Infosys's Co-Founders Sets Up A New Startup Incubator

Infosys’s co-founders S Gopalakrishnan and SD Shibulal have teamed up to launch a new business incubator namely Axilor Ventures, to help entrepreneurs and early-stage startups to succeed in diverse verticals.

Gopalakrishnan and Shibulal, have been joined by Srinath Batni, former Infosys board member Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann, professor at Harvard Business School and director of South Institute at Harvard, and Ganapathy Venugopal, former head of strategy and planning at Infosys to launch this new incubator.

Ganapathy Venugopal, has been appointed as the chief executive officer at Axilor and will spearhead the venture

Axilor will be incubating startups working in the ecommerce, healthcare, life sciences, sustainability and clean technology space. It will focus on scalable, disruptive and technology-led business ideas; and in initial stage it will run three programs i.e. – Accelerator, Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Early Stage Funding.

The first batch of the accelerator programme will commence in the first quarter of 2015.

Further, the incubator aims to assist the entrepreneurs and early-stage startups in raising funds and will also advise them on infrastructure, mentorship, market access and talent,” the founders said.

The Infosys founders will co-invest through their individual funds in the selected startup ranging from INR 30 lakh ($50k) in the accelerator programme to INR 6 crore ($1 Mn) in early-stage companies.

Infosys veterans have been seen very much active in the startup ecosystem in the country. Previously, former Infosys executives V Balakrishnan and TV Mohandas Pai with few others launched, Exfinity Fund, the technology focused fund to invest in startups. The fund recently raised INR 125 Cr. Former chairman Narayana Murthy’s family office runs the Catamaran Ventures, and NS Raghavan has set up a technology investment firm Ojas Ventures.