Saudi Space Commission announces launch of Saudi Space Accelerator Program

Business Wire India

Saudi Space Commission announces the launch of its Saudi Space Accelerator Program in line with the Kingdom's vision of becoming a global hub of innovation by 2030. The program seeks to enhance the national Space sector through the development of its infrastructure and enabling local entrepreneurs and businesses to advance innovative Space solutions.

The Program addresses the current state in the Kingdom's Space sector and proposes proactive Space solutions. Through the implementation of this program, the commission will ignite the local ecosystem and determine its maturity level, and to ensure that the sector remains viable for years to come, by providing an established business environment for growth and innovation for entrepreneurs to thrive in – overall improving the effectiveness of the commission's future programs and initiatives over the long-run.

The Saudi Space Accelerator Program is being supported by a greater initiative; The future Office for Entrepreneurship Development, that seeks to establish a new business unit within the commission dedicated to enabling the entrepreneurial space scene in the Kingdom. It aims to assess the current state of the sector, adopt best global practices, and develop a roadmap for local businesses. As for the Saudi Space Accelerator Program, it focuses on providing support to both local and international startups, which will enhance the promising and emerging space sector in the Kingdom. Participating entrepreneurs and startups will be supported in aligning their projects with internationally recognized best practices to achieve the Kingdom's 2030 goals.

By partnering with Techstars, the Saudi Space Commission is launching its first cohort in January 2023 to kickstart this new momentum. Through this first cohort the commission can access a niche market focused on space-related technologies, including drones, avionics, advanced structures, geospatial analytics, and a host of other technologies that contribute to the space industry development.

Aspiring entrepreneurs, both international and local, who are interested in developing their innovative solutions in the space sector are encouraged to apply for the first cohort of the Saudi Space Accelerator Program before the 12th of December. Qualified startups who meet the criteria will receive numerous benefits, including support from the commission, access to investors, financial support of up to 60,000 SAR for each startup, specialized training from international experts, networking opportunities, and one-on-one mentorship.

Apply here now: https://accelerator.saudispace.gov.sa/

*Source: AETOSWire  
 View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221205005419/en/

TechStars backed Saas Startup UnRemot Raises $700K in a Seed Round Led by Inflection Point Ventures

• Inflection Point Ventures leads the round, participated by DFAN and ah! Ventures.
• IPV announces unremot as its 46th deal for 2021; On track to invest Rs 155 crore across 60+ startups by the year end.
• IPV has invested in 104 deals so far, with Rs. 316 crore investments done till date.
• unremot is backed by Techstars Toronto accelerator and is part of the ongoing cohort

Techstars backed SaaS startup unremot that offers a community-driven business-in-a-box solution for consultants, has raised $700K in a seed round led by Inflection Point Ventures and participated by Digital Futurists Angels Network (DFAN), ah! Ventures and Point One Capital.

Since 18 months of the launch in Feb 2020, unremot has 14,000+ monthly active users, 40,000+ monthly visitors, 80% organic users and users from 52+ countries, with 70% from the US, Canada, UK, Australia & Germany.

Vinay Bansal, Founder & CEO, Inflection Point Ventures says, "unremot steps in at a time when discovering professionals on a seamless platform had become extremely important. We have organisations working on finding professionals from different domains but corporates. This platform has bridged the gap and helped Consultants create a community-like structure, increasing their discoverability factor. The fact that unremot is addressing the entire spectrum of remote working on an advanced level and keeping the entire experience efficient prompted us to back the company."

The independent consultants struggle to manage their client meeting requests, scheduling, and payments, surviving the broken experiences through multiple products. This problem is solved by unremot, which is a business-in-a-box solution that provides a personal office to consultants that allows their clients to discover, request, schedule, pay and conduct meetings in a jiffy - all in one place. It combines online discovery, calendar, payments, and video conferencing into one screen and leverages a discovery-driven community interface.

Shiju Radhakrishnan, CEO, unremot

Shiju Radhakrishnan, Founder & CEO, unremot says, “Our driving force for being entrepreneurs is to build products and watch users love it. The journey from our previous startup iTraveller to the current one, unremot is a testament to this pursuit. With unremot, we believe that the success of future businesses will depend on how best one could leverage the power of small communities at scale. unremot aspires to become a go-to place for consultants who want to build their client communities and we target to bring together 25 million users on unremot in the next 5 years.”

