India’s first European startup accelerator, Spark10, has launched its operations at the prestigious campus of Engineering Staff College of India (ESCI), Gachibowli – Hitech City Corridor of Hyderabad.
Jon Bradford, “God Father” of Startup Accelerators Europe will visit Hyderabad in Jan 2016 to formally launch the application process for the 1st cohort of Spark10 accelerator.
Founded by Atal Malviya, Jon Bradford, Paul Smith, Vijay Ketan Mitra, L.N. Parmi, Subba Raju Pericherla, Rajesh Gummadapu and Dr. Suresh Kamireddy, Spark10, is backed by strongest international mentors and angel networks, a unique group of entrepreneurs, VCs and Founders.
Spark10’s global mentor network of 500+ mentors includes Director of a Swiss nonprofit foundation, Jonathan Quigley, World Economic Forum, Switzerland; Director of CHC (Consumer Health Care) at Boehringer Ingelheim, a global group of companies in Japan and founder CEO Sleepout UK.
Spark10 invites startups with minimum viable product in the domains of IOT (Internet of Things), mobile, internet, smart technologies, analytics, machine learning etc. The accelerator aims to provide seed funding support of INR 20 lakhs for each of the 10 selected startups, as well as, provide them workspace for 13 weeks programme. Overall, Spark10 aims to invest $100 Mn across several startups over next 2 years. In addition to that, it is also extending support of international mentors, subject matter experts, angel investors, VCs as well as alumni network.
Speaking on the development, Atal Malviya, founding member of Spark10 said, “There are several startup incubators in the city. However, there is lack of accelerators with global exposure to support the ever increasing startups community in the city and produce next generation Dropbox or Uber. Our founding team has founded several European accelerators including Ignite100, TechStars, Eleven Accelerator etc and supported global startups so far.”
*Accelerator is an intensive 3 – 4 month mentor driven programme, along with seed funding, expert mentorship and global network to facilitate the real business growth. Many popular successful startups have graduated from accelerators in the West, few of these include Dropbox, AirBnB, and Quora among others.
The reason for choosing Hyderabad is due to the state’s emerging startup ecosystem. With India’s largest incubator T-Hub launched recently, Hyderabad has been positioned as the startup capital of India. With supportive government, Hyderabad is already home to over 1000 startups.
Welcome to Flash Feed, your essential source for breaking news and innovation from around the web – bite-sized and updated all day.
