Google Picks Gurgaon-based Health EdTech Firm Virohan for its Latest Cohort

Gurgaon based healthcare vocational institute Virohan Pvt. Ltd. becomes one of the 20 shortlisted startups by Google for its Accelerator Programme 2020. As part of the cohort, Virohan will receive three months mentorship and support from Google’s network of internal and external mentors.

Virohan is a Gurgaon based leading healthcare vocational institute, known to provide skill enhancement training for healthcare practitioners. A training partner of NSDC and a Yunus Social business Investee company, Virohan works with GE Healthcare and the Indian Medical Association (IMA) among others across India to provide youth with a career in the healthcare sector and make available trained workforce to the industry. Known as an edtech company focusing on training for jobs in the healthcare sector, like operating theater technicians, medical lab technicians etc, Virohan has trained over 4,000 students and has a placement rate of >85%.

Virohan is the only health education technology startup to be selected by Google amongst the 20 startups shortlisted for Accelerator program. One of the most differentiated offerings that differentiate Virohan from others is that it uses its standardized training model to rapidly train and connect its users with these fast-growing jobs in the healthcare industry. The courses offered emphasize on development of core technical skills, language abilities, and life skills in the student through gamified blended learning delivered by its facilitators in classrooms or purely online. The startup uses machine learning to predict demand for jobs across geographies and offers training programs for those jobs through its suite of mobile apps. Other startups included for Google’s four batch of accelerator program are antwak, BharatAgri, BlackLight, Games, Dcoder, Factors.in, Foxy.in, Gram Power, Inner Hour, Leher, Lokal, Math Buddy, Mera Cashier, Mosaic Wellness, MyHQ, Navia Life Care, Orowealth, Virohan, Wellthy Therapeutics, Womaniya and ZeoAuto.

Commenting on the selection, Kunal Dudeja, CEO and Co-Founder of Virohan said, “We are delighted to be selected at the prestigious Accelerator Program by Google. With the help of Google’s resources at hand, we will continue to evolve and create better skilling and employment solutions to the aspirants in healthcare ecosystem."

Google has been running its Google for Startups Accelerator programme for past 5 years in India. Virohan will be getting support for 3 months from Google ranging from access to Google teams, tech guidance on projects, machine learning related support, UX and design mentorship, leadership workshops, networking opportunities at industry engagements, PR support and more.

The company has also recently closed $2.8mn across seed and series A funding rounds. As part of the total fund raise, the seed round was led by Keiretsu Forum & Better Capital and series A round was led by the elea Foundation for Ethics in Globalization and by the Singh Family Trusts, advised by Artha Impact with participation from founders and National Skill Development Corporation.

About Virohan

Virohan is a health tech company that bridges the gap between industry demand and the skills of the workforce by using its ‘technology skill stack’ through which it predicts job demand for each job role across India, builds out the curriculum needed and delivers standardized training through blended offline and online learning.

10 Startup News That Made Buzz In The Week Gone By [10 - 15 July]

Missed the happening of startup world? Here is the recap for you. Mentioned below are the 10 news which made buzz during in the week gone by.

Bengaluru Based Gaming Startup IONA Entertainment Bags Investment From Chris Gayle

West Indies cricketer, Chris Gayle has invested an undisclosed amount in IONA Entertainment, a Bengaluru-based gaming startup. founded in 2016 by TS Subramanian and Preetha, IONA is a one-stop entertainment to Indian sports fans, which includes state-of-the-art virtual gaming. The startup had earlier raised an initial round of funding from Singapore-based Vestasia. For Gayle, India is his top priority in terms of investment destinations and wanted to invest as many businesses as possible.

Google Launches New Startup Programmes; Selects 11 Women Led Startups For Launchpad’s Build

The tech giant. Google has recently announced the expansion of its startup accelerator project Launchpad, bringing three other programmes under its umbrella — Start, Build and Scale. Under this initiative, Google India recently hosted a Developers’ Launchpad Build event in Bengaluru where they shortlisted and provided guidance to 11 women-led startups in Bengaluru. According to the Google Launchpad’s Event website, with this edition of Launchpad, they want to support women entrepreneurs from startups across various stages.