Commenting on the fund raise, Hemlata Varlani, CMO - DFAN shared, “DFAN is an angel network backed by a global community of 1500+ technology & business leaders. The start-ups we invest in are carefully chosen with due diligence and with our whole community actively contributing to their success. unremot’s solution brings its users on a community-based interface, enabling mutual discovery and engagement. They are solving a real problem with their ‘all-in-one tool’ designed for independent consultants to set up their own personalised online remote workspace. To capitalise the global gig economy, currently estimated to be $350 Bn and slated to grow to $455 Bn (2023), we are looking forward to unremot’s product being aggressively marketed along their robust GTM plan which includes organic search, community initiatives and affiliates."

unremot is a 25 member fully remote team, led by Shiju Radhakrishnan, Nisanth Kumar, Binse Abraham, Avanti Shukla and Thahir Backer. The team has previously worked together in the past, before being acquired and taking their exits.

unremot aims to reach 1 Mn users by the end of 2022, 5 Mn by 2023 and 25 Mn by 2025. To fuel this growth, the company is targeting to raise a larger $2 Mn round at the end of the Techstars program.

Shiju Radhakrishnan and Nisanth Kumar started their entrepreneurial journey in 2012 when they founded iTraveller - an online travel planning application that enabled customers to customise and book their holidays. In 2018, iTraveller’s story took an interesting turn when it got noticed by lastminute.com - the European OTA giant was looking to enter the Indian market and decided to acquire iTraveller.com. Once bit by the entrepreneur bug, there is no going back. By early 2020, Shiju & Nisanth once again found themselves consumed by an idea that needed innovation. This later evolved into unremot.

About unremot

unremot is a business-in-a-box solution built for consultants helping them leverage the power of community. unremot works like a publicly accessible meeting room for consultants who are constantly in meetings. On unremot one can discover, schedule, make payments, conduct meetings, and manage communities - all of it in one place!

Space Tech Startup Pixxel Raises $7.3 Mn in Seed Funding from Omnivore, Techstars and Others

Pixxel Team with ISRO Chairman, Dr. Sivan [Image - Twitter/Pixxel]

Bengaluru-based space technology startup Pixxel has closes US $7.3 million seed round with new capital from Omnivore and Tech stars joining alongside previous investors Lightspeed Ventures, Blume Ventures, grow X, Ryan Johnson and others.

The startup has recently signed an MoU  with ISRO's commercial arm, NSIL, to launch the its first remote-sensing satellite and India's first private remote-sensing satellite on an ISRO PSLV rocket in early 2021.

This additional funding will enable Pixxel to continue to rapidly scale its operations to meet the growing demand of high-quality remote sensing data through hyper spectral imaging, the Bengaluru-based private earth imaging company said in a statement.

Pixxel CEO Awais Ahmed, said, “Our new funding enables us to build a health monitor for the planet through the world’s most advanced hyper spectral small-satellites. This enables us to capture some of the richest imagery that’s ever been beamed down to earth.” Compared to the common multi spectral satellites prevalent today, Pixxel’s hyper spectral earth-imaging satellites will beam down 50x more information by capturing light reflected from earth in far more detail and in much narrower bands than just red, green and blue, the company said.

Techstars Announces Maëlle Gavet as New CEO

Today, Techstars, the worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed, announced that the company’s Board of Directors has appointed Maëlle Gavet as Chief Executive Officer effective January 11, 2021. Outgoing CEO and co-founder David Brown will continue to serve on the board. Techstars also announced David Cohen, co-founder, will assume the new role of Chairman of the Board of Directors. 

“Our mission is to support entrepreneurs everywhere because we believe they hold the solutions to the world’s greatest challenges,” said Cohen. “It’s our job to continue supporting them with mentorship and access to capital as they scale, and even more so as we do. Techstars’ success is attracting more and more interest from founders and investors, and we’re on a strong growth trajectory. We decided to bring in Maëlle Gavet, an experienced operator who has overseen growth of more than 10x our scale, to lead us through this next phase of our journey." 

As one of the highest velocity seed investors in the world, Techstars has invested in more than 2,300 companies. The company’s portfolio of thousands of companies is worth more than $185B today. 

