Meet 6 Deeptech Startups That Graduated From NetApp’s Accelerator Programme’s 11th Cohort

Nasdaq-listed cloud-led data storage and management company NetApp on Wednesday (April 26) announced the graduation of six deeptech startups from the 11th cohort of its flagship accelerator programme, NetApp Excellerator, during the company’s demo day event. 

The six startups – Zluri, AppSenitels, RapL, PrivaSapien, Firefly, and Squadcast – also pitched to investors, industry leaders, and mentors about their offerings in the deeptech space. The latest cohort saw an increased focus on solutions in data security, catering to the fast-evolving tech industries.

The accelerator program helped the startups under its cohorts with business and technology mentorship from experienced senior technologists, access to investors, and in scaling the businesses. NetApp Excellerator also offers a grant of $15K to graduating startups, which is equity-free.

Starting with its first cohort in 2017, the NetApp Excellerator program has so far mentored 72 deeptech startups, of which 18 have engaged in proofs of concept (POCs). Seven of these startups have also been acquired. Also, these startups have bagged a total of more than $330 Mn in funding. In that, $160 Mn was raised in 2022 alone, NetApp said in a statement.

Some of its alumni include LightMetrics, Neuropixel, and LivNSense. NetApp also collaborates with organisations like NASSCOM and Alchemist to engage with new startups and then onboard them.

“Increased interest from startups across the world, and investors is a clear indication of India’s growing relevance as a technology hub that meets global standards. Through the NetApp Excellerator, our aim is to create a thriving innovation ecosystem for deeptech-focused startups and help them accelerate their growth,” Ravi Chhabria, managing director of NetApp India, said in a statement.

Here are more details about the six startups that were part of NetApp Excellerator’s 11th cohort:

PrivaSapien

Founded in 2019 by Abilash Soundarajan and Deepika Abilash, PrivaSapien was mentored under the NetApp ExcellerateHER programme, an initiative dedicated to promoting women entrepreneurs.

The Bengaluru-based startup has built privacy technologies for businesses to enhance user security and help them meet global security compliance standards. PrivaSapien empowers businesses to visualise and mitigate privacy risks in data and helps them unlock data without violating privacy regulations globally. 

Right now, PrivaSapien largely caters to the US and European markets. It counts a European healthcare analytics company and a Silicon Valley-based Fortune 500 company among its clients. The startup recently received $1 Mn in seed funding from Omidyar Network India. 

AppSentinels 

Founded in 2020 by Puneet Tutliani, Deepak Kushwaha, and Mohit Joshi, AppSentinels is an application programming interface (API) security platform which helps app developers build secure APIs and security teams to protect users against API attacks.

AppSentinels’ platform helps organisations adopt a proactive approach to API security and saves time in responding to API attacks.

The Bengaluru-based startup is bootstrapped. AppSentinels is majorly focused on fintech and insurtech clients given the high and complex risk the applications in these ecosystems are prone to.

RapL 

Founded in 2021 by Arun Muthukumar and Murali Krishnan, RapL is a SaaS platform that helps enterprises build next-gen workforce by empowering them via AI-driven adaptive and continuous learning. 

RapL claims that its AI-based offering helps create a culture of continuous learning and improvement among employees. It also helps better alignment in business by providing better visibility on any gaps created.

Besides India, the startup also has its base in Seattle in the US. It currently caters to over 70 global customers, including EY, L&T, Dell, and Toyota. It has so far raised $2.2 Mn in a seed funding round in 2021.

Zluri 

Bengaluru-based SaaS management platform Zluri, founded in 2020 by Ritish Reddy, Sethu M, and Chaithanya Y, helps enterprises discover, manage, and automate their SaaS apps from a single dashboard. 

Zluri enables companies’ IT teams with better visibility and control of their SaaS application ecosystem. 

Zluri is backed by the likes of Kalaari Capital, Endiya Partners, and MassMutual Ventures. Last year, it raised $10 Mn in its Series A round. So far, it has raised $12 Mn in total funding.

Squadcast  

Founded by Amiya Adwitiya and Sisir Koppaka in 2018, Squadcast is headquartered in San Francisco and has a development centre in Bengaluru.

Squadcast calls itself a “reliability orchestration” specialist for software engineers which helps enterprises run their IT systems across websites and mobile apps efficiently and smoothly by automating human tasks.

The startup aims to be the easiest reliability and incident response platform by allowing global IT teams of all sizes to uplevel their incident management with next-generation Reliability Orchestration Engine based on site reliability engineering  (SRE) best practices.

Squadcast is backed by the likes of Wipro and DNX Ventures. It counts SonyLiv, Udaan, Clearbit, and American Airlines among its clients.

Firefly 

Founded in 2021, Firefly is a cloud asset management solution provider that enables DevOps, and platform engineering teams to control their cloud footprint and manage it more efficiently using Infrastructure-as-Code.

While cloud complexity and lack of sufficient management solutions lead to service disruptions, increased costs, misconfigurations, and inefficiencies, Firefly helps organisations to boost business velocity, increase cloud ROI, and improve governance by solving cloud complexity.

The startup is Israel based and caters to the Fortune 500 companies as well as startups.