Winners of Nasscom's Code For The Next Billion Program Announced

NASSCOM 10,000 Start-ups today announced the selection of 10 start-ups for the Code for Next Billion Program. These Startups are Wallet Guru, Light Vision, Perpignon, Kid Nurture, We-Share, I-We, Huehealth.com, Technovent, Padmavati Agro, and Redoctype. This is an inclusive program that aims to promote social good and will provide a platform for start-ups to showcase innovations that can help solve some of the problems in the society and can be recognized on a national level.

Startups will be given an immersive six month program to inspire, encourage and fulfill internet innovation among the developer community in India. Code for the Next Billion is running two programs targeting developers and students to build applications in the Health, Economic Empowerment (finance, capacity building, etc.), Education/Skill Development, Public Utility (water, power, transport). The program involves access to cutting edge technology, social impact and business mentors; workshops and webinars to receive hands-on training; investors and enterprises to help validate and scale the selected start-ups.

Vidhya Shankar, Head of Funding Partnerships & Alliances at NASSCOM 10,000 start-ups, Bangalore, said, “This is a positive step towards our objective to empower the developer community and motivate large scale innovation impacting bottom of the pyramid. Through the program, we aim to accelerate the development and adoption of mobile internet applications across India. We would like to thank all our partners for their valuable support and trust and hope to work with a lot more people in the future”.

Facebook has partnered with NASSCOM 10,000 start-ups and is the first partner of the Code for Next Billion Program. Other partners are NASSCOM Foundation, Unitus Seed Fund, CNBC TV 18 and IIM Ahmedabad’s CIIE. NASSCOM 10,000 Startups is a platform for technology startups to get connected to all the players in the ecosystem from angel networks to venture capital firms, accelerators, enterprises and industry bodies. 10,000 start-ups initiative helps startups with funding, incubation, acceleration, mentoring, enterprise connects, and showcase opportunities.

Ime Archibong, Director-Partnerships, Facebook, said "We are proud to partner with NASSCOM, CNBC, and others to invest in the leadership of developers who are building innovative solutions tailored to the historically unconnected and underserved. Building applications to solve education, financial, health and public utility challenges requires a different kind of imagination, risk appetite and skills. We are excited to support the journeys of these ten sdevelopers and hope that their journeys inspire the next generation of developers to apply their talents to solving these problems."

The first boot-camp for start-ups was organized with Parag Trivedi, Global Design Studio Leader, GE Healthcare on Design Thinking, Naiyya Saggi, Co-founder, Baby chakra on Scaling up for Social Impact,Anindita Guha, Head-Product and Marketing, Gupshup and Teamchat on Product Management the India way. Further to this, start-ups will be provided with technical, marketing, and financial support as well as leadership skills, to build their applications and businesses. They will get opportunity to be featured on a CNBCTV18 through a TV series to showcase their achievements. Further, they will get access to US$80,000 worth of Facebook credits and support through Facebook's FbStart program to build their business. They will get networking opportunities with industry leaders (CEOs, thought leaders, VCs, ecosystem evangelists, social change leaders), funders and the media to bring public awareness to their commitment, solutions and impact.

NASSCOM 10,000 Startups is a vision, which is committed to incubate, fund and provide support to impact 10,000 technology startups in India, by 2023. The aim is to nurture the promising startups into full-fledged technology stalwart companies, by giving them support via access to startup incubators, accelerators, angel investors, venture capitalists, startup support groups, mentors, and technology corporations.