-in conversational bots, which makes it easy for anyone across the enterprise to use analytics to drive decision-making. More information about Nanobi can be found here.

Anlyz

Anlyz is a next-gen security product with granularity and visibility of enterprise threat landscape, using machine/deep learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to address enterprise cybersecurity needs.

In the current ecosystem, information is the most valuable currency. Anlyz’s wheels are constantly in motion, scanning the slightest digital cues to keep information safe for their clients. Equipped with advanced cyber capabilities like machine learning, AI & sophisticated hunting, Anlyz is geared to take on threats to predict and prevent attacks even much before they happen. More information about Anlyz can be found here.

ArchSaber

Founded in Feb 2016, ArchSaber automates the diagnosis and prediction of issues occurring in a large and complex IT stack. ArchSaber helps enterprises by giving real-time diagnosis of an incident including comprehensive details, from root cause(s) to the critical services, so the resolution can be handled immediately before it becomes an outage.

The firm does deep analytics over finely grained data and ensures that clients get clear causalities amongst events, depicting the domino effect in form of a cause & impact graph. More information about ArchSaber can be found here.

A snapshot of all the startups that presented is below

Adya & Scalend Technologies, startups from the first cohort also presented about their experience and business developments. Each team was given approximately five minutes for the presentation [which sounded more like an Elevator Pitch :)]. After the presentation, there was demo walk-through and interaction with the startups where we had a chance to interact with the members present from the respective startups. You can get more information about the ‘Startup Meet’ on NetApp India’s official Twitter Page.

We plan to interact with founders of a couple of startups from the second cohort, so if you have questions for any of the startups do leave them in the comments section.

|In: Accelerator|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

In its continued efforts to strengthen the collaboration between startups and corporates, Microsoft ScaleUp [known previously as Microsoft Accelerator] has selected 12 startups to be part of its new 12th cohort. ScaleUp is part of the recently announced Microsoft for Startups initiative, a new program that delivers access to technology, go-to-market and community benefits that helps startups grow their customer and revenue base.

Image Source – ScaleUp

The selected startups in the 12th cohort are focused on areas of Artificial intelligence, virtual reality, Big Data analytics, among others to build solutions for the market. Microsoft ScaleUp focuses on late stage B2B start-ups and helps them accelerate their business growth through mentorship, streamlined Go-To-Market [GTM] activities and most importantly access to world-class technology.

During the six-month program, these startups will work closely with Microsoft leaders, industry experts and leverage the Microsoft Partner Network to scale their business models and serve enterprise clients. These startups will get access to Microsoft’s rich technology expertise, infrastructure and Azure cloud platform to build a strong technology backbone for their business. As part of the program, these startups will also have access to a vibrant global alumni network of over 730 startup graduates, which will foster peer support and networking as well as access to Microsoft industry and customer events.

Selected startups for the 12th cohort

  1. AppICE has built a proprietary platform that can take soft and hard sensor data from connected devices like smartphones and use machine learning to generate actionable insights.
  2. Appiyo Technologies’ Twixor is the first of its kind ‘customer engagement platform’ which brings together the power of ‘bi-directional actionable messaging’ and Business Process Management [BPM]. Twixor delivers actionable customer engagement in a PWA [Progressive Web App] capsule powered by their versatile BPM engine.
  3. Avanseus Technologies delivers AI based enterprise solutions for Mobile, Fixed, Transmission and IP Backbone Networks, Industrial Analytics, Security, Railways and the Internet of Things, transforming massive amounts of data into useful business insights and actions.
  4. eGovernments Foundation aims to build and drive government transformations across India using open source technology.
  5. Gaia Smart Cities Solution is a Data Automation and Analytics Company focused on bringing together multiple IoT and digital data streams into a single platform to enable the clients to measure, monitor and manage performance and service delivery.
  6. GrowthEnabler Pii [Personalised Intelligence Interface] provides insights and intelligence on Technology Disruption, Digital Innovation and its impact on large corporations to solve their business issues and create competitive advantage. Their unique Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning engine connects business issues to global innovative emerging companies and startups.
  7. Karo Sambhav is a tech-enabled, environmentally beneficial and socially responsible Producer Responsibility Organization [PRO] that is setting up a robust India-wide transformative solution on e-waste management.
  8. Kogence brings flexibility, agility and productivity in the High Performance Computing [HPC] based workflows.
  9. MachineSense has developed a patented Industrial IoT system for Predictive, Preventative and Electrical Maintenance of Industrial Machines. The company aims to build an IIoT platform for factory and building utilities that includes electricity, compressed air, water, HVAC, vacuum, etc.
  10. SmartVizX is developing VArch Suite, a virtual reality product that improves interior design collaboration in the Architecture-Engineering-Construction [AEC] industry by offering immersive visualization, spatial awareness, interactivity with design elements, data management and communication features.
  11. Sprinkle Data provides Search based Insight discovery and adaptive data management software-as service.
  12. Xurmo Technologies is a self-service data ingestion, preparation and analysis platform built with the vision to simplify and automate data-driven decisions. By simplifying the analytics process, Xurmo enables faster adoption of data-driven decision making in enterprises.