“Entrepreneurs change the world and at this moment in time in particular, we need them more than ever,” said Gavet. “Unfortunately, a lack of access to capital and effective networks is blocking so much potential. I’ve learned this first-hand, as an entrepreneur and as an investor. The success of the Techstars accelerator model and the velocity of its investing create so much potential to help even more entrepreneurs, explore new approaches to Venture Capitalism and help the tech industry become more human-centered and more diverse. I am honored and excited to join such a strong, mission-driven company that I know can transform the impact that tech has on the world, one entrepreneur at a time." 

Author of Trampled by Unicorns: Big Tech’s Empathy Problem and How to Fix It, Gavet has been a leading technology executive and entrepreneur for more than 15 years. She began her career as an entrepreneur and later became a Principal at the Boston Consulting Group and then went on to become CEO of OZON.ru, Russia’s largest e-commerce site (which recently went public on NASDAQ and is valued at over $9B), and Executive Vice President of Operations of the Priceline Group, the largest online hospitality and travel agency in the world which includes brands like OpenTable, Kayak, and Booking.com. Most recently Gavet was Chief Operating Officer at real estate platform Compass, valued at over $6B. 

Given Techstars’ decentralized geographical structure, Gavet will remain based in New York City. 

About Techstars 

The Techstars worldwide network helps entrepreneurs succeed. Founded in 2006, Techstars began with three simple ideas—entrepreneurs create a better future for everyone, collaboration drives innovation, and great ideas can come from anywhere. Now we are on a mission to enable every person on the planet to contribute to, and benefit from, the success of entrepreneurs. In addition to operating accelerator programs and venture capital funds, we do this by connecting startups, investors, corporations, and cities to help build thriving startup communities. Techstars has invested in more than 2,300 companies that today have a combined market cap valuation of more than $185B. www.techstars.com

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210112005293/en/

Techstars Launches the Sustainability Challenge

Techstars, the worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed, is now accepting entries for the Techstars Sustainability Challenge from anyone with ideas for how to reduce the significant toll global supply chains have on the environment. Winners will be showcased at the first Techstars Sustainability Summit in April, and at least one will have the opportunity to develop a proof-of-concept with a Techstars Sustainability Challenge Program Partner. 

Techstars Pathfinder members and Challenge Partners for this effort are: ABN AMRO, Cargill, Comcast NBCUNIVERSAL LIFT LABS, EG, Endeavor, Equinor, Princeton University through Princeton Innovation and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Semapa NEXT investment company, Stanley Black & Decker, The Heritage Group, The Nature Conservancy, Temasek and World Federation of United Nations Associations (WFUNA). 

The Techstars Sustainability Challenge is designed to accelerate efforts to develop new products, solutions and processes that will improve supply chain operations. Techstars and its Challenge Partners see collaborative efforts like this as critical to reducing the negative environmental impacts of supply chains and creating efficiencies that will drive long-term positive impacts for industries, markets and people around the world. 

“A massive challenge in sustainability today is improving operations of the global economy’s complex supply chains to be more efficient and environmentally friendly. It’s difficult for companies to get insights into their overall footprint and the operations of their suppliers, and ultimately alter behaviors and systems,” says Cody Simms, SVP of Investments and leader of Techstars’ global sustainability programs. “Through the Techstars Sustainability Challenge, we are putting out the call to entrepreneurs, tech startups, researchers, NGOs and corporate innovators to help us find and scale solutions to one of the world’s most urgent sustainability problems. We are looking for innovators who can help build a more sustainable supply chain through their work on the measurement and management of supply chain impacts.” 

Entry Categories 

Innovators will submit their entries to one of two specific areas: 

• Data & Automation: Solutions to help companies use automation, internal data collection, or more accurate inferences of external data sources to better measure, trace, and track the impact of their supply chain footprints.
• Materials & End-of-life Impact: Enable a manufacturer to reduce the impact of a product’s footprint through new materials innovations, either natural or synthetic. Solutions can range from limiting the extractive process for obtaining the raw materials, extending product lifespan, or mitigating the product’s end-of-life impact on the environment.

A panel of sustainability experts from Techstars along with Challenge Partners will judge all submissions on three criteria: problem-solution fit; scale of the solution’s potential impact; and the ability to implement a proof-of-concept with an enterprise organization.

 

Timeline

 

• November 16, 2020: Applications open
• March 8, 2021: Applications close
• March 25, 2021: Finalists notified
• April 1, 2021: Proof-of-Concept (POC) Working Session (virtual) - Finalists will deliver their pitches to judges, receive formal introductions to relevant corporate business units, and participate in matchmaking workshops with Founding Partners to brainstorm proof-of-concept and pilot concepts.
• April 15, 2021: Techstars Sustainability Summit Event (virtual) - Winners announced. At least one winner will have the opportunity to run a proof-of-concept with one of our Challenge Partners.

