Meet the 14 startups graduating from the second batch of Accel Rebound

Rebound, an investment programme from Palo Alto headquartered venture capital firm Accel, has announced the graduates of its second batch. The India-specific platform focuses on helping second-time entrepreneurs restart their journeys. 

The list of graduating startups includes AI (artificial intelligence) firm AnswerWise, API (application programming interface) platform Decentro and cloud kitchen service provider Hungry Wheels. 

Rebound, which kickstarted its second cohort in January 2020, is focused on knowledge sharing, peer learning, and one-on-one coaching, according to a blog by Avinash Raghava, community platform evangelist, Accel India. . 

The programme is led by the members of Accel -- Dinesh Katiyar, Shrrinesh Bala, Pratik Agarwal and Pranay Yadav.

Rebound is session-based with each huddle lasting for between three to four hours. The five sessions are held once a month. For the second batch of startups, the programme included  introduction and retrospection, market mapping, impact of Covid-19 on their business and product growth spiral.

“This is our way of making our learnings from working with over 150 companies within our portfolio available to founders starting up again. The idea behind Rebound is not to spot funding opportunities for Accel but, hey, if some of the founders in this avatar or next want to partner us and it makes compelling sense — we are always open,” Raghava said. 

Launched in 2019, the first batch of Rebound had 11 graduating startups.

Accel has now invited applications for its third cohort, which will have sessions covering a range of topics, from market segmentation and product growth framework to organisation design and executing a fundraising process. The last date of application is 29 August 2020, it added.

Here’s a snapshot of the graduating startups:

Walrus: Headquartered in Bengaluru, Walrus helps teenagers manage their pocket money via a mobile app and a debit card. It was set up in 2019 by Bhagaban Behera.

Utterwise AI: Founded in 2019 by Dheeraj Rajeev, Ripul Kumar, Sanjay Basavaraju, Utterwise AI gives cash-flow insights and empowers small businesses to make great everyday decisions about their cash positions. Utterwise has launched a business app for small businesses in India.

AnswerWise: Set up in 2019 by Nayan Kumar, the Bengaluru based company uses AI to simplify and automate customer support by helping customers and support agents instantly find answers in large existing knowledge bases.

Decentro: Founded this year by Rohit Taneja, Decentro is an easy-to-use API platform for banking integrations in India. The company is headquartered in Bengaluru.

Hungry Wheels: The Bengaluru headquartered startup offers a portable cloud kitchen as a service to those who want to set up a mobile F&B (food and beverage) operation. It was founded by Vikram Sood in 2019.

InterviewPass: Founded by Suresh Harikrishnan in 2019, InterviewPass is a video-based talent assessment software for growing businesses. Its automated video interviews and assessments allow businesses to reduce pain points in hiring by giving hiring managers and recruiters a quick and easy way to assess applicants effectively. It is based in Bengaluru.

LightCat.io: It is a product management tool built around customer knowledge, instead of bugs or tickets. LightCat.io is used by over 100 teams across the world to make customer-centric product decisions. It is based in Bengaluru and was founded by Utkarsh Apoorva in 2019.

Leap.club: The Delhi-based startup is a private professional network for women with a simple mission — to get more women in leadership positions. They combine a strong network, executive coaching, and learning and mental wellness to focus on the professional development of their members. Anand Sinha founded the startup in February this year.

MountBlue Technologies: Set up by Konark Singhal in 2017, the Bengaluru-based startup is a coding bootcamp focused on solving entry-level tech hiring for high growth ventures. It claims that about 500 engineers have graduated from its bootcamps. And all of them been deployed at over 150 tech companies that range from bootstrapped and pre-seed ventures to scaled multicorns and publicly listed entities.

Outplay: Established in 2019 by Laxman Papineni, Outplay is a sales engagement platform that allows sellers to customise messages at scale, across multiple channels like email, phone, text message, and social media. It is based in San Francisco.

RetargetAds was set up in 2020 by Sushant Shekhar. The Bengaluru-based startup is an Ad-Network that allows advertisers to re-target someone else’s blog traffic with Ads on social media platforms, keeping the blogs Ad-Free and cutting down costs of Ads for advertisers.

SalesBenefits: Singapore headquartered startup helps companies manage their sales commissions and performance-based compensation by linking with customer relationship management (CRMs), accounting and payroll software to analyse the teams’ performance. It was founded by Ashok Varma in 2020 

Sinecycle: Founded in 2020 by Aravind Gopalan, Sinecycle is building a smart integrated accounts receivable tool to help businesses automate and streamline their invoice-to-cash process.

Sorted AI: Launched in 2019 by Snehanshu Gandhi, SortAI is building a suite of AI-powered utility and productivity apps for Bharat users. The company has to date built two apps to start with — Kaagaz Scanner, a document scanning app, and Sorted AI, a productivity app offering smart reminders, tasks, and to-do list.