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Brigade REAP, an accelerator program with a focus on technology that Impacts the real estate industry, announced the graduation of its third cohort of five startups during the Brigade REAP Handover Day. Located in the premises of the iconic World Trade Centre – Bangalore, the Brigade REAP accelerator program is Asia’s first-ever startup accelerator, designed to help enterprise startups in the Real Estate sector.

Image Source – Brigade REAP

REAP was Launched in October 2016 with an intention to mentor startups leveraging technology which can help in delivering greater efficiencies to the Real Estate sector. Over 100 plus start-ups were evaluated for Cohort three and after two rounds of intense jury selection, 5 start-ups were inducted into the program. The start-ups inducted in the program went through a rigorous four and a half month mentorship and acceleration program before being handed over to the real estate Industry for consumption of their products and services.

The five start-ups reaped immense benefits from mentoring, stakeholder development, tech evaluation, business modelling and investor & enterprise connects. The six pillars of engagement focused by REAP are product development, Technology road-map, people strategy, go-to-market strategy, marketing-branding-PR strategy and strategies to make startups investment ready.

At the Handover Day of the 3rd cohort, these five start-ups demonstrated their ventures to eminent developers from the Real Estate Industry, Investors, HNI’s, other startup founders and senior management of global corporates. The event marked the culmination of the third cohort’s technology and market acceleration journey. Even as alumni’s, the startups will have continued access to mentorship and go-to-market opportunities with Brigade REAP, as well as eco-system connects.

Nirupa Shankar, Director, Brigade REAP, said

The main focus of the accelerator program is to make startups ‘industry ready’. Many of them need to tweak their business model in order to work seamlessly with established real estate developers who have their own idiosyncratic way of working. We try to work with startups that can help developers either increase revenues or decrease cost and time taken to deliver on products or services. We look at startups in the Real Estate, Hospitality, Office and the Retail Sector. We hope to add value to the industry and ecosystem through our efforts. ” said Ms. Nirupa Shankar, Director, Brigade REAP speaking on the occasion.

Startups that graduated from the Brigade REAP program

ECOSTP – A ‘Zero Power’ sewage treatment technology. Compared to conventional STP’s that consume energy, ECOSTP produces energy. A 200 KLD ECOSTP based sewage treatment plant can generate 50KL/day Biogas, energy equivalent to 25 liters of Diesel.

Tharun Kumar, Co-Founder, EcoSTP, said

REAP helped us succeed and coached us on all aspects of our business. If you have an idea which can disrupt the realty market place, REAP is the place to knock.

QuickQuotes– An enterprise procurement platform for construction, infrastructure & interiors. With a month on month growth of 100% in GMV since inception, they have over 300 QuickQuotes trained vendors dealing with a client base of over 150.

Prem Shankar, Founder, QuickQuotes, said

I had a great experience with REAP and the learning will continue despite graduating from the program.

Synconext– An IoT based building workplace technology that does energy monitoring for commercial Real Estate. They have successfully saved 157K kw/h of energy within an area of 561K sq.ft.

Vishal Jain, Co-founder, Synconext, said

The REAP team is very experienced and provides all round mentorship which is critical for any startup to succeed. REAP’s connects in the ecosystem is brilliant and this has helped us in opening doors for acquiring various leads.