“The goal is actionable impact,” adds Simms. “The winners’ journey with Techstars won’t end in a competitive victory. We will partner them with mentors from our global participating partner network so they can immediately begin working on building out real-world solutions that will affect meaningful change.”

 

Building a Strong Network of Mentors and Investors

 

Techstars Pathfinder Membership matches corporate innovators with exactly the right startups who can turn innovative ideas into business opportunities and open new revenue streams. The ultimate goal is to speed corporate innovators to action. That can mean establishing partnerships, building proofs of concept, identifying and seizing investment opportunities, or acquiring teams, technologies and/or customers.

 

The Techstars Sustainability Challenge is the anchor project for bringing together a group of members in 2020 to drive real progress toward a more sustainable world.

 

Follow this link to enter the Techstars Sustainability Challenge. Click here to learn more about partnership opportunities.

 

About Techstars 

The Techstars worldwide network helps entrepreneurs succeed. Founded in 2006, Techstars began with three simple ideas — entrepreneurs create a better future for everyone, collaboration drives innovation, and great ideas can come from anywhere. Now we are on a mission to enable every person on the planet to contribute to, and benefit from, the success of entrepreneurs. In addition to operating accelerator programs and venture capital funds, we do this by connecting startups, investors, corporations, and cities to help build thriving startup communities. Techstars has invested in more than 2,200 companies that today have a combined market cap valuation of more than $30 Billion. www.techstars.com

Techstars to Partner with ABN AMRO to Support Startups Transforming Financial Services

New accelerator program will support startups that are transforming financial services in business and life

Techstars, the global platform for investment and innovation, and ABN AMRO have agreed to a three-year partnership to accelerate innovation through a Techstars accelerator program. The partners will focus on identifying and supporting innovative startups transforming financial services in business and life.

The collaboration will connect ABN AMRO with Techstars' unmatched global network and help the company accelerate digitization and innovation in delivering its strategy. Through the mentorship-driven accelerator program, the companies will recruit and support the most promising early stage companies in the financial industry.

"Financial services and technologies underpin so much of what we do in business, life and even socializing today," said Keith Camhi, senior vice president of accelerators, Techstars. "Partnering with an innovative and engaged company like ABN AMRO allows us to continue to tap the immense sector expertise we have and help entrepreneurs develop solutions that enhance lives and improve how businesses operate."

Selected startups will work closely with Techstars' program team and vast mentor network, and with ABN AMRO's corporate innovation team, subject matter experts, and network of clients.

"Working with the startup ecosystem is crucial for ABN AMRO's innovation journey," said Edwin van Bommel, chief innovation officer, ABN AMRO. "Our aim is to be at the forefront of innovation in relevant ecosystems, supporting startups to become leaders in their field and allowing us to build out our leading position in innovation. Partnering with a leading accelerator like Techstars allows us to find and connect with the best startups in the global ecosystem."

Timeline:

• September 14, 2020 – Applications Open


• January 2021 – 10 companies selected


• March, 2021 – Start ABN AMRO and Techstars Accelerator


• June, 2021 – Demo Day

About Techstars
Techstars is the global platform for investment and innovation. Founded in 2006, Techstars began with three simple ideas — entrepreneurs create the future, collaboration drives innovation, and great ideas can come from anywhere. Today our mission is to make innovation accessible to everyone, everywhere. We do this by connecting startups, investors, corporations, and cities to create a more sustainable and inclusive world. Since 2006, Techstars has invested in more than 2,200 companies and today has a market cap of $27 Billion. www.techstars.com

About ABN AMRO
ABN AMRO serves clients in the retail, private banking and corporate banking sectors. Our primary focus is on Northwest Europe. We offer clients in the Netherlands an extensive and comprehensive range of products and services across a variety of channels, including our Mobile Banking app and Internet Banking. ABN AMRO possesses a clear and bold purpose: banking for better, for generations to come. The bank's impact on society and on the economy is tremendous, and for our contribution to be both positive and enduring we need to make the right choices. Everything that we do derives from our purpose: now and in the future.

