By any benchmark, Accel is among the many prime enterprise corporations in India. With almost two dozen Indian unicorn startups, together with a number of class leaders, Accel’s monitor document speaks for itself. However but, the companions main the agency’s early-stage accelerator program, known as Atoms, are uncharacteristically introspective about their learnings and the adjustments they’ve been implementing to enhance the chances of success.
“One fundamental belief we have is that at some point of time, all VC firms look the same to a founder. It’s just money,” stated Prayank Swaroop, a companion at Accel, in an interview.
All VC corporations have additionally grown more and more targeted on making early-stage investments in India in recent times and discovering the following Flipkart on the seed stage. The shift is primarily pushed by the conclusion that India will not be producing many billion-dollar exits, making it crucial to the VC funds to get in earlier to dramatically enhance their returns.
Accel has been looking for the suitable match for its early-stage accelerator program for almost half a decade now. Earlier than launching Atoms, the enterprise agency explored constructing a repository of information base and neighborhood with SeedtoScale, one thing that it continues to construct on.
“We did Demo Days, we were trying to be very similar to a lot of other funds,” stated Swaroop.
Simply as quick Accel tried issues, it has additionally walked again on a few of its steps. It not makes an attempt to provoke mingling between Atoms portfolio startups and different buyers, as an example. Swaroop recalled a dialog with a founder who knowledgeable him how the investor-meetup felt just like the startup was being placed on a treadmill to artificially impress different potential backers.
One other candid suggestions from founders revealed that many weren’t comfy participating with friends within the trade who have been years forward of them. “We are trying to find our own unique path and what has worked for some of the other firms, we think it’s not working for us,” he stated.
So right here’s what that path seems to be like. Atom’s third cohort options simply eight startups, notably smaller than different well-known accelerators. And all the chosen startups function inside two sectors: AI and Trade 5.0 (smart-manufacturing.)
Accel invests as much as $500,000 within the handpicked startup’s pre-seed spherical and there’s no valuation cap. Along with serving to the startup strategize, Accel additionally helps them meet trade gamers that may grow to be potential companions and prospects sooner or later.
Extra on this shortly, however first, the third cohort of Accel:
Spintly
Spintly is an IoT platform that simplifies entry management to business and residential buildings. In contrast to conventional programs, Spintly makes use of a distributed IoT structure and edge computing expertise, which eliminates the necessity for heavy back-end infrastructure and allows smartphone-based door entry to customers. Spintly has eradicated 200k plastic badges and 2k miles for wired infrastructure from the constructed world and presently servers 300+ prospects and 4k+ doorways.Asets
Canada-based Asets has launched an AI-powered, first-of-its-kind cloud-based Built-in Design Suite, a multidisciplinary CAD, simulation and engineering design platform that helps Engineering Procurement Building (EPC) and end-owner firms speed up their early-stage engineering by 10x. Prospects profit from the fast deployment of engineering sources, reducing effort time and prices associated to engineering initiatives.Tune AI
Tune AI is a GenAI stack for enterprises with options that embody Tune Chat, an AI chat app with over 180,000 customers and highly effective fashions for textual content, code era, and brainstorming, and Tune Studio, a complete resolution for fine-tuning, deploying, and managing the Gen AI mannequin lifecycle and enabling information safety with enterprise-grade compliance.Skoob
Skoob is a generative AI platform which is revolutionizing the way in which readers work together with books. As a substitute of navigating via total volumes, we harness the facility of AI to dissect books into topic-centric sections. We’re making information consumption intuitive and user-friendly.Arivihan
Arivihan is India’s 1st AI-based 100% Automated Studying Platform offering every distinctive faculty scholar with a private tutor of their pocket at ₹300 per thirty days, guiding them in planning for his or her exams, instructing them with video lectures, speaking to them, fixing their queries immediately, and validating their information by testing and enhancing them anytime they need, within the velocity they require.Meritic
Meritic is a storytelling co-pilot for monetary planning and evaluation (FP&A) groups to automate reporting and enterprise analytics. Meritic combines the facility of information graphs and language fashions to do extremely contextual evaluation, accumulate qualitative insights, generate related commentaries and automate monetary deck creation.(Two startups within the cohort stay in stealth for now.)
Accel handpicked AI and Trade 5.0 because the themes for Atoms as a result of the agency believes that these two sectors will look even dramatically bigger within the subsequent 10 years, stated Barath Subramanian, the opposite companion main Atoms.
Subramanian stated Trade 5.0 has emerged as a key theme because the archaic crops in India and elsewhere are lastly modernizing, paving methods for startups which can be bringing efficiencies to take a slice of the tens of billions of {dollars} flowing to consulting corporations and others every year by the trade. “These factories generate a lot of data, but until now it hadn’t been used,” stated Subramanian.
The trade has additionally benefited from New Delhi’s push and incentives to draw international corporations to develop their manufacturing bases within the nation and in addition the rising ‘China + 1’ shift amongst world giants.
Greater than 800 startups utilized to be in Atoms 3.0, and about 300-400 candidates have been AI startups. Swaroop stated almost two-thirds of all pitches targeted on AI startups that sought to resolve HR and advertising issues. “There’s too much of noise in the market that it’s a signal for us that we should hunt elsewhere” he stated.
“Beyond the capital and learning sessions, being part of Atoms has given us a strong founder community and highly collaborative peer group – for instance, when Meritic is faced with a challenge we can turn to any other team at Accel LaunchPad, which is where we currently operate, or to anyone from Accel’s network of over 200 portfolio company founders, to arrive at a solution,” stated Pallavi Chakravorty, co-founder and CEO of Meritic, in an announcement.
“The Founder Anonymous sessions have helped us open up to the cohort in an unfiltered manner and the GTM talks have been pivotal in shaping our B2B sales thinking.”
