NASSCOM unveils Accelerate 10X aimed at catapulting India's startup ecosystem

National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) unveiled its second phase, Accelerate 10X, a program that aims to stimulate the nation's deep tech startup ecosystem onto the next level.

Over the last decade, India has risen in significance and is the third largest tech startup ecosystem globally with close to a dozen unicorns being created. AI has the potential to add US$957 billion, or 15 per cent of current gross value added to India’s economy in 2035 and deep tech startups will drive this transformation as well as spearhead the broad structural transformation of the economy.

In the last 5 years, while 10,000 startups have spread its wings to nurture early-stage startups by incubating them in startup warehouses in 10 cities with the support of the state governments and sponsors, the Accelerate 10X program is designed to channelize the nation's entrepreneurial push into emerging technologies that will catalyse business and economic growth in future.

As the Indian public and private sector focusses on the adoption of next-generation technologies, the demand for advanced deep tech and AI-related technologies has seen an enormous growth, creating an opportunity for start-ups and tech players to provide innovative products and services. The AI startup sector saw an increase in funding of over 70 per cent in 2017 with Natural Language Processing being one of the major focus areas for investors and estimates suggest that 50 per cent of firms in India are implementing AI in their products.

In an effort to build on this momentum and mentor 100 mature stage startups every year, the immersive six-month program divided in phases of 45 days each will focus on three key aspects - Product (Global Acceleration & Mentoring), Technology (Engineering & Deeptech Lab) and access to Patient capital.

Imparting a focused push across key startup sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, education, smart cities and infrastructure could lead to substantial growth of AI in India. Providing a platform for promising DeepTech start-ups to explore, innovate, scale and solve for challenges of the future, the program will forge strategic partnerships with TechStars, technology majors (such as Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS)) in setting up Engineering and Deep Tech labs and set up innovation centres across the country.

Nurturing in the form of strategic consulting, global acceleration, leadership coaching at every growth stage will be provided in collaboration with partners such as PWC, Xinova and CEOQuest among others. Addressing the key aspect of access to capital the program will work closely with several VC/PE partners (such as Saif Partners, Inventus Capital Partners and AXILOR)

The program will have a four-pronged approach

Orient - Focus on diagnostic processes, requirements mapping & establishing critical success factors

Execute - Focus on implementing the vision of startup in phases and achieve target milestones

Take off - Focus on getting business, creating sustainable users and revenue

Scale - Focus on creating systems, processes, business models to grow at scale

Startups have not only changed the lives of Indians but have played a pivotal role in laying the right foundations for India’s digital economy to flourish. Startups are poised to become the future engines of growth of the tech ecosystem in India and the Accelerate 10X program will build on the foundation laid down by the 10,000 Startup initiative to position India on the forefront of the emerging technologies revolution.