Five homegrown companies built from scratch in Entrepreneur First India’s program will be invited to relocate to their latest San Francisco office following EF’s pre-Seed Investment Committee. These Indian startups will have the opportunity to continue their journey in San Francisco, growing what they’ve built into an early-stage company while gaining access to US investors, customers, and markets. This immersive program is aimed at strengthening the India-US corridor, helping exceptional Indian founders build global-first companies from their very inception.
The India team headed by Rahul Samat is now preparing the Indian startups as they gear up for this next stage in their founder journey. The 5 selected Indian companies that will be joining 28 other global teams include CodeAnt AI, Hanomi, Insight XR, Iterate AI, Repello AI, and Unproject. Once founders relocate to San Francisco post funding from EF’s Investment Committee, they will be matched with a Silicon Valley advisor, attend weekly conversations with experienced founders, operators, and investors, and pitch to world-leading investors at an in-person Demo Day hosted by Reid Hoffman. The teams will be working on everything from non-invasive brain-computer interfaces to decode language-related thought in the brain to Figma for spatial computing.
Iterate AI, founded by Saksham Aggarwal and Shubhram Bhattacharya, has the goal of creating infinite engineering bandwidth for product teams. Before the EF program, Shubhram was a product manager who built India's first book-keeping app for truck owners, while his co-founder Saksham, is a CS senior from BITS Pilani, who also worked as a full-stack developer at pyor.xyz. The duo’s final idea of Iterate AI wasn't their first. While on the EF program, they tested several ideas across industries by speaking with customers and invalidating a few hypotheses along the way, before eventually landing at the insight for Iterate AI, all while being supported with EF’s advisory.
"My journey in San Francisco has been incredibly exciting so far. While moving here had made me excited about being part of the world’s tech ecosystem, I was equally afraid of how I would adjust to a new country. This is where we received immense help and support from Entrepreneur First”, said Shubhram Bhattacharya, Co-Founder, Iterate AI. “They have been the backbone of our journey – from solving day-to-day problems, introducing us to potential customers, and investors, and even guiding us to valuable events to hone our pitches. As we gear towards the EF Demo Day, we are eager and excited to witness the levels of ambition that we can achieve.” He added.
Another team in this roster of five includes Rishabh Singh and Viba Mohan, founders of Unproject. The company is building Figma for spatial computing, and currently working closely with design partners from Unity, Microsoft and Gravity Sketch to build the perfect tool for spatial designers.
Commenting on the opportunity Viba Mohan, Co-Founder of Unproject added "Joining Entrepreneur First's San Francisco cohort signifies a milestone in our quest to revolutionize spatial computing and enable designers to work together seamlessly, ensuring they can explore, share, align, and express their XR concepts with unmatched productivity. As part of the cohort, we've had the opportunity to connect with thought leaders in the domain, potential customers, design partners, and investors. The unwavering support from EF gives us the much-needed drive as we work towards empowering designers building for immersive environments.”
Notably among others, CodeAnt AI by Amartya Jha and Chinmay Bharti is a DevTool that helps companies find and auto-fix code issues and security vulnerabilities. Hanomi, founded by Marco Mascolo and Drishti Bhasin, is an engineering co-pilot to slash design cycles for hardware companies by 50x. Insight XR by Sudhanshu Heda and Akshat Khare is dedicated to building an Analytics and Insights Platform for XR Experiences to help teams build data-backed experiences. Finally, Repello AI founded by Aryaman Behera and Naman Mishra is an automated red-teaming tool to proactively find vulnerabilities in generative AI applications.
Commenting on the Immersive Program, Rahul Samat, Partner and India Head, said that EF has also upgraded its investment terms for founders joining their programs across the globe. Teams that pass their pre-Seed Investment Committee will be offered a $125,000 investment for an 8% convertible instrument. In addition to the $125,000 investment amount per company, every founder will receive a pre-seed advance of up to $5,000 investment amount upon acceptance into one of their programs. This $5,000 advance per founder is in addition to the $125,000 Pre-Seed investment.
EF’s impressive global roster includes investors such as John and Patrick Collison (cofounders of Stripe), Taavet Hinrikus (co-founder of Wise), Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn), Matt Mullenweg (co-founder of WordPress), Tom Blomfield (cofounder of Monzo and GoCardless), Nat Friedman (former CEO of Github), Sara Clemens (former COO of Twitch and Pandora), Matt Robinson (cofounder of Nested and GoCardless), Patrick O’Shaughnessy (Positive Sum), Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman (cofounders of Deepmind), Claire Hughes Johnson, Sten Tamkivi, Elad Gil and Lachy Groom.
