Online payment major PayPal today announced the graduation of the second batch of startups from its incubation centre Start Tank. The batch comprising of user engagement startup Konotor and HR focused startup PiQube were incubated since November 2014.

Set up in Chennai two years ago, Start Tank incubates early stage startups to enable them to drive innovation in the industry. The incubatees receive mentorship and infrastructure support from PayPal, as well as networking opportunities.

“As one of the world’s largest startups, it is rewarding to see the startups incubated at Start Tank benefit from our mentorship and expand their teams and business during their incubation period,” said Guru Bhat, General Manager, Chennai Technology Centre, PayPal.

“PiQube and Konotor have done extremely well over the past year, and we wish the two companies the very best in their entrepreneurial endeavors,” he added.

Founded by Srikrishnan Ganeshan, Vignesh Girishankar and Deepak Balasubramanyam, Konotor enables messaging between businesses and their app users for customer support and engagement. The company, which was acquired by the flagship SaaS startup Freshdesk in December 2015, played a critical role in bringing out Freshdesk’s third product, Hotline.io.

“The tenure at at PayPal has helped us with growth as a product and a business. We were able to benefit from availing access to great infrastructure to support our business, consult with PayPal architects for technology guidance and bring more structure to our organization growth and business metrics,” said Srikrishnan Ganeshan, cofounder, Konotor.

PiQube, the second graduating startup, has raised $500,000(INR 34 Cr approximately) from The HR Fund during the incubation period. Founded by Jayadev Mahalingam, the hiring intelligence platform aggregates companies and recruitment agencies, and uses data science to help them hire better.

Source: The Economic Times