Six Indian Startups Shortlisted for Google Launchpad Accelerator Program

Google announced the second  class  of Indian start-ups that will  join the Launchpad Accelerator program at Google Headquarters in the heart of  Silicon Valley, California. The six nominees will join the second class on June 13, 2016. The six month long mentorship program for mid to late stage start-ups will include $50,000 in equity-free funding, a two-week all-expenses paid bootcamp at Google Headquarters, six months of ongoing mentorship and access to Google’s full suite of Launchpad initiatives and connections and product credits including Google Cloud and other products.

These start-ups will join 18 other promising start-ups from Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico. The two week boot camp will start with by determining each start-up’s critical challenges, and then deploy precise mentorship, actionable solutions, and Google resources that enables their product/app to scale.

“The Indian start-up ecosystem is growing and maturing very  fast, entrepreneurs are not shying away from the risks involved and are very eager to learn. Access to good mentoring and advice at early to mid- stage has been a big gap which we’re looking to fill. In our experience many start-ups struggle with UX, building scalable architectures and go to market strategy. Launchpad Accelerator Program brings together mentors and experts from within Google and external world to help these start-ups succeed. The first batch from India has benefitted a great deal and we are excited to on board the second batch from India.” said Paul Ravindranath, Program Manager, Google India.

Amarendra Sahu Co-founder of Nestaway from India , who was part of the first batch from India, shared that, “If you believe you can build a world class product, the mentors will push you to bet on yourself. We have benefitted a great deal from this program and have just closed a $30M Series C, one of the largest investment rounds in India this year.”
The shortlisted start-ups from India include:
Taskbob, Mumbai based start-up provides a range of home services like home cleaning, car spa, handymen services, drivers, appliance repair, maids on demand & the recently launched, at-home beauty services.

Programming Hub - Mumbai based company, provides an App to help Learn 15+ Programming languages such as Python, Assembly, HTML,VB.NET, C, C++, C# (C Sharp), JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, R Programming, CSS, Java programming and much more!

ShareChat, Bangaluru based company provides a social networking chat platform in Indian languages. With ShareChat you can share videos, jokes, GIFs, audio songs and funny images in Indian languages like Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, and Malayalam.

RedCarpet a Delhi based start-ups provides instant credit for online purchases. You can buy any product from any site and pay back in easy instalments

PlaySimple Games, Bangaluru based start-up, specialises in building simple and fun social games.

MagicPin, a Delhi based start-up, that provides a platform for offline merchants in a locality and provides real time promotions, loyalty programs while helping users to discover local merchants and transact on the platform.