Early-stage venture fund Axilor Ventures, led by Infosys co-founders Kris Gopalakrishnan and SD Shibulal, has selected 20 startups across five categories for its fifth accelerator batch, a company statement said.
The Bangalore-based accelerator has doubled the capacity for this batch. “The institutional capacity to support early stage startups in India is quite low - whether it is the structured programmes to systematically improve the odds of success of startups, the market access that they need in their early days or the angel investment capacity,†Ganapathy Venugopal, co-founder and chief executive of Axilor, said in the press note.
Below are the shortlisted startups in each category:
Artificial intelligence: Detect, Niramai, Orbuculum and Transporter.city
Enterprise: Adya Inc, CoPro, Extraaedge, Gig Production, Maroon and Rucept
Fintech: Legal Docs, TaxGenie and Treatgo
Consumer internet: Castiko, Knudge.me, Multibashi and YourQuote
Health-tech: PocketPill, Talkadoc and Healthfin
In the past two years, Axilor claims to have accelerated 30 startups and invested in over 20 firms. At the accelerator stage, Axilor does not take any equity, funding each startup with Rs 50,000. As part of its scale-up programme, it puts in Rs 25 lakh as seed funding in exchange for a small minority stake in startups that complete certain milestones.
Founded in late 2014 by former Infosys veterans Shibulal and Gopalakrishnan, Srinath Batni, Professor Tarun Khanna and Venugopal, Axilor supports early-stage entrepreneurs through its accelerator and scale-up programmes. The accelerator programme runs twice a year, in March and September. Gopalakrishnan is an advisor to technology venture capital fund IDG Ventures India and has made co-investments with the VC firm in a number of startups.
Last month, IDG Ventures India and Axilor Ventures jointly launched a programme to fund early-stage startups in frontier tech sectors.
In December 2016, Bengaluru-based Njuta Technologies Pvt Ltd, which runs events marketplace Events High, had raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Axilor Ventures.
In January, cloud-based solutions provider SecurAX Tech Solutions (I) Pvt Ltd had secured an undisclosed amount of funding from Axilor, Parampara Early Stage Opportunities Fund and a clutch of angel investors.
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