Techstars, a Colorado-based American seed accelerator, is launching in India by opening its first mentorship-driven accelerator in Bengaluru to nurture Indian startups in the emerging technologies.

Initially, the Techstars accelerator in India will invest $120,000 each in 10 startups working in emerging tech that include Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, AR/VR, Robotics, Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data Analytics.

"The aim is to help solve problems in sectors like food tech, agriculture, retail, banking, healthcare, manufacturing, public sector and transportation. We will help Indian entrepreneurs connect with mentors with the ability to bring step change improvements to their startup journeys," Ray Newal, Managing Director of Techstars accelerator in Bengaluru, told IANS.

The Bengaluru accelerator, which is yet to be operational, will start operations from February 4, 2019 and culminate on May 2. However, the applications to select 10 startups are NOW OPEN TO APPLY and will close on October 14.

Founded in 2006 by David Cohen, Brad Feld, David Brown, and Jared Polis, Techstars is now the community of more than 10,000 mentors and through its mentorship-driven accelerators, it has invested in 1,375 companies from more than 40 countries, with a combined market capitalization of US$9.6 billion.

"It is my priority to provide founders in India with the tools they need to succeed in their journeys, whether it be qualified advice, capital or simply access to the right people," said Newal. He further said that, the entrepreneurs are not unique to India but can be found in any developing country like Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria and the Philippines.

Techstars founders connect with other entrepreneurs, experts, mentors, alumni, investors, community leaders, and corporations to grow their companies.

The Colorado-based network operates three divisions: Techstars Startup Programmes, Techstars Mentorship-Driven Accelerator Programmes, and Techstars Corporate Innovation Partnerships.

Some of the Techstars alumni startups include ClassPass, Digital Ocean, Localytics, SendGrid, Contently, Occipital, Next Big Sound, Kapost, and Synack, among others.

In India, Noida-based e-commerce marketing software startup Betaout is part of Techstars 2015 summer batch.

Earlier, in August of last year, it was said that Techstars would launch its new startup programmes by entering into a joint venture (JV) with Bengaluru-based ANSR that provides enterprises to build and manage in-house or external accelerators and other such startups-focused infrastructure. ANSR also has an innovation arm called Kyron.

In last couple of years, more and more startup accelerators are coming up in Bengaluru including Fortune 500 companies. Last June, NetApp, a storage and data management firm launched its accelerator in Bengaluru followed by an another accelerator program by global advisory firm Zinnov, a month later. Prior to which, Mediaguru, a global media services company, has also launched startup accelerator program, in March 2017.

Via - First Post

[Top Image - Autoblog]
Advertisements

Post a Comment

Previous Post Next Post
Like this content? Sign up for our daily newsletter to get latest updates.