Microsoft Ventures is the latest to hop on the trend of startup accelerators starting to look for more mature firms in India, TechCrunch reported. The company has announced its Summer 2014 batch for the Indian accelerator where 16 startups have already been chosen. Of this number, six will form part of Microsoft's new Accelerator Plus program geared towards providing support and help to the firms that have already gained traction in the market and are more established, the report said.
The six startups that will form part of the Accelerator Plus program are MyBusTickets.in, Praxify, Thinxtream, Touchfone, ZingHR and Zoom. Microsoft Ventures Director Ravi Narayan said in a statement about the initiative, "This program is for more mature companies which are closer to VC funding. Most of them have made significant progress, so much so that the startup ecosystem is taking their eyes off them."
The other startups that were chosen for the early stage incubation program are Appointy, App Virality, Bookpad, Boutline, Imly, InstaSafe, IntouchApp, Metaome, Sliderule and Voonik, the report said.
Since August 2012, there were already 35 startups that have graduated from Microsoft Ventures in India with around 80% of them already receiving financing to date. The upstarts Adepto and Plustxt which have graduated from the program have already been acquired, the report said.
TechCrunch reported that accelerators are thinking of ways to become part of mature startups that are more fundable. The reason for this is that even if there are lucrative ways to earn endorsed by young firms, the Series A crunch is a reality that those coming from accelerators have to face. Citing figures from Accel India, the report said of the 1,000 companies from 62 different accelerators and incubators in India in the past few years, only 30 of them eventually snagged a Series A.
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