Meet The 6 Startups That Graduated From The First Cohort Of NetApp Excellerator

The US-headquartered data storage and management company NetApp has announced the graduation of the first cohort of six startups during the NetApp Excellerator Demo Day on December 12, 2017. The six startups that graduated are LightMetrics, ADYA, Vaultedge, Vitacloud, EnCloudEn and Scalend.

Located in Bengaluru, NetApp Excellerator programme is NetApp’s first-ever startup accelerator to help enterprise startups achieve their full potential through mentorship with one of NetApp’s R&D teams. The accelerator programme provides business and technology mentorship, customer access, access to tools, investors, coworking space and funding grants of $15K. In September, out of 250 applicants, six startups were shortlisted for the four-month-long graduation programme.

Deepak Visweswaraiah, SVP & MD, NetApp India stated, “Mentoring the startups in our very first cohort was a valuable learning experience for us. It allowed us to reconnect with the startup that we remain at heart. We will continue to support the startups through the NetApp Excellerator program and provide them with the best ecosystem to achieve success.”

As the cohort’s alumni, the startups will have continued access to mentorship and go-to-market opportunities with NetApp, as well as ecosystem connects. They will also share their experiences with startups in the future cohorts.

Commenting on the NetApp Excellerator programme, Ajeya Motaganahalli, Director of NetApp Excellerator program said, “With our rich history of innovation and expertise in data management, we have been able to provide the right mentorship, both technical and sales related, to the startups in our first cohort. We leveraged expertise from across NetApp to help the six best startups selected from the 250 applications received. In addition, we got them the best-in-class global industry experts to help them qualify the target markets better and supplement their technical capabilities.”

During the course of the programme, one of the participants Adya raised an angel round of funding to the tune of $250K

NetApp Excellerator: Meet The Six Startups

ADYA: Founded by Deepak Balakrishna and Pradeep Das in 2016, ADYA provides a SaaS services to help companies protect their data in their cloud apps from overexposure and insider threats.

Scalend Technologies: Founded by ex-Paypal employees, Ravi Madhira and Srikanth Parthasarathy in 2016, the Bengaluru-based startup provides an AI-enabled data discovery and insights platform for financial companies and services.

Vaultedge: Founded by Murali Tirupati and Sajeev Aravindan in 2015, the startup helps lawyers complete contract reviews and due diligences faster using AI.

Vitacloud: Founded by Rohin Bhargava and Rahul Vinod Upputuri in 2016, Vitacloud is a digital health platform that empowers physicians to prevent, manage and reverse chronic diseases, using connected technology and data.

LightMetrics: Founded by Soumik Ukil, Mithun Uliyar, Ravi Shenoy, Gururaj Putraya, Krishna AG and Dr Pushkar Patwardhan in 2015, LightMetrics helps make driving safer. The startup helps understand driver behaviour better by providing visual context to telematics.

EnCloudEn: Founded by Satya Kishore Gontina, Abinash Saikia and Vishwa Vijoyendra Narayan in 2015, the startup delivers a proprietary zero-touch private cloud and VDI solution built on its own hyper-converged platform for enterprises.

Considering that Google, Microsoft, IBM, Intel and other leading software and hardware giants have already been providing accelerator programmes, NetApp Excellerator is a late entrant to the Indian startup ecosystem, largely due to the lack of data-centric ecosystem.

As  the first NetApp Excellerator Demo Day event commemorated the completion of the first cohort, NetApp has opened lines for the applications for the second cohort. Startups based on horizontals like IOT, cloud, big data and analytics, machine learning, virtualisation and data security can apply for the accelerator programme.