Delhi-based Startup Builds A Touch Screen Mirror With Wi-Fi Connectivity

Delhi-based startup Help Me Build Technologies Pvt Ltd. has developed an innovative touch screen smart mirror called  ‘Nuovo, that can do anything and everything with Wi-Fi connectivity and android phone. Nuovo ‘Smart Mirror’ can keep you updated with notifications from social sites like Facebook and Twitter. You can get the latest news from the leading publications, can also access YouTube videos, and even book cab through Uber. With the help of this, the user can control which app to be displayed on the mirror for easy access.

Finally, It's Official, PayTM Acquires OML’s Insider.in

The digital payment startup PayTM has acquired a majority stake in Insider.in, a ticketing platform. According to the sources, this deal is done for about 35 crores. Shreyas Srinivasan, Insider.in founder will continue running the business, while Only Much Louder (OML) founders and brothers Vijay and Ajay Nair will remain stakeholders and members of the advisory board. This acquisition will enable hundreds of millions of PayTM customers to discover a wide selection of events and book instantly.

Earlier owned by OML, Insider.in is one of the leading ticketing platforms in India for events and properties including for events and properties, including NH7 Weekender, EDC and The Grub Fest.

StartUp India Report: After 18 Months Only 39 Startups Qualified for Tax Benefit

According to a report by The Hindu, till March 2017, only around 10 Indian startups have been able to pass the eligibility for tax benefits. This takes the total number of startups actually benefitting from the programme to 39 since its launch 18 months ago in January  2016. In recently, concluded the budget session, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had announced alteration in the government’s policy on tax concessions for startups and said that only the firms incorporated on or after April 1, 2016, could now avail a three-year tax holiday in the first seven years of their existence.

According to experts, only a few startups have been able to pass the tax benefit eligibility criteria because not many corporate entities have been incorporated on or after that stringing cut-off date that the government has decided upon.

Google Acquires Indian Startup Halli Labs

Google’s growing interest in Indian startup ecosystem can be witnessed by this. Recently, tech giant acquired Halli Labs, an Indian startup working on solutions based on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Based out of Bengaluru, Startup has been founded just four-months back by former Stayzilla employees. Over the past one year, Google has announced several services to better serve the untapped Indian market. The startup announced the news by a post on Medium, and Caesar Sengupta, a product management VP at Google, also confirmed the acquisition with a Tweet.

Early Stage Startup Funding Shrinks Sharply In 2017

This news comes as a major concern for Indian Startup ecosystem. According to the reports, the base of the startup funding pyramid is shrinking and this could severely impact the growth of startup ecosystem in India. According to the figures stated by Tracxn the number of angel and seed investments made in the first half of 2017 (January to June) is down to 260, indicating a drastic drop from 419 in the first half of 2016. Whereas, Seed funding has seen a steep decline from 278 to 152. The report further states, the total funding in 2017 at $5.1 billion is more than double that in 2016, at $2 billion and ecosystem get this number because of the two big funding rounds of $1.4 billion each in Flipkart and Paytm.

Startup Tools Launched By Microsoft

Microsoft recently unveiled three new tools that would help small businesses and startups to grow at a rapid pace. The three new tools: Microsoft Connections, Microsoft Listings and Microsoft Invoicing will be a great addition to the company’s existing rack of tools like the Outlook Customer Manager and Microsoft Bookings. The main idea behind launching the three tools is to make Microsoft users more involved in its Office 365 ecosystem. In order to make it available to people, the company has decided to make the tools available free of cost through Microsoft’s Office 365 First Release program.

Acquisition Talk: Snapdeal’s Logistic Arm Vulcan To Be Acquired By Gati, TVS

The logistics arm of online marketplace Snapdeal, Vulcan Express in talks with express distribution and supply-chain companies, Gati, Peepul Capital and TVS Logistics for its acquisition. The companies have shown their interest to acquire Vulcan Express. From this acquisition, Snapdeal is expecting Vulcan Express to fetch Rs 90-120 crore, which could take place over the next 60 days.

Sachin Tendulkar Backed Smarton To Acquire New IoT Startups

Smartron is planning to spend Rs 300 crore for acquiring new companies to complete IoT play in India. According to the company’s top executive, Smartron will spend money towards acquisition of new firms in the area of healthcare, smart homes, energy and infrastructure. The startup is taking this step to broaden its IoT product portfolio in India. Founded in 2004 by Mahesh Lingareddy, the company further plans to invest Rs 1,500 crore over the next three years towards setting up R&D, engineering, manufacturing and data centre facilities.

