Microsoft announces "Accelerator plus Programme" for later stage start-ups

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Microsoft Ventures in India has announced the final list of technology start-ups that will constitute the 2014 summer batch at the Microsoft Ventures Accelerator Program in India.

The 16 start-ups are Appointy, App Virality, Bookpad, Boutline, Imly, InstaSafe, IntouchApp, Metaome, Sliderule, Voonik, MyBusTickets.in, Praxify, Thinxtream,Touchfone, ZingHR and Zoom. Six of these companies, namely MyBusTickets.in, Praxify, Thinxstream, Touchfone, ZingHR and Zoom, will constitute the newly-launched Accelerator Plus Programme, which is tailor-made for start-ups that have customer traction and know their market fairly well, whose needs are vastly different from early stage companies.

Ravi Narayan, director, Microsoft Ventures, said: "The good thing about this batch is that most of these companies already have a certain amount of customer traction and the Accelerator Programme is well positioned to step in and help them move ahead faster than they would have otherwise. We saw a lot of great applications this time around, which means the start-up ecosystem is evolving rapidly."