Four Startups join VentureNursery’s Second Acceleration Program; Our Take

VentureNursery, India’s first angel-backed start-up accelerator revealed the names of start-ups who have joined their 2nd Acceleration program. These are Interview Master, Klip, Smart Sample and the Venturator.

Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, EVP, VentureNursery said “Over 150 applications were received from 15 cities for the second Acceleration Program between September and November 2012. While majority of the applications were from Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Pune, nearly 30% of them were from tier- 2 cities like Lucknow, Kanpur, Bhopal and Nagpur. Retail, consumer technology and e-business sectors have drawn the most interest.”

VentureNursery’s second batch of start-ups is currently under acceleration and is likely to graduate in the first week of April, 2013. These start-ups are undergoing intense and customized mentoring by an elite group of serial entrepreneurs, charter angels, VCs, technologists and senior corporate managers. They will be presenting to a group of Charter Angels on the ‘Pitch day’ for raising seed investment.

The second batch of participating start-ups, in alphabetical order, are:

INTERVIEW MASTER 

Interview Master, the next generation Hiring Application, is an innovative web application based on the concept of Automated Video Interview Solution which allows you to create, administer, evaluate interviews online using pool of pre-recorded video questions and structured evaluation tool. Using Interview Master for recruitment can lead to 90% savings in time and cost compared to traditional methods.

Interview Master is cofounded by a group of dedicated enthusiasts from I.I.T. Bombay, NMIMS with experience in MNCs like National Instruments, KPMG and Larsen & Toubro.

KLIP 

KLIP is a social shopping curation platform that helps users make better buying decisions and personalize their shopping experience. It provides a community where users can discover new products and do relevant products research through their social connections. KLIP aims to simplify users’ shopping experience by creating visual KLIP boards of products they like, ask questions and post quick comments and opinions.

The start-up is founded by professionals having vast experienced in Social media space.

SMART SAMPLE

SMART SAMPLE is an evolving community of new product enthusiasts. The platform enables the user to not only voice their feedback and experience directly to large corporate at the launch and pre launch stage of the product. Marketers generate trial, awareness and advocacy through the SMART SAMPLE community of more than 50,000+ trained volunteer brand evangelists by providing them free samples.

The start-up is founded by a professional having experience in marketing assignments with leading FMCG majors along with a serial entrepreneur from BTL space.

THE VENTURATOR 

The Venturator is an online marketplace that connects start-ups with eco-system enablers. It aspires to be the first of its kind media portal that helps early stage start-ups to connect to the right resource pool available in the market there by accelerating their growth in the shortest time span.

The Venturator is founded by an experienced start-up media professional.

Our Take

This is the second accelerator this month to announce its batch of companies and it can only mean a good thing for the Indian startup ecosystem as they provide much needed mentorship to first time entrepreneurs, along with seed capital to sustain.

Of the four companies chosen here, 3 are consumer facing and one is business facing. It may be too small a sample to draw an inference from, but it is now becoming more apparent that B2C companies are seeing more traction, when compared to B2B ones.

All of them are product startups, which is an encouraging trend, as more Indian startups are looking to go the product way.

Stay tuned as we bring you more updates from the Indian startup scene.