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Accelerator seriously reconsiders investing in India for early-stage startups

TechBrunchBy TechBrunchMarch 28, 20246 Mins Read
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By any benchmark, Accel is one of India's top venture companies. Accel's track record with nearly 20 Indian unicorn startups, including several category leaders, speaks for itself. But still, the partners leading the company's early-stage accelerator program, called Atoms, are unusually reflective about what they've learned and the changes they've made to improve their chances of success.

“One of the fundamental beliefs we have is that at some point, all VC firms look the same to the founders. It's just money,” says Prayank Swaroop, partner at Accel. he said in an interview.

Also, all VC firms in recent years have increasingly focused on finding the next Flipkart in early stage investments and seed stages in India. This change is largely driven by the realization that India is not generating billion-dollar exits and that it is essential for VC funds to get in early to dramatically improve returns. There is.

Accel has been trying to find the best fit for early-stage accelerator programs for nearly five years. Before launching Atoms, the venture considered using SeedtoScale to build a knowledge base and community repository, and continues to build on that.

“We did a demo day and tried to be very similar to a lot of other funds,” Swaroop said.

As much as Fast Accel has tried, it has also taken some steps back. For example, we no longer try to initiate interactions with startups in the Atoms portfolio and other investors. Swaroop recalled a conversation with a founder who said investor meetups felt like startups were being put on a treadmill to artificially impress other potential backers.

Another candid feedback from founders revealed that many founders are nervous about engaging with industry peers who are years ahead of them. “We're trying to find our own path, and we think what's worked for some other companies won't work for us,” he said.

That path will look like this: Atom's third group includes only eight startups, which is noticeably smaller than other well-known accelerators. And the selected startups all operate within his two sectors: AI and Industry 5.0 (smart manufacturing).

Accel invests up to $500,000 in pre-seed rounds in selected startups, with no cap on valuation. Accel not only helps startups develop their strategies, but also helps them meet industry players who could become potential partners and customers in the future.

We'll talk more about this later, but first let's talk about Accel's third cohort.

Whisper
Spintly is an IoT platform that simplifies access control to commercial and residential buildings. Unlike traditional systems, Spintly uses distributed IoT architecture and edge computing technology, eliminating the need for large backend infrastructure and giving users smartphone-based door access . Spintly has eliminated 200,000 plastic badges and 2,000 miles of wired infrastructure from the built world and currently serves over 300 customers and his 4,000+ doors.

assets
Canada-based Assets has launched a first-of-its-kind cloud-based Integrated Design Suite powered by AI. It is a multidisciplinary CAD, simulation, and engineering design platform that helps early stage acceleration for engineering procurement construction (EPC) and end-owner companies. -10x stage engineering. Customers can quickly deploy engineering resources and reduce the effort and costs associated with engineering projects.

Tune the AI
Tune AI combines Tune Chat, an AI chat app with over 180,000 users and powerful models for text, code generation, and brainstorming, and a comprehensive solution for fine-tuning, deploying, and adjusting. GenAI stack for enterprises with solutions including Tune Studio. Manage the lifecycle of Gen AI models and achieve data security with enterprise-grade compliance.

Scoob
Skoob is a generative AI platform that is revolutionizing the way readers interact with books. Rather than navigating through an entire volume, use the power of AI to divide your book into topic-centric sections. We make knowledge consumption intuitive and user-friendly.

Alivihan
Arivihan is India's first AI-based 100% automated learning platform that provides each unique student with a personal tutor in their pocket for just ₹300 per month to plan their exams, teach them through video lectures, talk to them, and more. Teach them how to solve problems. Validate your knowledge by running queries instantly, testing and improving whenever and as fast as you need.

merit
Meritic is a storytelling collaborative pilot for financial planning and analysis (FP&A) teams to automate reporting and business analysis. Meritic combines the power of knowledge graphs and language models to perform advanced contextual analysis, gather qualitative insights, generate relevant commentary, and automate the creation of financial documentation.

(Two startups in this cohort remain stealth for now.)

Bharath Subramanian, another partner leading Atoms, said Accel carefully selected AI and Industry 5.0 as themes for Atoms because the company believes these two areas will grow even more dramatically over the next decade. He said it was because he was there.

Subramanian said Industry 5.0 is finally starting to modernize in countries like India, making way for start-ups that are bringing efficiencies to some of the tens of billions of dollars that flow annually to consulting firms and others. He said that this is emerging as an important theme. industry. “These factories generate a lot of data, but until now it hasn't been used,” Subramanian said.

The industry is also benefiting from New Delhi's push and incentives to attract foreign companies to expand their manufacturing footprint in the country, and the growing “China+1” shift among global giants.

More than 800 startups applied to participate in Atoms 3.0, and around 300-400 applicants were AI startups. Swaroop said nearly two-thirds of all pitches were focused on AI startups looking to solve human resources and marketing problems. “Too much noise in the market is a signal to us to look elsewhere,” he said.

“Beyond the funding and learning sessions, being part of Atoms has given us a strong founder community and a highly collaborative peer group. For example, when Meritic faced challenges, we turned to Accel You can rely on the rest of the team at LaunchPad, Pallavi Chakravorty, co-founder and CEO of Meritic, said in a statement.

“The Founder Anonymous sessions helped us open up to our cohort without any filters. The GTM talks were pivotal in shaping our B2B sales mindset.”



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