Google Developers Launchpad and Social Alpha Join Hands for Social Enterprises Startup Ecosystem
Google Developers Launchpad and Social Alpha announced a partnership to support social impact start-ups in India’s growing start-up ecosystem. This partnership, Social Alpha Powered by Google Developers Launchpad, will help start-ups gain access to resources including expert mentors, tools, and methodologies for building businesses that can drive meaningful impact on the technology ecosystem.
The initiative will enable Social Alpha to create learning programs based on information and resources aggregated from a select group of the world’s top accelerators. Social Alpha will also access Google’s global network, insights from the company’s Silicon Valley-based start-up programs, and twenty years’ worth of Google’s research and best practices on building businesses, products, and teams at massive scale.
Social Alpha, supported by Tata Trusts will be the first accelerator from India to collaborate with the Google Developers Launchpad program, and will join a growing network of independent accelerators across Latin America, Africa, Europe, and Asia.
Manoj Kumar, Founder and CEO of Social Alpha shared, “As we continue to build and grow the lab-to-market ecosystem for high impact innovations in India, our portfolio companies need access to world class technologies especially in the areas of data science and machine learning. Our partnership with the Google Developers Launchpad program will address this gap and help unlock the immense potential that resides in these start-ups”
Kevin O’Toole, Google’s Head of International Growth for Launchpad, commented: “Google is thrilled to expand our partnership with Social Alpha and its exceptional start-up portfolio. The Powered by Google Developers Launchpad program is about empowering start-up communities around the world, and helping them leverage each other for insights and resource sharing. Google Developers Launchpad doesn’t take an equity stake in accelerator portfolio start-ups, but instead focuses on developing companies and their ecosystems over the long term.”
This partnership will focus on supporting start-ups that have the potential and / or are already incorporating Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Technologies in their work. These technologies can play a pivotal role in enabling social impact start-ups to achieve scale given that they work in low resource settings and target customers who most often cannot afford or access their services.
Social Alpha and the Google Developers Launchpad teams will also be exploring ways in which resources can be identified to provide specific support, customized to suit the needs of the sector that each start-up operates within. The Google Developers Launchpad program’s mentoring can be especially helpful in arming start-ups with insight into ways to navigate the investment ecosystem.
In recent years, there has been a rapid rise in the number of accelerators in India. In the early years of the start-up wave, when India was consolidating its presence as the second largest start-up hub in the world, start-ups were facing severe challenges to grow and sustain their businesses. Accelerators have provided immense support to seed and growth stage start-ups to enhance and sustain their businesses, while playing the role of an aggregator to bring the ecosystem together and increase the overall chance of survival of the start-ups.
