Know how Microsoft is helping businesses grow

Advertisement
Know how Microsoft is helping businesses grow Keeping an eye on late-stage companies, Microsoft Ventures, which started operations in India in 2012, is in discussion with many venture capital firms like Accel, Sequoia and Helion, among others to mentor their portfolio companies and help them address the problem of scale. This information was revealed in an Economic Times report.
Advertisement

Ravi Narayan, director at Microsoft Ventures, told the ET, "There are huge scaling problems that have never been addressed before. Few startups have solved this problem." In order to explain this, Narayan said some startups were recording a million transactions a day. On the contrary, others were driving huge traffic on their website.

Sameer Brij Verma, principal at Nexus Venture Partners, informed the business daily that "Microsoft has been speaking to a number of venture funds for this initiative including Nexus."

The program, which is known as Hi-Po, derived from the term "high potential", will begin from July. As per the ET report, “The accelerator will pick Series A funded companies of VC firms to work alongside other startups for four months, sans any financial investment from either side.”

Up until now, nearly 63 startups have graduated from Microsoft Ventures. Out of this, 70% of the startups have raised funds. The accelerator has been constantly fiddling with its model to focus on startups that have grown to an extent. The company had launched two new programmes— Scale Up and Accelerator Plus—for late-stage firms in March.

Advertisement

"It's a win-win for all of us. Startups get two parents to look after them. And we can get a bigger bouquet of offerings for our customers who use the Microsoft platform. For VCs, it is a great way to mitigate risk," Narayan told ET. (Image: Microsoft)