Microsoft is changing its strategy to engage with start-ups in India. The company, which unveiled its accelerator in Bengaluru five years ago to support early-stage firms, is now betting big on late-stage start-ups. The software major is helping these companies scale up, win key deals and go global.
“We realised that our strength was there. We needed to change the strategy,” said Bala Girisaballa, CEO-in-Residence, Microsoft Accelerator, India.
Average age of three
Microsoft Accelerator said that it had selected 14 late-stage start-ups in its 11th cohort to help them boost their enterprise readiness and go-to-market activities. These include Simplilearn, Hotelogix and Ace Turtle. The average age of start-ups of the fresh cohort is more than three years and among them, have raised close to $64 million in funding till date, according to Microsoft. Their company sizes average about 80 employees and clock an average revenue of $2.6 million, said the firm.
“We have the ability to open them up to Fortune 1000 companies. But when you put them in front of a customer (like a large bank), they can’t be early stage. Slowly, we started moving to late-stage companies,” said Mr. Girisaballa.
Sanjoe Tom Jose, co-founder of Talview, a talent assessment technology solutions provider, said that the firm joined the Microsoft accelerator when it had hit a plateau in the Indian market.
He said that Microsoft introduced the firm to some of its largest enterprise customers in the U.S. including Bank of America, Starbucks and specialty beauty chain Sephora. He said that Talview was able to reach the final stages of closing a deal with one of the largest retail chains in the U.S.
