Four Indian startups picked for 5th accelerator programme of Silicon Valley-based 500 Startups

Dave McClure's accelerator and seed investment fund 500 Startups has announced its 5th batch of companies for the accelerator programme, comprising some 33 companies from over a dozen countries (excluding the US). This also includes four Indian startups in what happens to be the first batch, chosen through open applications process. Earlier, referrals were used to pick the companies.

The funding in the four Indian startups was announced in October by Pankaj Jain, a venture partner (India), via his Twitter handle. Jain was hired by 500 Startups last month to lead the Indian investments.

Here is a look at the Indian startups who have made it to the list.

gazeMetrix: It's the flagship product from Delhi-based UberLabs, founded by Deobrat Singh, Saurab Paruthi and Debayan Banerjee. UberLabs works in the field of computer vision with applications in social media and brand analytics domains. The gazeMetrix technology includes a picture-and-video analyser, measuring brand visibility across social media by analysing the brand mentioned in the photographs and videos uploaded across social media platforms. The founder trio was working with Nivio prior to starting their own venture.

Instamojo: Run by Mumbai-based Urbanpotion Technologies Pvt Ltd, it's a P2P platform that enables one to give away unused stuff by sharing a unique link as also sell digital files. Instamojo was founded earlier this year by Sampad Swain, Aditya Sengupta, Akash Gehani and Harshad Sharma. It also raised angel funding from Rajan Anandan and Sunil Kalra in July this year.

TradeBriefs: A customised newsletter publishing site where subscribers can select areas of interest and pick & choose what they want to read. It also offers industry news, insight and job openings to subscribers via newsletters. Mumbai-headquartered TradeBriefs was set up by Sreekumar Vijaykumar back in 2008. He was earlier working as the managing director for All India Retail.

WalletKit: WalletKit is a SaaS platform to create, manage and deliver digital passes to mobile wallets. Started 3-4 months ago by Kevin William David and Ramakanth Dorai, WalletKit aims to be the central platform to deliver digital mobile passes across all major mobile wallet platforms.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)