Startup accelerator Kyron's parent raises $9M from Accel, others

ANSR Consulting India Pvt Ltd, a corporate consultancy firm focused on bringing multinationals to open their IT back-office operations in India that also runs Bangalore-headquartered startup accelerator Kyron, has raised $9 million (Rs 57.6 crore) from Accel Partners with participation of unnamed family offices and individual investors.

The funds will be utilised to bring more global in-house captives (GICs) into India in addition to creating an engagement program where startups can work closely and directly with these multinationals, separate media reports that first reported the development citing the company, said.

An email sent to the company for further details elicited no response.

ANSR was launched by former CEO of Indian IT and back-office arm of global retailer Target, Lalit Ahuja, almost a decade ago.

In December 2012, it had launched Kyron as a global startup accelerator. The accelerator has already incubated over a dozen startups, including Shopping Wish, Lost Click Found, Buzzinga, Teritree, Book Pad Tech, My Window, Admirch Media Labs, Spatio Viz, Buzz Anytime, Link My Sport and Get Out, among others.

Ahuja told The Economic Times that Kyron will eventually merge with ANSR.

It intends to develop a parallel programme where it will act like a matchmaker identifying the problem statements from larger enterprises and bring on board the startups capable of solving them.  This program will not have an accelerator batch. These startups will work with the MNCs for a period of six months. While the multinationals will not fund the startups in this program, Kyron will take a 5 per cent stake for an investment of up to $50,000 (Rs 32 lakh), he told the publication.

Kyron aims to back over 500 companies over the next five years across six markets- India, US, China, Argentina, Czech Republic and Malaysia.

India continues to be one of the world's leading location for setting back-office for MNCs with more than 825 GICs operating across multiple locations currently, generating revenue of $15.5 billion and employing nearly 5.3 lakh people, reveals a recent study by IT industry body NASSCOM.