Startup Village firms vie for place on Nasscom ‘10,000 startups’ programme

TechnoparkToday.com (July 2013) >> Nine companies incubating at Startup Village have made it to the second round of selections for a flagship programme launched by IT trade body Nasscom to support 10,000 technology startups across India.

DecideQuick, iTraveller, Finahub, tagNpin, Tuttifrutti Interactive, 4^th Ambit, Smacon Technologies, Cenact and Losinters Labs from the Kochi-based telecom technology incubator will, if chosen by Nasscom for the programme, get support including funding, workspace, networking platforms and a range of services and products to help build their business.

By providing fledgling companies an opportunity to get world-class support, Nasscom’s ‘10,000 startups’ initiative will strengthen Startup Village’s own goal of incubating1,000 product start ups, mainly student enterprises from college campuses, that are working on breakthrough technologies for the global telecommunications industry, over the next decade.

Nasscom has partnered some of the world’s best incubators and accelerators such as Microsoft, 91 Springboard and TLabs, and India’s best angel investor networks for the programme. It received 4,000 applications, out of which only 8% were shortlisted for the second round.

The nine young entrepreneurs from Startup Village who have made it through the first round of the selection process stand a chance to receive accelerator support including seed capital, mentoring and advice; angel funding, high-quality office space, linkages with other similar startups and a Startup-Kit package worth $25,000 of value added services and credits from Google, Amazon, Microsoft and other companies.

Among the firms selected are DecideQuick, founded by Shameer Thaha, which has developed a social data analytics tool to help people make smart and informed decisions quickly; iTraveller an ERP platform for tour operators and travel agents developed by Shiju Radhakrishnan; and Finahub, founded by Ajith K George, is a web based customer management platform that enables share broking companies and equity investment firms to manage all the customer interactions on a single platform.

Siddharth Gupta’s tagNpin by provides loyalty program as a service to all merchants on a single platform; Tuttifrutti interactive, founded by Ajish G Habib, offers cross platform game development; 4^th Ambit started by Ruby Peethambaran, is an academic and professional networking site; Smacon Technologies, setup by Sreekesh Pai, specializes in web and mobile app development; Cenact, by Prateek Jain, is developing multiple mobile and tablet offerings around personalized videos and Losinters Labs, a company set up by Nithin S, is working on a new search concept.