Speaking on the occasion, Samir Kumar, Managing Director, Inventus Advisors, said, “India is witnessing an unprecedented surge in entrepreneurship, as a large number of new companies are launched every day. The angel and seed ecosystem has matured to help them get a good start. However, today, scaling up is the real challenge for an Indian entrepreneur. With Microsoft Ventures’ Scale Up & Accelerator Plus programs set to address the requirements of middle to later stage startups, we'll see the mature startups propel themselves faster to the next orbit. As an investor, I believe, this is a very important step in the maturing of the startup ecosystem.” Samir and Phanindra were among the jury for the shortlisting process of the Summer 2015 batch.

The startups were selected for the programs based on their current customer traction, market potential and funding stage. The current batch has five startups under Accelerator Plus and six under Scale Up programs. It also included few international startups – three of them making to the final list – Uninstall from Singapore and iBot and UberLabs from the U.S.

 Phanindra Sama, Co-Founder, RedBus.in said: “As an entrepreneur myself, I understand the woes of later stage startups – poised on the inflection point – but don’t know whom to turn to for help. When mature startups are ready to pivot, with bigger goals and gameplan, right mentoring at that stage can be that much-needed adrenalin to help them zoom to the next level.”

Ravi also added that the top 200 shortlisted startups who applied for the Summer 2015 will be referred to the next batch of Microsoft Ventures Partnered Accelerator Programs and the early stage startups will be invited to join the BizSpark program.
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