India Adds 13 More Budding Tech Entrepreneurs In 2013

Microsoft Ventures in India recently announced the graduation of its Winter Batch from the Microsoft Ventures Accelerator program in India. At a Demo Day held at the Microsoft Lavelle Road office in Bangalore, the 400 plus audience of mentors, industry influencers, venture capitalists, angel investors and media professionals witnessed the amazing progress made by each company over the last four months at the Accelerator.  The 13 startups which graduated now include: AdSparx, ShieldSquare, Chance, Frrole, Native5, SignEasy, TommyJams, Whalelogix, Scibler, HasGeek, Nanobi, Tookitaki and 1000Lookz.

Congratulating the graduating batch, Ravi Narayan, Director, Microsoft Ventures in India said: “The last four months have been exciting and a great learning experience for all of us—the startups and the Microsoft Ventures in India program team.  The companies in the batch ranged from first-time entrepreneurs to more seasoned, experienced entrepreneurs who have just hit upon their best idea with this venture. Hence, we had to cater to a very varied set of asks from the batch – from improvements in UX, to global expansion, customer acquisitions and product development. I am extremely proud that we could make some really successful customer acquisition and investor connections for some of the startups. In this context, I would also like to thank some of our mentors for the amazing support they provided us.”

The accelerator, which was until recently headed by Mukund Mohan, now director of Microsoft Ventures, shifted hands after the global reorganization that took place in July.

“It is amazing that 90% of the companies in this batch are running on revenues, as opposed to just 30% in the first batch. We are talking revenues of about $100,000. That is dramatic shift in the last one and half years,” said Mohan, former CEO in residence, Microsoft Accelerator.

A notable ones that graduated are Chance, a video interaction application; Frrole, a media social intelligence platform; SignEasy, an online document signing application; and TommyJams, a Web platform that connects music artists to venues. All the graduating companies, except two, are close to getting funded, people with direct knowledge of the matter said Mohan.

The Microsoft Ventures Accelerator team in India is now busy shortlisting applications for the fourth batch, which will start in January 2014. After rigorous screening, the final list of up to 15 startups will be announced soon. The four-month incubation process at the state-of-the-art Microsoft office in downtown Bangalore will begin on January 22, 2014 and end with Demo Day in May.