The company had earlier acquired Volta Motors, a Chennai-based automotive player that manufactures electric vehicles.

Other Important News

Apart from these startups news, there were other important headlines which grabbed the eyeballs of the readers. The parent company of Google and several former Google subsidiaries, Alphabet has officially launched a new firm, Gradient Ventures within Google that will invest in early-stage AI startups.

Recently, iKeva had launched 2 new centres – 175 seats secured co-working space in Sector 44, Gurugram’s Premium location and another 165 seaters in Mumbai.

Apart from these two, another news which made the buzz was iVOOMi, Chinese electronic major announcing its strategic alliance with the e-commerce giant Flipkart, to capitalize on latter’s Market Intelligence support, in order to extensively penetrate into Tier – 2,3 & 4 cities in India.

Meet 11 Upcoming #WomenInTech and Their Startups Selected In Google Launchpad's Build Programme

Who says startup ecosystem is dominated by the men only? With the world going digital and advancing at a rapid pace, today more and more women are stepping out of their homes and taking the plunge to pursue their dreams and ambitions. Today’s women are balancing their career and entrepreneurial aspirations with home. These business women have become the inspiration for a lot of other females who hesitate in taking a step forward.

And this can be proved by recently concluded Google India event where they shortlisted and provided guidance to 11 women-led startups in Bengaluru. The tech giant has recently announced the expansion of its startup accelerator project Launchpad, bringing three other programmes under its umbrella -- Start, Build and Scale. Under this initiative, Google’s Launchpad Accelerator programme, Google India recently hosted a Developers’ Launchpad Build event in Bengaluru.

According to the Google Launchpad's Event website, with this edition of Launchpad, they want to support women entrepreneurs from startups across various stages. “The program is brought to you in collaboration with Google's Women Techmakers initiative and Google's Women@ program and includes some great Leadership workshops driven by Google as well,” said webpost.

We at IndianWeb2 brings to our reader 11 woman-led startups that were part of Build and received training from Google and industry experts.

CampusTime

Founded by: Amruta Desai
Founded In: November 2015
Location: Bengaluru

Amruta Desai’s entrepreneurial journey began when she was 18, as a co-founder of Globals, an IT multinational company. Under her leadership, Globals was able to build a strong partner network in Europe, India and the Middle East. Desai strongly believes that Edtech products can create immense value for both teachers and students. She founded CampusTime in 2015. It a mobile internet startup that enhances student engagement at colleges by helping students connect and network on their Campus. They bring the entire campus ecosystem on board. With the help of the platform, students, alumni, faculty and the administration can share information, connect, collaborate, conduct polls, placements and much more.

PregBuddy

Co-founded by: Sarika Sivareena
Founded In: October 2016
Location: Bengaluru

IIT Kharagpur alumni, Sarika Sivareena co-founded PregBuddy along with Subhadeep Mondal. It a comprehensive health and wellness platform for women which provides personalized care during the years of pre-conceiving to their early years of motherhood. They are completely a bootstrapped startup for the past 9 months with a team of 3. Prior joining the team of PregBuddy, Sivareena used to work with Furlenco and PepsiCo. She also founded PR-Cell IIT KGP in July 2012.

evibe.in

Founded by: Swathi Bavanaka
Founded In: February 2014
Location: Bengaluru

Swathi Bavanaka is an emerging entrepreneur. Bavanaka co-founded Evibe, an online platform for hassle free party planning because she faced a problem with finding right vendors during her own wedding. Prior to Evibe, Swathi did her masters in the US and returned back to India with her passion for working for a startup. At Evibe, she takes care of strategies, customers and vendor engagement. She aspires to touch millions of lives with her skill and expertise in the coming years.

Omnify

Founded By: Kabandi Saikia
Co-founded In: 2016
Location: Mountain View, California

Kabandi Saikia works to grow Omnify’s customer base and improve its experience. She juggles between operations, marketing, analytics and content. Human Resource Management graduate from Manchester Business School, England and Delhi University alumnus. Omnify is a Global SaaS platform for the small services business. Since the launch in 2016, their strategy has centred around building a platform to help businesses manage their scheduling, selling omnichannel and better engagement with their customers.

