Global hardware networking giant Cisco said that eight Indian startups have graduated from its startups program – Cisco LaunchPad. These starups are AlgoEngines, VuNet, Teslon, Torchfi, Navstik Labs, HaltDos, Astrome and IQLECT. Over the four-month at Cisco’s Bengaluru campus, these startups combined innovation and rapid prototyping with access to Cisco’s technologies and labs, mentors and equity-free Grant.

During the program, these startups worked on solving real-world customer problems as well as building creative solutions to requirements identified by Cisco’s internal IT organisation. “They have demonstrated the strong potential for startups’ solutions in a digitising India including last mile connectivity, e-healthcare and analytics to dramatically simplify network operations,” said Cisco in a statement.

Cisco LaunchPad is an open innovation accelerator to enable startups and support India’s developer community. The LaunchPad aims to accelerate India based business-to-business (B2B) startups in deep tech and emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, machine learning, security, IoT and analytics. According to a NASSCOM report, 35% of startups in India founded in 2015 were B2B with a 17% share of private equity/ venture capital.

Cisco offers a structured curriculum with technology and business mentorship provided by renowned international faculty, senior engineering talent and Cisco leaders to all selected startups. Over the course of the program, access to Cisco’s financial, technical and go-to-market resources provided a powerful boost to the startups’ efforts to refine their product strategy, identify new customers and markets and accelerate their time to market and revenue. Company informs that the eight startups also received robust Go-To-Market (GTM) guidance from both Cisco’s India and Asia Pacific & Japan sales team, with the intent to expand access to Africa and the Middle East regions in the future.

In addition, more than 300 hours of senior technology executive time across Engineering, IT, Sales and Services were dedicated to startup mentorship and approximately $2M of Cisco equipment was made available to startups to test and validate their products. Cisco informs that its corporate development that leads its investment activities is actively engaged in shaping the LaunchPad program, from selection to investments.

“Over the last four months they have exchanged ideas and insights with some of the finest leaders from Cisco and the industry. More importantly, we will continue our work with these startups and build on the strong foundation we have laid. They have set the bar very high for those who will follow in their footsteps. We are geared up to welcome the next batch of innovators and entrepreneurs to LaunchPad”, said Amit Phadnis, President, engineering and India site leader.

Opening of the application process for the second cohort would begin in April 2017.

Source: The Financial Express