The Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) at the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Hyderabad announced the onboarding of 10 start-ups for the combined accelerator cohorts. AvishkarDeeptech accelerator (cohort 15), OjasMedtech accelerator (cohort 8) and the first cohort of new Mediatech accelerator.
Since the launch of accelerators in 2016, there have been over 20 cohorts, 26 start-ups in the domains of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning(ML), Internet of Things (IoT), digital health. About 55 per cent of them have been raising follow-on funding.
The accelerator kickoff for all shortlisted start-ups took place on June 2 in the presence of CIE’s panel of mentors and experts from the industry. From an overwhelming application pool of 150 start-ups, the selection committees shortlisted 10 start-ups for the programme. The shortlisted start-ups were from domains of electronic manufacturing, property tech, digital health, tele-readiology, AI, computer vision, and music production.
The accelerator programmes offer shortlisted start-ups up to Rs 40 lakh seed fund along with a detailed six-month programme that proffers four streams of mentorship – Business Strategy, GoToMarket Plan, Technical Review and Domain-specific mentorship. The programme is facilitated jointly by CIE, IIIT Hyderabad, Co-creation Consulting, and SucSeedIndovation Fund among others. Resident mentors for the programme guide accelerator start-ups towards defining a thorough customer segment and business strategy. The programme also opens avenues for the start-ups through IIITH’s research support and collated networks.
Ramesh Loganathan, COO CIE-IIITH, said, “In the 14 years since CIE was started, we have incubated over 400 start-ups and are very happy to see our accelerator programmes also now mature into an engine that is nurturing and amplifying 10-15 deeptechstartups every year. And also that they have in recent years raised large rounds of follow-on funding and generated significant employment.”