SOSV backs four Indian SaaS startups via Chinaccelerator

Princeton, New Jersey-based venture capital firm SOSV, with over $740 million under management, said on Wednesday that four of the six startups selected in the latest batch of its accelerator programme, Chinaccelerator, are based in India.

One of the Indian startups, a spokesperson said, has grown about 300% in the past three months since the batch-18 started, working with some clients such as IPL and English Premier League.

The latest batch of the Shanghai-based accelerator programme will graduate on December 9. SOSV, over the last two years, has made 44 investments in India.

The VC has so far invested in and helped accelerate the growth of over 1,000 startups worldwide. Each year, it invests in 150 companies through its vertical accelerator programmes.

Launched in 2010, six-month-long Chinaccelerator helps internet startups, around the world, cross borders -- from the world into China, and from China to the world. SOSV operates five other global accelerators.

Notably, all four startups are software-as-a-service (SaaS) based. “In 2020 alone, the Indian SaaS industry has grown 1.5 times faster than its global counterparts,” SOSV said in a statement.

“India is very diverse, offering a more competitive environment, not dominated by big players like China. But this still makes the Indian business ecosystem a bit of a battleground, thereby complicating life for early-stage entrepreneurs to survive,” William Bao Bean, SOSV general partner, said.

Read: William Bao Bean on why India is the number one focus market for SOSV

Here’s a glimpse of the four Indian startups selected by SOSV:

Toch: The Mumbai based startup, founded in 2016, operates as a media-tech platform that creates instant replays and highlights from live feeds in real time. It lets content owners to automatically analyze and edit videos in real-time for content moderation, ad insertion and sports highlights.

CodeJudge: The Bengaluru-based startup, founded in 2019, helps companies recruit software developers through building projects and real-time evaluation. 

BuildPan: The Indore-based startup, founded in 2019, helps mobile app developers build, integrate, test, deploy and utilize user feedback synchronously across Android and iOS powered by artificial intelligence.

MikeLegal: The Gurugram based startup, founded in 2017, operates as an artificial intelligence enabled lawyer that helps law firms and corporates automate legal research for trademarks and intellectual property.