Cisco LaunchPad to consider 6-8 innovative digital startups for the second cohort in April

Soma Tah

After the successful graduation of its inaugural cohort of eight startups, Cisco LaunchPad announces the opening of the application process for the second cohort which would begin in April 2017.

Cisco intends to take abut six to eight startups in the second cohort. The selection process will start soon.

Cisco LaunchPad aims to build and accelerate startups that will shape India's long-term success in the digital era. So, "the ability to innovate in different aspects of digitization, create a digital solution that can be taken to market and willingness to work with a larger ecosystem are the three prerequisites that will be closely looked at during the selection process," said Amit Phadnis, President, Engineering and India Site Leader of Cisco Systems.

Cisco will also look at the scope of synergies from the technology standpoint. Therefore, startups that show an intent to associate themselves with a larger ecosystem from the digitization perspective, the technologies that can be integrated into Cisco platform or solutions that can be built on top of the existing Cisco technology platforms are likely stand a better chance.

The vision of Cisco LaunchPad is to accelerate India based business-to-business (B2B) startups in deep tech and emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, machine learning, security, IoT and analytics. The inaugural cohort of startups demonstrated the strong potential for startups' solutions in a digitizing India including last mile connectivity, e-healthcare and analytics to dramatically simplify network operations.

The eight startups were selected from a list of over 200 applicants, and over the four-month program at the accelerator at Cisco's Bangalore campus, they were given access to Cisco's advanced technologies and labs, world-class mentors and equity-free Grant.

The startups worked on solving real-world customer problems as well as building creative solutions to requirements identified by Cisco's internal IT organisation.

"We started the journey of Cisco LaunchPad with the vision of creating end-to- end digital solutions to customers. At the end of first cohort, we have startups working on Cisco platforms around some cutting-edge digital solutions. I am really excited about the long-term value Cisco Launchpad is creating for the ecosystem," said Phadnis.

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, said Cisco.

Access to Cisco's financial, technical and go-to-market(GTM) resources helped them to fine-tune their business model, product and pricing strategy, identify new customers and markets and accelerate their time to market and revenue.

The eight startups also received robust 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. The inaugural cohort also extended their reach globally to select customers, partners and investors in Silicon Valley.

Here are the startups of the first cohort:

Astrome Technologies – It aims to revolutionize the world of Internet connectivity for the remotest of locations with easy installation and automated line-of-sight deployments.

IQLECT – It is an analytics company with a focus on making Real Time Big Data Analytics simple, pervasive and affordable for all types of enterprises – large and SMEs.

VuNet – It has an IT infrastructure management product that provides correlated views and real time insights into application, security and network performance, synthesized from the vast amount of data spread across network locations, devices, applications, storage, users, security devices and data centers.

Torchfi –  It provides the software interface system that reduces the need to hire additional waiters and reduces cost by streamlining the menu. It also manages the orders in the kitchen and reduces pilferage on the cash till. The customer can also make payments through the phone.

Algo Engines – It collects data from sensors situated on wind turbines/solar plates; analyzes it and provides intelligence on the production capacity, future capacity and health of these machines.

Teslon – It has a complete remote healthcare delivery platform that integrates with medical devices to allow for remote medical data telemetry while providing high end video collaboration for doctor patient interaction.

HaltDos –  They work on a comprehensive DDoS mitigation solution that 'Detects, Mitigates & Monitors'​web applications on a continuous basis to protect from hackers. It ensures high availability of website/web services by automatically and accurately detecting and mitigating DDoS attacks.

NavStik Labs – They work on development of technologies to power next generation autonomous aerial robots i.e the "brain" of the drones.  They basically work on technology development to power intelligent autonomous mobile robots.

As alumni, the eight startups will continue to work with Cisco from the integration with the larger Cisco platform and technology perspective and offer support to the future batches at the LaunchPad also.