 "Angel investor Sawhney's Global Accelerator Program zeroes in on 11 startups")
GSF Accelerator founded by prominent angel investor, Rajesh Sawhney, kick-started its Global Accelerator Program on June 2, 2014 with 11 startups selected from a pool of more than 500 applications sourced world-over.
The 13-week global accelerator program will connect entrepreneurs to peers, mentors, advisors and investors in India, Singapore, San Francisco, New York, Boston and Toronto through a slew of partners. Some partners include Impact Hub in SFO, New York and Singapore, Communitech, University of Waterloo in Canada, Intuit in Bengaluru, Investopad in Gurgaon, and Mass Challenge in Boston.
The program has a prime purpose to help startups kick-start growth in global markets. In a statement to the media Sawhney said, “The selected startups have diverse business models and target markets. However, the common factor between them is their vision to go global. Ranging from a startup facilitating high quality medical tourism, to a startup providing innovation platform for crowd-sourcing business solutions, to another one developing a graphic design app with vector editors and collaborative capabilities, this cohort is set to establish new benchmarks in the technology world.”
Mentoring and coaching
Selected startups will go through an intense mentoring and coaching program starting with five weeks in India, followed by four weeks in San Francisco, two weeks in New York, one week in Toronto and finally a week in Singapore where startup teams will get an opportunity to immerse themselves in global startup ecosystems.
They will be mentored by a diverse group of successful entrepreneurs and industry experts and will connect with angel investors, different seed and venture capital firms, through rigorous workshops, one-on-one office hours, office visits and informal networking mixers.
“We have received massive support from a range of corporates like Facebook, Linkedin, Spotify, Evernote, Intuit, Cisco, Autodesk, Paypal, Lyft, Kickstarter, Whatsapp, Shopify, Google among others,” said Sawhney in an e-mail interview with Firstbiz. This in addition to major venture capitalist firms like Sequoia Capital, Canaan Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Accel Partners.
Funding start-ups
GSF will provide funding of $40,000 to $60,000 to chosen start-ups and will also be hosting six demo days globally. “We will invest in seed rounds of some of the companies along with other investors,” added Sawhney.
GSF is a startup platform in India, founded by Sawhney, and the ecosystem consists of 25 portfolio companies; 43 Entrepreneurs-in-Residence, 250 mentors across the world backed by a group of 25 superangels.
“This is one big step in the evolution of the GSF platform. We intend to make it even bigger in the years to come. We are developing strategic tie-ups with key stakeholders in the startup eco-system globally. Lots of exciting ventures will be enabled by GSF platform,” Sawhney concluded.
A quick look at the eleven startups:
TripMD connects patients to trusted healthcare worldwide.
Greymeter is an interactive talent community where organizations crowd-source real world challenges to get innovative solutions while students earn exciting rewards.
GuideTrip is a global content driven online platform which helps in connecting travelers with guides; to search for, interact with and book travel experiences with directly.
GigStart is a marketplace that provides quick and transparent connect between entertainers and party planners.
pxify is building a free graphic design program that’s focused on being as easy-to-use as possible, which integrates collaboration features so that design teams and clients can work alongside one another.
WhatFix is a SaaS customer engagement startup that helps business on board their customers seamlessly and provides interactive knowledge flows to enhance product adoption.
WizenWorld is a gaming startup that teaches math and science concepts to middle school students through engaging multi-player games.
Daily Rounds is a mobile app learning platform for doctors to review clinical patient case studies.
Cuztomise helps field service businesses to reduce their operational costs by its workforce scheduling and optimization, through App and Platform as a Service offering.
AirStream enables accessing files and streaming media from multiple computers and cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive through a single app on any Mobile device.
Hashtago is developing core technology for hashtags mining, tracking, targeting and analytics for B2B solutions and customer-oriented services.