Microsoft Ventures Accelerator to conduct 7 city coffee meet-ups with start-ups

Starting October 21^st this month, Microsoft Ventures Accelerator in India will be conducting coffee meet-ups with start-ups across 7 cities of India. Over a period of 11 days, the Microsoft Ventures team will spend a day each in Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Kochi and Hyderabad, to meet entrepreneurs looking to find the right Accelerator to expedite their dreams as well as start-up aspirants who need to have their questions answered before they take that final plunge into entrepreneurship.

Inviting all start-ups to attend the coffee meet-ups, Ravi Narayan, Director, Microsoft Ventures in India, said, “Informal meets like these, where you get to interact with a lot of like-minded people and experts who can answer all your questions, are very helpful. We conducted similar meet-ups last year too, and were amazed at the response.”

“While the start-ups benefited by getting their doubts cleared, we benefited from feedback and insights that prompted us to introduce a few changes in our program that made it more robust. We intend to build deep connections with all relevant start-ups in India, anyone who is looking to make it big in Cloud, internet, mobile and data analytics technologies. We love start-ups that are solving interesting problems, requiring enormous scale. I strongly urge all start-ups and start-up aspirants to find their nearest city, and block the date to attend the coffee meet-up,” Narayan added.

Microsoft Ventures in India features a community evangelism program called BizSpark, an accelerator program and a seed fund, offering start-ups a single point of entry to engage with Microsoft. Microsoft Ventures Accelerator started operations in India in August 2012 and has had 22 companies graduating over the first two batches, with 80 per cent of them having received funding. Currently, 13 start-ups are being accelerated in the third batch, and are scheduled to graduate on November 29, 2013.

The accelerator is inviting online applications for its fourth batch now. The last date for submitting applications are November 15, 2013 and the batch will commence on January 22, 2014 and graduate in May.