WeGoT Utility Services – An IoT based water usage Analytics Company which helps track user consumption of water. In more than 2000 homes they have saved over 30 Million liters of water within the first 2 years of existence.

Abilash Haridass, Co-founder, WeGoT, said

Being part of REAP has given us the opportunity to interact and connect with various stakeholders in the industry that are striving to bring about a real change in this space.

Woodzon – An Online B2B marketplace for woodworking industry. They have 20,000 plus products with categories ranging over 200 plus.

Binesh Viswanath, Co-founder, Woodzon, said

Being a startup it’s really hard for us to have an acceptance in the market but the brand name Brigade REAP gave us a huge push to the market. The program helped us in improving our conversion ratio which was one of our biggest ask.

Applications for the fourth cohort are now open. Selected startups will receive technology and business mentorship as well as access to markets and investors. To know more, please visit Brigade REAP

About Brigade REAP

Brigade REAP is focused on technology startups whose end product/service is applicable to Real Estate be it Residential Commercial or Hospitality projects. The sectors range from IoT, Nano Technology, Cleantech and Renewable energy, Logistics and Visual Computing. The program is mentored by John Kuruvilla, Chief Mentor for the program and Apul Nahata, Mentor-in-Residence and has a stellar line up of mentors and advisors.

|In: Accelerator|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Microsoft Accelerator, a global program built to empower start-ups, and Accenture Ventures, which partners with and invests in growth-stage companies that create innovative enterprise technologies, today announced a new ecosystem partnership that aims to strengthen the start-up ecosystem in India.

Image Source – e27.co

The two companies will help growth-stage technology B2B start-ups boost their enterprise readiness and go-to market, and help achieve scale in national and international markets. This was announced at Microsoft Accelerator’s flagship event, ThinkNext 2018. The event, which was attended by over 400 business and industry thought leaders, start-ups, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs also marked the graduation Microsoft Accelerator’s 11th winter cohort.

Microsoft Accelerator and Accenture Ventures will support growth-stage technology B2B start-ups in India specializing in artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, Augmented/Virtual Reality, Blockchain, Fintech, Big data, Security and Customer experience solutions, and provide access to Accenture’s global clients and Microsoft’s global network. The ecosystem partnership will help start-ups deploy solutions in large India and global client environments, improvise on their business model and sharpen their go-to-market strategy. Start-ups stand to gain by developing innovative solutions for enterprise use cases created out of the synergy between Microsoft Accelerator and Accenture Ventures and their shared innovation ecosystems consisting of start-ups, venture capitalists, universities and corporate R&D Labs.

[L-R] Bala Girisabala, Managing Director, Microsoft Accelerator and Avnish Sabharwal, Managing Director, Accenture Ventures India on the signing of MoU between the two entities

Speaking on the ecosystem partnership, Bala Girisaballa, Managing Director, Microsoft Accelerator, said

Start-ups are the centers of innovation, and over the past decade they have played a crucial role in disrupting many industries worldwide. Today, the need is to create a collaborative environment and bring start-ups and corporates together to co-create and co-innovate. Our partnership with Accenture showcases our commitment to connect start-ups with large corporates and help them scale up to become successful businesses.

Commenting on the ecosystem partnership, Avnish Sabharwal, Managing Director, Accenture Ventures, India, said

At Accenture Ventures, we believe that an open innovation approach can help enterprises accelerate adoption of ‘The New’, underpinned by innovation and digital. This ecosystem partnership is an example of how we orchestrate the innovation ecosystem and create opportunities for start-ups to grow and scale-up. We are excited about the unique value that Accenture Ventures and Microsoft Accelerator can together create for start-ups and enterprises.

Through this ecosystem partnership, Microsoft Accelerator and Accenture Ventures together will host various start-up events and summits in India which will enable them to engage deeply with the start-up network and bring new opportunities to innovate for clients. In the process, the ecosystem partnership will significantly strengthen the Indian B2B start-up network and support Startup India and Digital India programs.

About Microsoft Accelerator

Microsoft Accelerator is a global program built to empower startups around the world on their journey to build great companies. We work with market-ready startups to provide the tools, resources, connections, knowledge and expertise they need to become successful companies. Our goal is to help startups mature into enterprise-ready companies by scaling every aspect of their business. For more information, please visit Microsoft Accelerator