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1244449/Techstars_master_logo_color_Logo.jpg

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DocSumo Raises $220k seed funding from Better Capital, Techstars and Barclays

The start-up will use the fresh funds to build sales channels in USA and strengthen its product to unlock new use cases

DocSumo, document AI startup founded in 2019, raises seed funding from Better Capital, an early stage venture firm with fintech investments in notable companies like Rupeek, Open, Khatabook, YAP and others. Global accelerators TechStars and Barclays also participated in this round making the total raise for the company to $220K.  The start-up provides intelligent workflow automation for financial services companies to save back office costs by up to 70% through document data capture, analytics and fraud detection.

DocSumo, which is headquartered in Mumbai, was founded by Rushabh Sheth (CEO), ex-Managing Director of Rocket Internet in Asia and Bikram Dahl (CTO), who was leading business intelligence and data science for the same firm. The startup has its engineering team based out of Kathmandu, Nepal and head office in Mumbai. Seeing the head of finance at their previous firm spend days reconciling invoices with bank statements, Rushabh and Bikram leveraged their data science and software engineering expertise to build Docsumo.

The document AI market is valued at $1.5 billion globally and with recent advancements in computer vision, it is growing 70% annually. DocSumo’s core technology platform helps in the automation and analysis of financial data such as bank statements, pay stubs, tax data, and business financial documents. It helps companies and firms to convert unstructured documents into structured data. Using various analytics techniques and data science, Docsumo helps its clients reduce turnaround times and increase accuracy and efficiency of the underwriting process. 

Speaking about its core value proposition, Rushabh Sheth, founder and CEO, Docsumo said, “Even today, most financial services firms outsource their back-office operations in India where thousands of people do mundane tasks of entering data and verifying documents. Not only is it costly and takes a long time, but it is also error-prone. Using natural language processing, DocSumo automates the reading of documents to enable companies to make faster and accurate decisions. Our aim is to build a ground-breaking AI solution that can read documents the way humans do and make data trapped in those documents actionable.”

DocSumo will use this investment to strengthen its product, marketing and sales engine, and also foray into newer markets like the USA. Going forward, the company plans to build a suite of API products that will help lenders and insurers to automate their operations thereby providing better customer experience. 

“Documents are the starting point of thousands of workflows at small & large organizations across industries. DocSumo is building on the cutting edge advancements in computer vision and natural language processing to extract data and context inside documents to enable automation of document workflows like never before. At Better, we are excited to be part of DocSumo’s journey as it unlocks this large and growing Document AI opportunity”, said Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital. 

Other than saving time and money, Docsumo has a range of API products for reading ID cards, bank statements and tax returns. They are currently working with large lenders in India such as PaySense (acquired by PayU) to enable real-time customer onboarding and also with insurers in the USA to enable reading of policy documents.

Build Your Business in Just 54 Hours. GetMentored, GetFunded

RevStart, promoted by Ishan Singh and a leading co-working and incubation centre based out of Noida will be organizing Techstars Start-up Weekend Noida - a 54 hours Start-up weekend, from March 8 to 10, where participants will learn from mentors how to take an idea to a business and get funded.

TechStars Start-up Weekends are weekend-long, hands-on experiences where entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs can validate their start-up ideas and learn to turn them into a real business. On an average, half of Start-up Weekend’s attendees have technical or design backgrounds, the other half have business backgrounds. It’s a great opportunity for those looking for co-founders or to work in a start-up. At Revstart’s event, mentors have been curated to include subject matter experts, recently funded founders and experienced investors.

Happening on 8 – 10th March’19, the event kicks off at 5 pm on Friday with a Keynote by Mr. Sanjiv Bikchandani, one of the most successful entrepreneurs in India founder of Info Edge (the first Dot Com IPO) sharing his journey as an entrepreneur and a successful investor. This will be followed by open mic pitches, where attendees get one minute to introduce themselves, pitch their idea and name their ask. On Saturday teams will start working with mentors on their business plan, validating their ideas, practicing Lean Start-up Methodologies and building a minimal viable product. On Sunday there will be a Pitch Clinic to prepare for the final presentations. Participants will present the plan to marquee judges like Mr. Girish Shivani-Yournest, Ms. Padmaja Ruparel-IAN and Mr. Shailesh Vikram-Massive Fund, receiving valuable feedback, potential funding which can also include access to RevStart’s Incubation Programme.

