Nasscom Selects 22 Startups for 2nd Cohort of its DeepTech Club Program

Nasscom Product Council (NPC), a Nasscom's platform for product-based companies, has announced its second batch of the Nasscom DeepTech Club, which is its flagship program for startups in deep technologies.

The DeepTech club involves start-ups working on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), AR/VR, Robotics, NLP and similar technologies.

Launched in October 2017, Nasscom DeepTech is a 3-month mentor-mentee program where the latter typically is a founder who is passionate about working with cutting edge technology, one who is comfortable reading and applying in journal papers in their chosen area, creates new IP and is keen on adopting latest technologies – AI, ML, Robotics, Algorithms, Drone, AR/VR, Speech/Image, Cyptography etc.

The program provides a platform to foster engagements, enterprise, investor & global connects, global expansion and in process, get a lot of visibility to choose customers & markets.

The startups selected were judged on the combination of the several criteria including -- Technical Depth, Business value, Unique/Idea innovation and adoption of solution.

The startups selected will be recognized, nurtured and promoted by NASSCOM via various programs, platforms and events. The Club has three segments: Lab to Market, Pre-Revenue & Post-Revenue.

The 22 Deep Tech startups selected are --

1. Imaginate Software Labs Pvt Ltd




2. Constems AI Systems Private Limited




3. Artivatic Data Labs private Limited




4. DheeYantra Research Labs




5. Bitonic Technology Labs Private Limited




6. SwitchOn/ Abee research labs




7. Invento robotics




8. Uber Techlabs Pvt Ltd




9. QuNu Labs Private Limited




10. Active Intelligence Pte Ltd




11. CLAP Research




12. CogniCor Technologies




13. Coeo Labs




14. Scapic




15. Horus Intellisys Pvt. Ltd.




16. Clootrack Software Labs Private Limited




17. Wobot Intelligence Private Limited




18. Matisoft Cyber Security Labs




19. Tesseract




20. TRANSERVE TECHNOLOGIES PVT LTD




21. Infrrd




22. FORMCEPT

The first cohort of the DeepTech Club program had 20+ companies who were mentored and supported by industry leaders. Three of the 1st cohort startups got funded and 3 were accepted by Mass Challenge in Israel. Most importantly, almost all participants saw their value proposition, go-to-market and growth rate improve.

Besides Nasscom DeepTech Club program, to catapult India's deep tech startup ecosystem onto the next level, Nasscom recently has also launched Accelerate 10X, a second phase of Nasscom's 10,000 Startups initiative, which was launched 5 years ago. With Accelerate 10X program Nasscom aims to mentor 100 mature stage startups every year.

Nasscom Product Council, Accenture Plans To Collaborate With Israel Innovation Authority

Relation between India and Israel is at its peak after PM Narendra Modi’s visit to the nation known as the ‘hub of technology startups’. In the same line, to help startups to grow and nurture, the Nasscom Product Council and Accenture, an IT consulting major plans to collaborate with Israel Innovation Authority. This step is taken to help both the countries startups in joint product development, knowledge transfer and in the creation of hardware ecosystem.

This move comes after the Prime minister Narendra Modi visited Israel in July 2017. During his visit to the country, Prime Minister had promised collaboration in technology, defence, and security along with bilateral cooperation in entrepreneurship and cyber security.

According to ET report, the Nasscom Product Council's co chair Somdutta Singh and Avnish Sabharwal, MD, Accenture Ventures and Open Innovation, Accenture India plan to take the delegation of product council leaders, startups to Israel in the first week of September.

Commenting on the development, Somdutta Singh said, "We are working with startups in Israel and the collaboration between the two countries will benefit the world at large with new hardware innovation. This will also overcome the cultural challenges in workspaces in both the countries."

As per the Avnish Sabharwal, the collaboration will happen around artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), blockchain, cybersecurity and in the areas of healthcare, pharmacy, agriculture among other industries.

"Every year, around 40 delegations go to Silicon Valley from India. We want the kind of traffic between Israel and India. We shall figure out MoUs with Israel Innovation Authority and other bodies there," said Sabharwal.

Sabharwal believes that with this collaboration they would be able to make the Israel-India corridor as strong as the Silicon Valley-India corridor and bring Israel based accelerators to India. Further Singh highlighted that for India to go ahead and change its image from an IT services nation, it’s important to frame policies better which will encourage the current product startup space.

Further, Singh highlighted that for India to go ahead and change its image from an IT services nation, it’s important to frame policies better which will encourage the current product startup space.

This is not the first time when such initiative is taken. Earlier in July 2017, Idein Ventures, a global private equity firm with its India offices in Hyderabad and Mumbai, had expanded to Israel.

In the same month, India’s Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) announced that they are going to invest a whopping $ 25 million in Israel-based technology incubator, Jerusalem Innovation Incubator (JII).