Six Indian Startups Selected For Google Launchpad Accelerator Program

Google today announced the second batch of Indian startups that will join the Launchpad Accelerator program at Google Headquarters in Silicon Valley, California. The six Indian startups selected to be a part on the program include Taskbob, MagicPin, Programming Hub, ShareChat, RedCarpet, PlaySimple Games.

Paul Ravindranath, Program Manager, Google India, said, “The Indian startup ecosystem is growing and maturing very  fast, entrepreneurs are not shying away from the risks involved and are very eager to learn. Access to good mentoring and advice at early to mid- stage has been a big gap which we’re looking to fill. In our experience many startups struggle with UX, building scalable architectures and go to market strategy. Launchpad Accelerator Program brings together mentors and experts from within Google and external world to help these startups succeed. The first batch from India has benefitted a great deal and we are excited to on board the second batch from India.”

The six nominees will join the program on June 13, 2016. The six-month mentorship program for mid to late stage startups will include $50K in equity-free funding, a two-week all-expenses paid bootcamp at Google Headquarters, six months of ongoing mentorship and access to Google’s full suite of Launchpad initiatives and connections and product credits including Google Cloud and other products.

These startups will join 18 other startups from Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico. The two week boot camp will start by determining each startups critical challenges, and then deploy precise mentorship, actionable solutions, and Google resources that enable their product/app to scale.

More details about the shortlisted startups from India-

Taskbob – A Mumbai-based home utility service provider. Taskbob is run by Crenovative Ideas Pvt. Ltd, and was started in 2014 by IIT graduates Aseem Khare, Abhiroop Medhekar, Ajay Bhatt and Amit Chahalia. The mobile-only startup offers instant home services by sending verified and skilled professional serviceman at the customer’s doorstep to fix household appliances such as AC, washing machine, computer and refrigerator.

Programming Hub – Owned by Mumbai-based, Nexino Labs Pvt Ltd, Programming Hub is an application to Learn 20+ Programming languages such as Python, Assembly, HTML, VB.NET, C, C++, C# (C Sharp), JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, R Programming, CSS, Java programming, etc. Founded in 2016, Nexino’s products reach more than 2 Million learners worldwide.

ShareChat – Bangalore-based company provides a social networking chat platform in Indian languages. With ShareChat users can share videos, jokes, GIFs, audio songs and funny images in Indian languages like Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, and Malayalam. It was founded by Ankur Sachdeva, Farid Ahsan and Bhanu Pratap Singh in January 2015.

RedCarpet – Gurgaon-based startup provides instant credit scoring and enables purchase financing using advanced AI. Users can avail instant credit for online purchases, they can buy any product from any site and pay back in easy instalments. RedCarpet was founded in 2015 by Abhay Tamaria, Sandeep Srinivasa and Kartik Venkataraman.

PlaySimple Games – Bangalore-based PlaySimpleGames, specialises in building simple and fun social games. It was founded in 2014 by Siddharth Jain, Suraj Nalin, Preeti Reddy and Siddhanth Jain.

MagicPin – Gurgaon-based hyperlocal discovery platform, Magicpin, provides a platform for users and merchants, in a locality, can discover, interact and transact. It aims to create a social platform to help people connect and discover shops, restaurants or other services around them.

Prior to this in December 2015 Google announced the launch of the Launchpad accelerator program. At that time six Indian startups, Frankly.me, Holachef, Justride, Murmur, Nestaway and English Dost were selected for the program from India. Interestingly two of the six startups selected, Murmur and Frankly.me have shutdown their operations this year.

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