Starting Oct 21, 2013, Microsoft Ventures Accelerator in India will be conducting coffee meet-ups with startups across 7 cities of India. Over a period of 11 days, the Microsoft Ventures team will spend a day each in Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Kochi and Hyderabad, to meet entrepreneurs looking to find the right Accelerator to expedite their dreams as well as startup aspirants who need to have their questions answered before they take that final plunge into entrepreneurship.
Inviting all startups to attend the coffee meet-ups, Ravi Narayan, Director, Microsoft Ventures in India, said, "Informal meets like these, where you get to interact with a lot of like-minded people and experts who can answer all your questions, are very helpful. We conducted similar meet-ups last year too, and were amazed at the response."
"While the startups benefited by getting their doubts cleared, we benefited from feedback and insights that prompted us to introduce a few changes in our program that made it more robust. We intend to build deep connections with all relevant startups in India, anyone who is looking to make it big in Cloud, internet, mobile and data analytics technologies. We love startups that are solving interesting problems, requiring enormous scale. I strongly urge all startups and startup aspirants to find their nearest city, and block the date to attend the coffee meet-up," Narayan added.
Parth Saxena, co-founder of TommyJams, had attended a meet-up in May 2013, before he joined the third/ current batch of Microsoft Ventures Accelerator in India. Sharing his experience, Saxena said: "The meet-up gave us a deep insight into what Microsoft Ventures Accelerator is all about. While we knew about the program, meeting the team and sensing the work environment made us confident that this was the right way to go forward. After learning about the program in detail and clarifying some of the questions we had, we sent in our application and were selected for the third batch!"
Microsoft Ventures in India features a community evangelism program called BizSpark, an accelerator program and a seed fund, offering startups a single point of entry to engage with Microsoft. Microsoft Ventures Accelerator started operations in India in August 2012 and has had 22 companies graduating over the first two batches, with 80 per cent of them having received funding. Currently, 13 startups are being accelerated in the third batch, and are scheduled to graduate on November 29, 2013. Applications for the fourth batch are now open online (Online registration form), the last date for submitting applications being November 15, 2013. The fourth batch will commence on January 22, 2014 and graduate in May.
The program has already received several applications. If you have started a company or are contemplating starting one, but have a million questions about the what, the how and the where – this is your chance to get your answers from the experts. All you need to do is to sign up for a coffee date for the Microsoft Ventures team in your city.
Entry for the meet-ups is free for everyone. All an interested attendee needs to do is register on the link for the city of his or her choice.
The multi-city schedule is listed in the table below.
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