LetsEndorse

Co-founded by: Monika Shukla
Founded In: 2015
Location: Bengaluru

IIT Kharagpur alumni, Monika Shukla co-founded LetsEndorse that builds holistic ecosystems around the UN Global Goals, brings together social changemakers and enablers to harness knowledge about powerful innovations, build collaboration for sustainable solutions and mobilise funds and resources through a mix of crowdfunding and corporate-giving.

It is a digital market-network (a social network cum marketplace) dedicated to the social development, comprising of non-profits, social entrepreneurs, companies, communities and local administration. The startup is backed by Social Alpha (a Tata Trusts Initiative) and incubated as part of NASSCOM 10k Startups, Bangalore.

Fundamentor

Founded by: Bhargavi A.R.
Founded In: 2014
Location: Bengaluru

Bhargavi founded Fundamentor, an innovative product that improves logical reasoning, Maths, English and creative thinking aptitude in children aged 8 to 15. It uses methods which children enjoy ensuring effective cognitive aptitude development. The startup has been developed by professionals who have worked globally in senior positions in Fortune 500 companies. Their team consists of alumni from top engineering and business schools in India and

Talking Street

Founded by: Maheima Kapur
Founded In: 2014
Location: Bengaluru

Maheima Kapur founded Talking Street and the key contributor for Bangalore. Maheima is a Physics graduate from Sri Satya Sai University and an MBA from IIM Bangalore. She has 9+years of work experience in marketing and related disciplines across organizations such as Unilever, Tata Global Beverages and Britannia. Talking Street helps travellers and foodies experience and discover the most popular eateries that are frequented by local foodies.

Clinikk Healthcare‏

Founded by: Bhavjot Kaur
Founded In: 2016
Location: Bengaluru

Having a background of a business family, Bhavjot Kaur first tryst with entrepreneurship was at the age of 19 years, when she had started a firm called Y.United Publications which came up with North-East’s first tabloid magazine. Currently Kaur is building Clinikk Healthcare which aims at revolutionizing the way healthcare is delivered. She is responsible for business development and operations to deliver seamless and prudent medical experience to families. Clinikk is the “one-phone-call-away” health companion of an entire family. The startup provides a healthcare experience like never before – centralized, convenient, trustworthy and of top notch quality which is ensured by an internal medical monitoring platform.

Plexus MD

Co-founded by: Binal Doshi
Founded In: 2014
Location: Bengaluru

PlexusMD is an online professional network exclusively for medical professionals and healthcare organisations.With over 75,000 doctors across 25 states and over 300 hospitals across 120 cities, they claims to be India's fastest growing online community of healthcare professionals. PlexusMD helps doctors to create their professional identity in the web, stay updated on the latest news and developments in their specialty, find and connect with other medical professionals and apply to the best jobs, fellowships and courses from leading institutions.

Guvi Geek Network

Co-founded by: Sridevi
Founded In: 2014
Location: Chennai

GUVI is an IITM's RTBI incubated company focus on sharing technical learnings in vernacular languages. They are a group of software industry experts who share the common passion of sharing our knowledge. Guvi’s journey started off in 2010 as a Youtube Channel with 400+ technical videos in vernacular languages. On gaining more than 1 million views and 5000+ subscribers, GUVI incorporated as a Startup, incubated in IIT Madras in 2014. Guvi seeks to help its users acquire new skills in a language that they are comfortable in.

Mishipay

Co-founded by: Tanvi Bhardwaj
Founded In: 2015
Location: Bengaluru

Tanvi Bhardwaj passionate about analytical reasoning and logic in general. She enjoys finding problems and designing and building systems to solve them, whatever they are. She co-founded Mishipay, a new retail payments startup in 2015. They have invented a new technology which allows shoppers to pick up a product they wish to buy, scan the barcode with their phone, pay within the phone and simply walk out. Completely eliminating queuing from the point of sale. By using RFID and cloud computing we also ensure security against theft and seamless integration.

This is not the first time when an initiative is taking to encourage entrepreneur. Earlier in January 2017, it was reported that the central government is considering to launch an exclusive scheme for Indian women entrepreneurs. These kinds of encouragement help women to dream and aspire to become what they desire. 

Google Launches New Startup Programmes

Starting a business is easy, but taking it to another level of success and productivity is something a majority of entrepreneurs struggle with on a daily basis. Tech giant Google being a big weight in the world of business understands the struggle and turbulence that comes along the journey, and has offered to help startups grow through this period.

