Startup incubation platform India Accelerator raises seed funding

Gurugram-based mentorship-driven incubator India Accelerator has raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding from InvestMind Solutions Pvt. Ltd and HotStart Ventures, a company statement said.

With this funding, India Accelerator plans to diversify its offerings, expand its global reach, and invest in very early-stage startups, the statement added.

Founded by Ashish Bhatia and Abhay Chawla last year, India Accelerator is a member of the Global Accelerator Network, a consortium of more than 85 accelerators around the globe.

The company has completed two rounds of cohorts, mentoring several startups including GalaxyCard, Insurance Samadhan, Lawyered, CabBazar, and Null Pointer.

“The investors bring a huge amount of network and connect to IA, which will help us progress with the original vision of setting up IA, i.e. to use its resources to continue helping entrepreneurs who are struggling to have fun and to make money for its investors along the way,” Bhatia said.

India Accelerator had put in around $150,000 as seed investment in six startups from its first batch including Voko, Square1, Kuants, WAM (Wish-a-Mitra), Evalk ASL, Cabbazar. These startups operate across sectors such as fin-tech, artificial intelligence, transport and e-commerce.

“We see the investment in India Accelerator as a step towards backing the budding talents of one of the biggest Asian economies and the company aims to provide them with a springboard into the Asian startup scene,” Ankit Airon, partner at HotStart Ventures said.

Invest Mind Solutions is an India-based investment firm. The second investor, HotStart Ventures, is a Singapore-incorporated private company which plans to invest in startups in Southeast Asia.

“There’s a lot of support which is given to early-stage companies but it is still really difficult to succeed. While supporting IA, we look forward to supporting companies looking to raise investment,” Pankaj and Neeraj, co-founders of Invest Mind Solutions, said in the statement.

A number of corporates and technology giants offer accelerator programmes where they mentor early-stage startups. Hyderabad-based T-Hub and aerospace company Boeing mentored tech startups offering solutions from virtual reality to workflow management through an accelerator programme. Last month, they shortlisted three Indian startups for the Boeing HorizonX India Innovation Challenge.

In the same month, Target Corporation India, the local arm of US-based retail giant Target, selected six startups for the sixth batch of its flagship four-month Target Accelerator Program in the country. The programme focuses on technology-driven ideas to create solutions for the retail environment.

At the same time, early-stage venture capital firm Blume Ventures partnered with two US-based funds to launch an accelerator-cum-fund platform to invest in business-to-business startups in India.

In June, IT services firm Accenture and industry lobby Nasscom have launched an accelerator programme called "scalerator" in collaboration with the Israeli government.

In the same month, tech giant Google said it was launching a four-month-long accelerator programme for gaming startups and developers in Asia called Indie Games Accelerator.