Ishan Singh- Founder, Revstart Incubation Center says “I have been a part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem since 1998, built and exited from businesses in India and the US. Techstars have given us a globally recognised format to organize Start-up weekend Noida and I am grateful to my friends from the ecosystem like Mr. Ashish Kashyap- Ex-GoIbibo, Mr. Abhinav Mathur- Founder, Million Sparks Foundation, Ajay Rajgarhia- APM Fininvest, Anisha Singh- MyDala, Deep Bajaj- PeeBuddy / Sirona, Digvijay Singh- IAN, Pankaj Agrawal- Ex-CIO, CISO, Rahul Agarwala- Knimbus, Rahul Singh- The Beer Café,

Rohit Pateria- Placio, Rohan Mahajan- LawRato, Sanjiv Bajaj- Bajaj Capital, Saurabh Arora- University Living, Siddharth Vij- ShoeKonnect, Shikha Mehra- Mainchain, Vikas Kuthiala- Parriez, Vivek Agarwal-  CEO, Liqvid and Yogesh Bansal- Angel Investor, who are participating in this event as mentors. Thank you for the support form partners like Indian Angel Network, Miraaya Ventures, MyHQ, Startup Delhi and TiE New Delhi.

About  Techstars
Techstars is the worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed. Techstars founders connect with other entrepreneurs, experts, mentors, alumni, investors, community leaders, and corporations to grow their companies. Techstars operates three divisions: Techstars Start-up Programs, Techstars. Mentorship-Driven Accelerator Programs, and Techstars Corporate Innovation Partnerships. Techstars accelerator portfolio includes more than 1,400 companies with a market cap of $15.9 Billion.

About RevStart
RevStart, Co-work. Incubate. Accelerate, is an ecosystem to support entrepreneurs, Start-ups and small business by quality services like co-working, incubation and acceleration. It is a brand founded & promoted by Mr. Ishan Singh, a seasoned entrepreneur and investor. In his personal capacity, through our investment arm, Re Capital.

Mumbai-based CometChat Raises $120K, Selected for Techstars Boulder Accelerator Program

Mumbai-based CometChat, a CPaaS startup, announces its entry into Techstars Boulder core accelerator program. CometChat is the first Indian startup to be selected into 3 month long Techstars Boulder program.

As part of the program, Techstars will seed fund CometChat $1,20,000 and incubate the Company in its US location. Under the program, CometChat will have access to Techstars resources such as mentors, financial, legal and infra resources for life. This would include access to Techstars network of more than 10,000 entrepreneurs, 2,700 investors and 1200 alumni companies. At the end of 3-month program, selected companies in the program will be showcasing their progress and refined product to investors as part of demo day, which is likely to result in further growth stage funding and visibility.

Anuj Garg, Co-founder & CEO, CometChat, says, “This is a big milestone for us as we are the first Indian startup to be accepted into Techstars Boulder. We are very excited to leverage Techstars network and mentoring program; we will be able scale CometChat faster than expected. We will also be significantly expanding on our AI/ML & bots platform allowing our customers to include artificial intelligence in their communication layer with great ease”

Commenting on accepting CometChat into the Techstars Boulder program, Natty Zach, Managing Director, Techstars Boulder, says, “We are excited to work with CometChat in the next class of Techstars Boulder. This is the first company from India accepted into the boulder accelerator program. We hope the learnings about building great companies will flow in both directions.”

CometChat, which originally began as a licensed model nine years ago was launched as a pure play Subscription Service in 2018 by twin brothers Anuj Garg and Anant Garg, takes pride in the fact that they built the Company, generated revenues and expanded their team and portfolio, while being bootstrapped. The Company has also announced the launch of CometChat Pro, an SDK for expert developers, who are looking to build bespoke in app/web chat solutions in their final offering to the end user. The product is priced starting at $499/month. Also announcing the launch of CometChat Go, a ready to use plug and play solution for beginner developers and business owners looking to add a communication layer in their product

As the decision making power has gradually shifted from CIOs of companies to developers there is booming market of B2D (Business to Developer) startups emerging looking to empower developers and catch a pie of the growing developer mind space. Companies such as Stripe, Github, Auth0, PagerDuty & New Relic are stellar companies built solely on a developer focused product.

