American tech giant Oracle on October 5 announced the first batch of startups for its Startup Cloud Accelerator programme in New Delhi and Mumbai. The selected young ventures are using technologies such as artificial intelligence and Internet of Things to solve problems such as diagnosing diseases among newborn babies to providing anti-counterfeiting solutions to enterprises.

“What is interesting is that majority of the companies that applied are using artificial intelligence and machine learning and these are areas that we have (already) embraced tremendously,” said Sanket Atal, group vice president of Development, Oracle, in a telephone interview. “This underscores how the synergy is happening between Oracle cloud offering and startups,” said Mr. Atal.

For example, one of the new portfolio firms iNICU enables early diagnosis of critical diseases in neonates by leveraging the Internet of Things and AI and improve the overall quality of healthcare. Another young firm Original4sure provides anti-counterfeiting and advanced tracking supply chain solutions to enterprises in the manufacturing sector.

The Redwood Shores, California-based firm said these companies will be entitled to technical and business mentoring by Oracle and industry experts. Besides Oracle cloud credits and co-working space, these ventures would also be given access to Oracle’s ecosystem of customers, investors and partners.

With $37 billion in annual revenue, Oracle had introduced the cloud accelerator initiative as a pilot programme last April in Bengaluru and it has been a success for the organisation. It now has eight such accelerators across the globe out of which three are based in India which includes Bengaluru, New Delhi and Mumbai.

“We have taken feedback from the startups so that we can improve our products as well. The inputs have been incredibly valuable,” said Mr. Atal.

Source: The Hindu