Microsoft India Tuesday consolidated all its startup related offerings under a single umbrella and will now offer startups a single point of entry to engage with Microsoft through its seed fund, an accelerator program and its community evangelism program called BizSpark.
According to India’s Microsoft Ventures lead Mukund Mohan, “Through this coordinated effort, we will now engage with entrepreneurs at every stage of their journey from ideation to maturity and support them with compelling offerings. Our community evangelism program will provide entrepreneurs easy access to technology and resources, so that they can focus on exploring ideas.”
He added that the accelerator will provide access to mentors and technical experts so that they can convert their ideas into products. The fund will offer seed investments to startups that demonstrate early business success.
“In all, through one focused effort we will provide the tools, resources and expertise that startups need as they innovate, build and grow,” Mohan said.
Ravi Narayan, formerly of the Managing Director of MentorPartners will be responsible for Microsoft Ventures Accelerator and its connections with other community initiatives.
Kattayil Rajinish Menon will drive broad community engagements as part of the BizSpark program for startups with other accelerators, incubators, industry forums as well as Microsoft customers and partners in India.
The consolidated approach is crucial for India where the startup ecosystem is evolving very fast with a 302 per cent growth in number of new companies founded since 2006.
Ravi Narayan, a serial entrepreneur and investor agrees to this consolidation.
“Startups already have enough to worry about. Their access to Microsoft, and its vast and varied resources will now become easy and smooth. With its breadth of offerings and its extremely strong customer and partner base, Microsoft is uniquely positioned to help startups in ways that very few can match. I am very excited to be part of the team that will lead this change,” Narayan said.
The community evangelism program is open to anyone with a great idea especially those with solutions to real world problems or creating meaningful innovations.
The teams will have access to Microsoft software, world-class technology support and our huge partner base giving them a better chance of business success.