Anant Garg, Founder & CTO, CometChat, says, “We believe we are at the cusp of a big milestone in the journey of CometChat. While on one hand, Techstars program will help us enter the US market and establish corporate channels and expand our presence in a big way, on the other hand, rolling CometChat Pro, will ensure we are ready for highly evolved and quality obsessed customers, which are developers in this case. For us our mission is clear, if you need chat in your app, think CometChat”

CometChat, a B2D (business to developer) company, has plans to expand aggressively in the US and EU markets with their Developer-First marketing approach. To capture a share of the mind space of developers as well as for key talent acquisition they will be raising funds in 2019 – transitioning from their bootstrap roots to a growth focused enterprise.

CometChat, a global leader in Communication-Platform-as-a-Service (CPaas), provides thousands of customers with a communication platform for their websites, web apps, mobile apps and IoT. Its extensible platform seamlessly enables developers to add voice, video, text chat along with a host of other features like bots. Used by over 50,000 customers worldwide with billions of messages being exchanged per month, CometChat is loved by developers worldwide. CometChat has been founded by twin brothers Anant Garg and Anuj Garg. CometChat Go enables beginner developers and business owners to add a full fledged messaging and communication platform within their website and apps in seconds using a plug and play interface. CometChat Pro enables intermediate and expert developers to easily customize and scale their communication requirements using their SDK’s and APIs.

Techstars Funded Spoonshot (Dishq) Acquires Hyderabad-based Tech Startup Brisky

Bangalore-based, Techstars funded company Spoonshot (formerly dishq), a personalized food recommendation engine, has acquired Hyderabad-based restaurant analytics startup Brisky, announced the company.

The financial details of the deal have not been disclosed.

Brisky was founded by Rajesh Bhutada and Jatin Bhatia in 2015 as a nightlife booking platform. They pivoted in 2017 to a restaurant analytics startup and raised an angel investment from the Spark10 accelerator, Atal Malviya, Vivek Nama, Suren Marumamula, Deepak Ambvani and Abhinav Mannepalli last year.

“We have observed that the restaurant industry has always had a great desire to adopt new technologies and make data-driven decisions. However, they are not willing to put the effort of going through charts, deriving correlations and splicing data sets to get the insights. What they are looking for is someone to tell them what actions they should take.” said Rajesh Bhutada, CEO, Brisky

Brisky collates customer engagement data from various touch points and acts as a virtual consultant for restaurants, suggesting actions to take, such as targeting the right set of guests for a particular offer/event, studying customer feedback and highlighting the grey areas that need improving to attract positive reviews, and recommending steps that restaurants should take in order to increase guest loyalty.

“The way Brisky has approached this problem has impressed all of us at Spoonshot. They have come up with such an intelligent product that truly helps restaurants and bars understand their customers, and quickly highlights the areas that need attention” said Kishan Vasani, CEO, Spoonshot Inc.

In a short period of time after completing the POC in July 2017, Brisky has more than 100 restaurant brands in India as their customers. With this acquisition, Spoonshot plans to leverage its taste prediction and food trends technology to further strengthen Brisky’s capabilities in providing insights to the restaurant industry across US and India.

Founded in 2015, by Sai Sreenivas Kodur (ex Zomato) and Kishan Vasani (ex Just Eat), Spoonshot leverages food science and artificial intelligence to predict consumer taste and food trends. It is a taste AI company backed by prominent investors like TechStars and Arts Alliance.

Spoonshot has raised $560,000 in total from venture funding. In August last year, it raised $120,000 from Zeroth.ai, followed by $400,000 in pre-seed funding from from TechStars Farm to Fork accelerator and Arts Alliance, in July this year.

While the majority of the Spoonshot team is based at the company HQ in Bengaluru, India, the startup also has its presence in London, UK, and a US office in St. Paul, MN.

[Top Featued Image - Medium.com/@spoonshot]

American Seed Accelerator Techstars Launches in India, To Invest $1.2 Mn in 10 Startups

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.

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Techstars To Launch Startup Accelerator in India Next Month

US-based global startup accelerator Techstars will launch a new startup accelerator in India next month.

The new accelerator programme will be set up in Bengaluru and will support and back nearly a dozen early-stage ventures. To run its India operations, Techstars has appointed the former managing director of Microsoft Accelerator India, Bala Girisaballa, as president of its India operations. Girisaballa will lead Techstars’ entry into India.

For its India operations, Techstars has tied up with Bengaluru-based ANSR as a joint venture signed last year, which helps enterprises build and manage in-house or external accelerators and other startups-focused infrastructure.

Techstars has also set aside a separate corpus from its global $300 million startup fund to back early-stage startups in India.

