The startup ecosystem in India has swiftly evolved in current years. According to the Economic Survey 2021, 12 out of the 38 unicorns in India have been added in 2020 even though 4,70,000 jobs have been made by 39,000 startups. India presently homes the world’s third-biggest startup ecosystem. Paul Ravindranath, programme manager at Google for Startups Accelerator (GFSA) India, says that 2020 offered an atmosphere for quickly-paced digital adoption in the startup ecosystem. “Areas such as education, healthcare, fintech, gaming, media, and retail have taken a front-row seat in the current scenario. The use of scale approaches using deep tech continues to be an area of growth amongst startups,” he adds.
Ravindranath knows the pulse of the marketplace more than the previous couple of years, Google for Start-ups Accelerator India has effectively worked with more than 80 startups. “The programme started in 2018 and is focused on supporting startups that are solving India-specific challenges,” he says.
Take, for instance, Navia Life Care, a digital well being startup that is facilitating the flow of details in the region of information-driven choice creating, by introducing digitisation, evaluation, and engagement across the healthcare ecosystem. “We were privileged to be selected as one of 20 companies in the Google for Startups Accelerator batch of 2020. Through this programme, Google extended technology, business, and product mentorship support to select companies that were creating a positive impact during the pandemic,” says Kunal Kishore Dhawan, co-founder & CEO, Navia Life Care.
According to Ravindranath, the concept of the accelerator programme is to enable promising startups with 3 months of mentorship and assistance from Google and market authorities in the locations such as cloud, UX, Android, Web, item approach, and marketing and advertising, and with a precise emphasis on creating AI and ML capabilities. “It is a three-month digital accelerator programme for high potential Seed to Series A tech startups based in India.”
Google is now prepared to accept applications for its fifth class and is searching for startups that are not only utilizing scalable technologies such as AI/ML but are meaningfully assisting the world adapt and move forward. Startups that meet the following criteria are eligible to apply:
- Startups in these verticals but not restricted to edtech, healthtech, fintech, retail & logistics, media, productivity and agritech
- Startups based in India
- Preferably in the Seed to Series A, B stages.
“In addition to technical mentoring, founders are also coached on key aspects of leadership, in a Google-created ‘Leaders Lab’, specially conceived to make leaders aware of the blindspots in their management styles,” says Ravindranath. The startups graduate with numerous wins to their credit— such as deploying and optimising scalable tech architecture, managing development, executing pivots, fundraises, functions/awards on Google Play, and more.
Dcoder is an additional Google beneficiary it is a mobile-1st coding platform, generating a mobile developer workforce. Co-founder and CEO Ankush Chugh says Google for Startups programme helped in 3 major facets: technologies, item, and marketing and advertising. “The GCP team and mentors helped us scale and optimise our infrastructure and reduce costs by upto 50%, product workshops helped us hone our strategy in delivering value to our coders, with the help of the marketing workshops we received in-depth knowledge of the tools, product and strategies in the digital ecosystem.”
InnerHour is a technologies-led mental well being platform that gives a variety of tools and services to people struggling with mental well being issues. “As part of the GFS accelerator programme, we were able to attend workshops led by industry professionals and also access 1-1 mentorship,” says Amit Malik, founder & CEO, InnerHour.
Again, Sai Gole, co-founder and COO, BharatAgri, says his startup not only moved to one hundred% digital subscription and digital payments throughout a span of two months throughout the GSFA programme but also is developing 40%+ month-on-month.
Last but not the least is BlackLight Games, that creates culturally relevant genuine-time multiplayer games for mobile. Says Shruti Sarraf, CEO, BlackLight Games, “GSFA is a programme that is designed to help startups succeed given their needs, their current state, and their challenges.”