India is at the moment house to over 200 incubators and accelerators
Amongst them, a deeptech B2B accelerator programme, Cisco LaunchPad is supporting the startups by way of its tech stack, mentors, enterprise connects, occasions, and extra
Presently, on its seventh cohort, it has been serving to the expansion and scale of its graduated startups even amidst the pandemic
Ever since March 2020, we now have all been speaking concerning the pandemic and the assorted approaches homegrown startups took to outlive it. Whereas many startups pivoted their enterprise fashions to undertake the developments of the market, others tweaked their services and products to cater to the prevalent challenges.
“The lockdown affected the acquisition of new sales for our business. To survive and grow in those scenarios we took a little different approach. We came up with a new product UV Saaph in March and completed all the certifications by May. The product has helped us survive the pandemic and the lockdown immensely,” mentioned Gokul Shrinivas, CEO and founding father of Minion Labs.
Bengaluru-based Minion Labs initially focussed on offering real-time insights into the vitality consumption of electrical home equipment. Its newest product UV Saaph, designed like a microwave, permits the customers to disinfect objects comparable to grocery, meals, grocery store deliveries, water bottles, utensils and extra.
Whereas one other startup, Teslon didn’t must make any modifications, reasonably, observed higher adoption of its merchandise amidst the pandemic, “We didn’t really face a lot of challenges as our vision has always been to build technology that can bridge the access to care. Our carenation packages provide a host of products that enable remote care and diagnosis and thus we were able to contribute and spread our presence to more places amidst the pandemic,” mentioned Harsha Muroor, founder and CEO, Teslon.
The startup develops the Carenation product, which supplies distant healthcare services. By June 2020 alone, its distant ICU carts have been getting used throughout eight states in India and 7 nations general.
Due to the enabler ecosystem of the nation, startups comparable to Teslon, Minion Labs and extra have been in a position to clock immense development of their enterprise. In response to the startups — whereas traders and incubators have additionally performed a significant function — the assistance they acquired from their accelerator programme has confirmed to be essentially the most helpful.
Startups Reveal The Significance Of Accelerator Programme In Their Journey
In response to a current Inc42 Plus evaluation, India is at the moment house to over 200 incubators and accelerators. Offering the startups with the required connections and mentorship, the accelerator ecosystem of the nation has helped the expansion of the startups proper from the preliminary days of their inception.
Amongst the distinguished names is a B2B deeptech startup accelerator, Cisco LaunchPad, aiming to help the startups through its tech stack, mentors, enterprise connects, occasions and extra. The LaunchPad boasts of getting over 100 mentors in its portfolio who’ve helped greater than 47 deeptech startups until now. The startups which have benefited from the accelerator until date embody names comparable to Minion Labs, MishiPay, Teslon, Probus, SenseGiz, FluxGen, SatSure, ZestIoT and extra.
Elaborating on the identical, Muroor defined that an accelerator performs a significant function within the journey of the startup even properly previous its commencement. Part of the first-ever cohort of the Cisco LaunchPad, he added, “We were a group of engineers starting out with an idea and we needed guidance in turning that idea into a business. That is where the accelerator’s connections help the startup, right? In our case, we were able to focus on our product as well as channel the GTM strategies much better with the help of the Cisco LaunchPad team.”
Whereas Ganesh Shankar, founder and CEO, FluxGen focussed on studying the nitty gritties of a enterprise and product-market match from its accelerator programme.
He identified, “The right connections and networks in the industry are important for a startup which is just starting its journey and such was the case with FluxGen. Thankfully, our ties with our accelerator programme have enabled us to leverage their industry connections to date.”
Part of the third cohort of Cisco LaunchPad, FluxGen develops sustainable water administration product, AquaGen. It instructed Inc42 that whereas the lockdown made it slightly tough for the startup to scale its operations throughout borders on India, it additionally introduced with it a bunch of alternatives. Lately, the startup mentioned that it has been in a position to provoke conversations in addition to deploy its options for numerous corporates comparable to Microsoft, Amazon and extra.
“With the realisation that the world will be a very different place after Covid, we understood that we had to revisit our product strategy and Rakesh Sharma (senior design strategist at Cisco) spent nearly 22 hours with us on helping redesign our product strategy,” added Shankar. It’s this assist and steering from Sharma, that helped FluxGen scale throughout the present eventualities, believes Shankar.
Hyderabad-based, ZestIoT that develops options for asset monitoring and passenger administration for the aviation trade, believes that an accelerator must be spot on in creating worth for associate startups and assist it in creating a singular story for every stakeholder. The founder and CEO of ZestIoT, Amit Sukhija additional instructed Inc42 that for any startup that’s simply charting out its journey, getting advantages such because the gross sales workforce in addition to tech stack from its accelerator programme advantages an enormous deal.
Extra Than Simply An Accelerator
India’s startup ecosystem, undeniably, is amongst the quickest rising startup ecosystems throughout the globe. ‘The Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2020’ by Startup Genome, ranked two Indian cities, specifically Bengaluru and Delhi, amongst the highest 40 most beneficial ecosystems to construct a globally profitable startup.
Sruthi Kannan, head of programme at Cisco LaunchPad believes that with the best steering and mentorship from the incubators and accelerators, the startup ecosystem is sure to flourish and scale moreover within the world rating.
The accelerator programme that concluded its sixth cohort in August, has not too long ago closed the purposes for its seventh cohort, which — as a result of pandemic and social distancing norms — goes completely digital.
Elaborating on the steps taken to make sure clean conduct of the upcoming digital cohort, Kannan mentioned, “We have inaugurated Kalki, our very own VR-based interactive and immersive experience centre that enables startups to demo and pitch their products/offerings to potential clients virtually.” Kannan additional added that Cisco LaunchPad will proceed to deliver the mentors and the startups collectively to co-create a number of significant engagements and drive digitisation into newer realms.
