PassionIT News

Google India has launched a new cohort-based accelerator, called Google for Startups Accelerator Women Founders program, for women-led startups in India.

Under the new initiative, Google India would focus on providing mentorship and other benefits to 20 women entrepreneurs in each cohort. The sector-agnostic program would focus on the very early-stage to up to Series A startups.Talking to Inc42, Paul Ravindranath G, program manager, developer relations and head of Google accelerator at Google India, said that the program is a pro bono one and no capital has been allocated for it. Google India would not take any onboarding charges or equity from the startups. 

“It’s a program that focuses on helping the founders build the foundational aspects of building out the startup and the technology stack and the teams,” Ravindranath said.

Google India is planning to enable two such cohort-based programs for women entrepreneurs in India in a year.

Over 200 mentors across Google’s teams and other industry experts beyond the company would be a part of each cohort. Besides the in-house mentors, some of the other names who would be a part of the new cohort program include Mabel Annie Chacko, cofounder and COO of Open Financial Technologies, Soham Mondal, founding partner at Triveous, among others.

The specific focus of Google India’s new accelerator program includes mentoring the startups on leadership, hiring, capital raising, building a community, and networking. The women founders would get access to insights on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), tech stack-based mentoring, and product strategy. 

“Besides, peer support and networking amongst women founders and women mentors is something that we are building out robustly for this,” said Ravindranath.

Google’s first accelerator program started in India in 2015. It was earlier known as ‘launchpad accelerator’ and was later named as Google for Startups Accelerator program. 

Google for Startups Accelerator program is among the most popular accelerator programs run by global companies in India. Cisco LaunchPad, Y Combinator, GE Healthcare’s India Edison Accelerator Programme, are among the other such programs.