Google has recently announced the expansion of its startup accelerator project Launchpad. The tech biggie is bringing three another programmes under its umbrella- Start, Build and Scale. The new additions will help the giant in mentoring the startups on specific requirements for their respective growth stages.

Under the newly launched five-day Start programme, the startups, which will be mostly in the ideation stage, will be mentored in basics of user experience and design, marketing and pitching. In the two-day Build programme, Google will help startups that are seeking validation of their technology stack. When it comes to the Scale programme, the tech giant will be looking to address the design challenges of fully developed products.

For these newly launched shorter programmes, the acceptance level is 20 per cent of the total applications. According to a statement given by Paul Ravindranath, lead for Google Launchpad accelerator programme and head of developer relations to the Times of India, "We increasingly see that while the total number of applications has dropped, those who apply are serious startups that have achieved a minimum scale. The entrepreneurs are self-selecting the programmes that are more valuable for them and are more articulate on what exactly they want to achieve from our programmes."

Google's Launchpad Accelerator is a programme that empowers founders by supporting their startups through mentorship and equity-free support. The Accelerator leverages all that Google has to offer, to help participating tech startups reach their true potential. The six-month long accelerator programme selects six startups for every class. Till now, a total of 26 startups have been selected from more than 200 applications.

The program is currently operating in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico), Asia (India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam), Africa (Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa), and Europe (Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland) but there are plans to expand to other countries as well.

Meet 6 Shortlisted Indian Startups For Google's Launchpad Accelerator Programme

Google has shortlisted six Indian startups for the fourth class of its Launchpad Accelerator Programme. The class 4 will kick off on July 17 at the Google Developers Launchpad Space in San Francisco and will include 2 weeks of all-expense-paid training. With this batch, a total of 26 Indian startups has so far joined the accelerator programme from India.

“This time around, startups from Asia and Latin America will be joined by peers from Africa and Europe. In addition to expanding our reach, we’re also expanding our curriculum. We’ll help the startups dig deeper into machine learning and AI, to help them leverage Google’s latest technologies to scale their apps,” said Roy Glasberg, Global Lead, Launchpad Program & Accelerator in a blog post.

Six-month accelerator programme will allow participants to receive equity-free support, credits for Google products, and continue to work closely with Google back in their home country. Further, shortlisted startups will undergo intensive mentoring from more than 20 Google teams, and expert mentors from top technology companies and VCs in Silicon Valley.

As per the Google, the current batch will be introduced to the new curriculum that will help the startups to dig deeper into machine learning and artificial intelligence. It will further help them to leverage Google's latest technologies to scale their apps.

Here are the six shortlisted startups from India:

EdGE Networks: Founded in 2012, the startup is HR solutions provider powered by Artificial Intelligence.

FastFilmz: An app for fans of South Indian movies.

IndiaLends: Credit underwriting and analytics platform for unsecured consumer lending.

RailYatri: Intelligent, big data platform that leverages crowd-sourced content to help long distance travellers.

RecipeBook: Intelligent solutions in food and retail powered by deep learning computer vision.

SigTuple: Powered by data-driven intelligence, the startup is smart screening solutions.

Curofy to Join Third Google Launchpad Accelerator Programme

Curofy, a verified doctor-networking platform has been shortlisted to participate in the third batch of Google Launchpad Accelerator programme to be held at Google Headquarters in California, USA.

The equity-free programme will begin on January 30, 2017.During each class, over 20 Google teams will provide comprehensive mentoring to late-stage app startups. The three-month programme starts with an all-expenses-paid two-week boot camp at Google headquarters.

The two-week boot camp will start with determining challenges the startups face, providing mentorship and solutions along with Google resources that enable their products/apps to scale.

Apart from Curofy, the six other startups shortlisted from India includes Flyrobe, HashLearn, Rentmojo, KaptureCRM, Happy Adda Studios and Playment.  24 other startups will also join the programme from Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

Commenting on this opportunity, Pawan Gupta, co-founder, Curofy said, "Google Accelerator provides a great opportunity for Indian startups to be mentored in best product and engineering practices followed in Silicon Valley. The learning and exposure from the accelerator will prepare Curofy's product for its growth beyond India".

Launchpad Accelerator is Google’s premier program for startups developing technical products on Google platforms. The heart of the program is technical training and strategic mentorship, helping developers succeed.

For detailed list of the selected startups Click Here