We welcomed 10 change-makers to the second class of Launchpad Accelerator India, in March this year. In keeping with the 'Solve for India' theme of the accelerator, these 10 startups focused on building scalable solutions for some of India's toughest problems in the areas of healthcare, fintech, sustainability, among others, using AI/ML. With the second class close to graduating, we are now inviting applications for Class 3 from startups working in similar areas.
A look back at Class 2:
With Class 2, we took the mentee startups - spanning verticals across fintech, healthcare, sustainability and more - through intensive mentorship bootcamps delivered by Google & industry experts, spanning across the areas of technology, product strategy, marketing, UX/UI and leadership.
The program is designed to address the specific needs of the startups in each batch. Startups that needed help with their machine learning algorithms were taken through a machine learning bootcamp while, startups that needed to overhaul their customer onboarding journeys or improve their customer retention went through design sprints.
In addition to technical mentoring, founders were also coached on key aspects of leadership such as empathy, in a Google-created 'Leaders Lab', specially conceived to make leaders aware of the blindspots in their management styles.
Hearing from the founders and mentors:
"We have been trying to streamline our ML engines, but finding ML experts can be tough. Through the Launchpad program, we have been connected to ML experts across the globe who have worked on similar problems and have given us interesting ideas which we are currently implementing"
- SmartCoin,
"Our assumption was that decreasing the dropout rate of customers might be most important. Although it is important, we realized before dropout, getting more customers to onboard was more important. Hence we understood that we need to work on content marketing and go through a design sprint too. The design sprint helped to reduce the customer onboarding time by 50%"
- FinancePeer
"With due credit to its name, Launchpad truly boosts, accelerates, course corrects and motivates startups to succeed at scale by bringing the finest of Google and industry specialists from a variety of backgrounds to support these startups' vision."
- Vivian Gomes, Director of User Experience at HFR&D, Mentor, Google Launchpad Accelerator
Class 2 of Launchpad Accelerator India
Apply Now for Class 3 of Google Launchpad Accelerator :
While these 10 startups continue their journey to scale their solutions to meaningfully address some
of India's toughest problems , we are excited to invite applications for the next class.
of India's toughest problems , we are excited to invite applications for the next class.
If you are a startup that uses technology like AI/ML to solve systemic problems in India, submit your application now under "Launchpad Accelerator India" at this link, by August 18, 2019. The batch will kick off with a 1 week bootcamp in mid-October, in Bangalore.
Before you apply, do check if your startup meets the following criteria to be eligible for the program
1/ Be a technology startup
2/ Be based in India
3/ Have preferably at least raised seed funding
4/ Address a challenge that is specific to India
5/ Use advanced technology like AI/ML to power the solution
Each class will receive mentorship and support from the best of Google in AI/ML, Cloud, UX, Android, Web, Product Strategy and Marketing. Startups will also receive Google Cloud Credits from $20K, going up to $100K each.
We look forward to hearing from you and growing India's startup ecosystem, together.
We look forward to hearing from you and growing India's startup ecosystem, together.
Posted By Paul Ravindranath, Program Manager, Launchpad Accelerator India