Google invites startups to apply for the third batch of Launchpad Accelerator India

by Suman Gupta

India, August, 2019: Google is inviting applications for the third batch of Launchpad Accelerator India. The last date of applications is August 18, 2019. The program, now in its second year, mentors early-stage startups on various aspects of their business, across the areas of technology, product strategy, marketing, UX/UI and leadership. 

Speaking about the program, Paul Ravindranath, Program Manager, Launchpad Accelerator India, said ‘The program theme Solve for India, focuses on mentoring startups that seek to address some of India’s most complex problems in the areas of healthcare, fintech, sustainability, among several others, using AI/ML technology. With over two decades of experience in building some of the world’s most-used technology products, Google is uniquely positioned to facilitate the Indian startup ecosystem in building scalable and globally relevant solutions, and Launchpad Accelerator India is one of the key ways in which we drive this.’

Apply Now for Class 3 of Google Launchpad Accelerator: Startups that use technology like AI/ML to solve systemic problems in India can submit their applications by visiting Launchpad Accelerator and submitting their applications under ‘Launch Accelerator India’ by August 18, 2019. The batch will start with a 1 week bootcamp in mid-October, in Bengaluru, Karnataka.

Before applying, startups should meet the following criteria to be eligible for the program:

Be a technology startup

Be based in India

Have preferably at least raised seed funding

Address a challenge that is specific to India

Use advanced technology like AI/ML to power the solution

Each class will receive mentorship and support from the best of Google in AI/ML, Cloud, UX, Android, Web, Product Strategy and Marketing. Startups will also receive Google Cloud Credits from $20K, going up to $100K each.

A look back at Class 2:  With Class 2, Google took the mentee startups through intensive mentorship bootcamps delivered by Google & industry experts, spanning across the areas of technology, product strategy, marketing, UX/UI and leadership.

The program is designed to address the specific needs of the startups in each batch. Startups seeking help with their machine learning algorithms were taken through a machine learning bootcamp while, startups that needed to overhaul their customer onboarding journeys or improve their customer retention went through design sprints.

In addition to technical mentoring, founders were also coached on key aspects of leadership such as empathy, in a Google-created ‘Leaders Lab’, specially conceived to make leaders aware of the blindspots in their management styles.

“We have been trying to streamline our ML engines, but finding ML experts can be tough. Through the Launchpad program, we have been connected to ML experts across the globe who have worked on similar problems and have given us interesting ideas which we are currently implementing” – SmartCoin.

“Our assumption was that decreasing the dropout rate of customers might be most important. Although it is important, we realized before dropout, getting more customers to onboard was more important. Hence we understood that we need to work on content marketing and go through a design sprint too. The design sprint helped to reduce the customer onboarding time by 50%”  – FinancePeer.

“With due credit to its name, Launchpad truly boosts, accelerates, course corrects and motivates startups to succeed at scale by bringing the finest of Google and industry specialists from a variety of backgrounds to support these startups’ vision” – Vivian Gomes, Director of User Experience at HFR&D, Mentor, Google Launchpad Accelerator.

About Google: Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Through products and platforms like Search, Maps, Gmail, Android, Google Play, Chrome and YouTube, Google plays a meaningful role in the daily lives of billions of people and has become one of the most widely-known companies in the world. Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.