Additionally, Techstars also plans to launch its corporate accelerator program wherein it will help top Indian companies and corporates to build their own in-house accelerator. Globally, companies such as Amazon, Walt Disney, Barclays, Comcast and Target have tied up with Techstars to launch corporate accelerator programmes.

The first batch of Techstars' India accelerator will open for applications in April and begin by the year end. It will operate out of Bengaluru and have a broad focus on hardware and software technology sectors.

The above development was first reported in LiveMint.

Typically, upon acceptance to Techstars’ 3-months accelerator programme, a startup is offered a $100,000 convertible note and also contributes $20,000, mostly used as stipend, and in return receives a 6% stock.

Related Reading -- 6 Startup Accelerators in India Recently Launched By Global Tech Leaders

Launched in 2006, Techstars has 40 accelerators around the world including in New York City, London and Paris. Since its launch, it has accepted more than 1,270 startups into its programmes and helped them raise over $4.4 billion in funding. It counts DigitalOcean, ClassPass, and Sphero among its graduates.

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.

Techstars To Launch Startup Accelerator in India Next Month

US-based global startup accelerator Techstars will launch a new startup accelerator in India next month.

The new accelerator programme will be set up in Bengaluru and will support and back nearly a dozen early-stage ventures. To run its India operations, Techstars has appointed the former managing director of Microsoft Accelerator India, Bala Girisaballa, as president of its India operations. Girisaballa will lead Techstars’ entry into India.

For its India operations, Techstars has tied up with Bengaluru-based ANSR as a joint venture signed last year, which helps enterprises build and manage in-house or external accelerators and other startups-focused infrastructure.

Techstars has also set aside a separate corpus from its global $300 million startup fund to back early-stage startups in India.

Additionally, Techstars also plans to launch its corporate accelerator program wherein it will help top Indian companies and corporates to build their own in-house accelerator. Globally, companies such as Amazon, Walt Disney, Barclays, Comcast and Target have tied up with Techstars to launch corporate accelerator programmes.

The first batch of Techstars' India accelerator will open for applications in April and begin by the year end. It will operate out of Bengaluru and have a broad focus on hardware and software technology sectors.

The above development was first reported in LiveMint.

Typically, upon acceptance to Techstars’ 3-months accelerator programme, a startup is offered a $100,000 convertible note and also contributes $20,000, mostly used as stipend, and in return receives a 6% stock.

Related Reading -- 6 Startup Accelerators in India Recently Launched By Global Tech Leaders

Launched in 2006, Techstars has 40 accelerators around the world including in New York City, London and Paris. Since its launch, it has accepted more than 1,270 startups into its programmes and helped them raise over $4.4 billion in funding. It counts DigitalOcean, ClassPass, and Sphero among its graduates.

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.

Global Startup Incubator Techstars Is All Set To Make Its Debut In India; Enters Into JV With ANSR

To tap the country’s aggressively growing startup ecosystem, the US-based incubator Techstars is all set to make its debut in India. The global incubator is going to launch its new startup programmes over the coming weeks and months. For the same, Techstars has entered 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.

The financial details of JV are undisclosed. With this JV, Techstars aims to open centres across multiple locations in India in a few years. The firm will launch its first centre in Bengaluru next year.  Commenting on the development, Lalit Ahuja, CEO, ANSR told ET, "The launch of Techstars India will provide an impetus to the rapidly growing startup ecosystem and the emergence of India as a dominant entrepreneurial network."

Through its programme in India, Techstars also wants to bring its other global portfolio startups and corporate partners to India and vice-versa.

Techstars help entrepreneurs and early-stage ventures by providing them with office space, mentoring and seed funding to early-stage startups for about 3-6 months. The selected startups are offered $20,000 in exchange for 6% common stock and a $100,000 convertible note upon acceptance.Techstars operates four divisions -a startup programme, an accelerator, corporate innovation partnerships, and a venture capital fund.

Founded in 2006 by Cohen, Brown, Brad Feld and Jared Polis, Techstars fund technology oriented companies, typically web-based or other software companies.Operational in countries such as Australia, Canada, Israel, France, and across the US, Techstars, over the past decade has accepted over 1,000 early-stage ventures globally into its programs. According to Techstars its portfolio companies have collectively raised over $3.8 billion.

Some of the notable companies that have graduated from the accelerator include Digital Ocean, Localytics, SendGrid, Contently, Occipital, Next Big Sound to name few.