Google Launchpad Accelerator 2016

Tech giant, Google has announced the second batch of Indian startups that will join its Launchpad Accelerator program at Google Headquarters in California, USA. The six-month long mentor-ship program for mid to late stage startups will start from June 13, 2016 and each startup will get $50,000 in equity-free funding.

Launchpad Accelerator Program, which brings together mentors and experts from Google and outside to help the startups see success has selected six startups for the program - Taskbob, Programming Hub, ShareChat, RedCarpet, PlaySimple Games and Magic Pin.

Taskbob:

A Mumbai-based startup which recently raised a Rs 28 crore Series A round led by IvyCap Ventures, provides a range of home services like home cleaning, car spa, handymen services, drivers, appliance repair, maids on demand and the recently launched, at-home beauty services.

Programming Hub:

This one’s too Mumbai-based and provides an app to help learn over 15 programming languages such as Python, Assembly, HTML, VB.NET, C, C++, C# (C Sharp), JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, R Programming, CSS, Java programming.

ShareChat:

The Bengaluru-based startup is a local language social networking chat platform where users can share videos, jokes, GIFs, audio songs and funny images in Indian languages like Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, and Malayalam.

RedCarpet:

The Delhi-based startup provides instant credit for online purchases. Users can buy any product from any site and pay back in easy installments

PlaySimple Games:

This Bengaluru-based startup specializes in building simple and fun social games. GuessUp and Word Trek are two of their popular games.

MagicPin:

This Delhi-based startup offers a platform for offline merchants in a locality and provides real-time promotions, loyalty programs. Also helps users to discover local merchants and transact on the platform. They recently claimed that 4, 00,000 selfies had been uploaded on their platform in less than six months.

For their first batch of the Launchpad Accelerator, Google had picked Indonesia, Brazil, and India because of the tremendous growth opportunities in each country.

The two week boot camp will start with by determining each start-up's critical challenges, and then deploy precise mentor-ship, actionable solutions, and Google resources that enables their product/ app to scale.

Google will also provide the startups with access to a full suite of Launchpad initiatives, connections and product credits including Google Cloud and other products.

Google India program manager Paul Ravindranath said, "Access to good mentoring and advice at early to mid-stage has been a big gap which we are looking to fill. In our experience many startups struggle with UX, building scalable architectures and go to market strategy."