● In a 5-year journey, six of 58 alumni startups have been acquired and 13 have raised additional funds
● Eight women-led startups mentored through NetApp ExcellerateHER – the current cohort inducts three more, bringing the tally to 11
● A truly global program with 25 startups from different parts of the world including the USA, UK, Singapore, Germany, Israel & Botswana.
Bengaluru – NetApp has announced the launch of a milestone: the tenth cohort of NetApp Excellerator – its flagship startup accelerator program. With this, the NetApp Excellerator, in just 5 years since its inception, has successfully accelerated the path of over 60 startups operating in the deep tech space.
With Cohort 10, NetApp has onboarded eight new startups that are leveraging cutting-edge tech to solve real-world problems. These startups represent diverse sectors like green-tech, kubernetes, computer vision, health-tech, and cloud security. EduFuse, Streamingo Solutions, LivNSense, AccuKnox, NeuroSAPIR, ShardSecure, Kubermatic, and Subcom form this elite cohort and have been meticulously selected based on their technology prowess and problem-solving ability.
Technology, like all businesses, benefits from diversity. Through NetApp ExcellerateHER, a dedicated initiative that promotes women founders, NetApp has mentored eight women-led deep tech startups so far. Launched in 2020, NetApp ExcellerateHER is seeing a growing interest from tech entrepreneurs both nationally and internationally. The current cohort of ExcellerateHER will see participation from three tech startups – LivNSense, EduFuse, and Streamingo.
Madhurima Agarwal, Director – Engineering Programs & Leader – NetApp Excellerator, NetApp India, said, “Five years ago, we embarked on a journey to identify like-minded startups and mentor them with our deep expertise in data management. Through the NetApp Excellerator, we have built lasting technology partnerships with over 60 startups while touching the trajectory of hundreds of others. Partnering with these startups is accelerating our customers’ success with well-engineered innovative solutions.”
Commenting on the launch of Cohort 10, Ravi Chhabria, Managing Director, NetApp India, said, “It is now obvious that data is at the core of most modern business value propositions, and it is rapidly accelerating the digital transformation of even the most traditional businesses. This fifth anniversary of the NetApp Excellerator sees us navigating a new generation of startups that are all hybrid multi-cloud enabled and built on data at scale across the world’s most prevalent cloud services.”
Over the years, the NetApp Excellerator program has evolved to become truly global in nature. As a result, the startups have access to resources, mentors, and industry experts across geographies to gain maximum exposure and knowledge. In the last five years, NetApp has mentored 20 global startups. The current cohort includes five global startups from Germany, USA, and Israel.
Since its inception in 2017, the award-winning NetApp Excellerator Program has mentored 60+ startups. Over the years, it has evolved to now provide a proof of concept (PoC) model that gives startups a platform to demonstrate the efficacy of their solutions in the real-world, and work side-by-side with NetApp to refine their minimum viable products (MVPs), identify additional use cases and possibilities, and determine the startups’ go-to-market strategies. Start-ups are also offered access to NetApp products like SPOT to help them thrive in the hybrid cloud environment. With SPOT and its added features, startups – most of whom are cloud natives, can cut their cloud costs to a great extent.
