Second cohort of Data-driven Startups graduate from the NetApp Excellerator Program

Cohort 3 — Call for applications open to startups till August 5, 2018

Six startups that constituted the second cohort of the NetApp Excellerator Program, which began earlier this year, graduated today. SigTuple, Nanobi, ArchSaber, Anlyz, Dataken and BlobCity presented their data-driven solutions at a Demo Day organised by NetApp.

NetApp Excellerator Program Cohort 2 : February 2018 — June 2018

As a part of the program, NetApp [NASDAQ: NTAP] provided the selected startups access to its platforms and technologies, tools, co-working space, HR, marketing, legal and tech support. The company offered an equity-free grant of US$15,000 to startups upon completion of the 4-month program and the startups own their intellectual property (IP).

“Mentoring and interacting with startups has proven to be a great learning experience for us. This year, we saw a diverse mix of startups with respect to gender, stage of evolution, and geography — a proof-point that increasing numbers of startups recognize the importance of our data-driven business model,” said Deepak Visweswaraiah, senior vice president & managing director, NetApp India.

The application period for the third batch of the program is open until August 5, 2018. NetApp is soliciting applications from startups working in areas related to IOT, cloud, big data and analytics, machine learning, virtualization, data security, storage, data management and other related areas. [Apply] “The fundamentals are the same. We will continue to remain in the data space, with a focus on AI and ML,” said Visweswaraiah.

In the last few years NetApp has repositioned itself from a traditional storage provider to become an authority in the cloud space.

“These six startups were carefully selected from over 450 applications,” said Ajeya Motaganahalli, senior director and leader of the NetApp Excellerator Program. The number of applications for the second cohort nearly doubled from 250 during the first cohort. “Our globally acclaimed mentors and in-house technology experts took great care in creating custom programs for each of them.” Some of the mentors include Sramana Mitra, Founder and CEO of One Million by One Million (1Mby1M) and Nick O’Connor, a mentor from the valley.

Indian B2B Startups going Global

Investors are now placing their bets on Indian B2B startups. One of the startups in the second cohort, SigTuple, raised $19 million in its Series B round led by Accel Partners and IDG Ventures two days back.

“Indian B2B (Business to Business) companies are going global,” said Deepak Visweswaraiah. “B2B startups typically take longer than B2C startups to reach scale.”

“I see a good future for B2B start-up companies in India. Indian start-up ecosystem should have a global mentality and I see that the attitude is changing, however it is going to take some time,” said Rajesh Raju, Managing Director, Kalaari Capital.

Bharat Innovation Fund, created by IIM Ahmedabad’s Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), is looking to invest $100 million in B2B startups.

Strategic Alliance Partners

“We have taken our relationship with BlobCity, SigTuple and Nanobi to another level by making them our strategic alliance partners, which means we will co-create solutions and go to market with them,” said Ajeya Motaganahalli.

“Through their time with the NetApp Excellerator Program, SigTuple, one of the participating startups received funding; Anlyz and BlobCity initiated multiple proof-of-concept projects, and some big customer wins for a couple of other startups,” he added. BlobCity recently acquired Network 18 as a customer, to detect spam comments using its analytics solutions.

NetApp Excellerator Program Cohort 1: August 2017 — December 2017

“Scalend, from cohort one is a strategic alliance partner. It goes to market with our teams,” said Deepak Visweswaraiah. Scalend has built a proof-of-concept (PoC) for HDFC bank.

The Indian government is investing a lot in digital transformation, especially to detect frauds in banking and finance.

“The banking sector has the biggest scale anywhere in the world. If you can solve SBI’s problem you can solve the problem anywhere in the world,” said Visweswaraiah.

After a startup graduates from the NetApp Excellerator Program, NetApp tracks their progress through alumni programs, events and alliance partnerships. As alumni, they continue to have access to mentorship and go-to-market opportunities with NetApp, as well as access to other organizations and influential individuals in the ecosystem.

“We started with a simple aim to make healthcare in India more affordable, accurate and accessible. Thanks to the NetApp Excellerator Program, we now have confidence in our product and technology, as well as operational efficiency and cloud storage strategy — and we are elated to be chosen as a NetApp Alliance Partner,” said Rohit Kumar Pandey, cofounder and CEO of SigTuple.

Last week NetApp received the Best Corporate Startup Accelerator Program Award at the Zinnov Confluence 2018.

Cohort 2 of the NetApp Excellerator Program 2018

ArchSaber — Automates the diagnosis and prediction of issues occurring in a large and complex IT stack to offer real-time monitoring and alerting of all core and noncore infra components and advanced data science techniques to detect and fix these issues

SigTuple — Digitizes pathological slide images and runs cloud-based image processing for diagnosis in pathology labs

Nanobi — Interactive and visual full-stack end-to-end analytics platform that offers services to prepare, analyze, and visualize complex data, while eliminating the need for multiple technologies

BlobCity — Analytics marketplace that allows companies to distribute their analytic products on its platform

Anlyz — Next-generation security product that uses machine learning, deep learning, and artificial intelligence to address enterprise cybersecurity needs

DataKen — Provides deep-learning-driven business process automation, predictive network management, customer insights, and microsegmentation, augmenting artificial intelligence and machine learning

NetApp Insight Neil@NetApp