NetApp Excellerator Program announces graduation of six start-ups

NetApp has announced graduation of its first cohort of six start-ups during the NetApp Excellerator Demo Day. Located in the heart of Bengaluru’s technology neighbourhood, the NetApp Excellerator program is NetApp’s first-ever start-up accelerator, designed to help enterprise start-ups to achieve their full potential through mentorship with one of NetApp’s largest R&D teams.

“NetApp mentorship helped us focus our market research, and identify the right target market and target customers we could go after,” said Ravi Madhira, CEO, Scalend Technologies. “Offering us the support of its large and experienced sales machine, NetApp made the program even more compelling. Our new-found status as a NetApp Alliance Partner has given us a sure foothold in the data-driven enterprise domain.”

The first NetApp Excellerator Demo Day event commemorated the completion of the first cohort, all six participating start-ups – Lightmetrics, Adya, Vaultedge, Vitacloud, Enclouden and Scalend, demonstrated their achievements and progress to venture capitalists, NetApp executives and prominent industry leaders present. Sports icon and entrepreneur, Anil Kumble, was the guest of honour for the demo day event held at the NetApp campus in Bengaluru today. The event marked the culmination of the first cohort’s technology and market acceleration journey. Now as alumni, the start-ups will have continued access to mentorship and go-to-market opportunities with NetApp, as well as ecosystem connects. They will also share their experiences with start-ups in the future cohorts.

“With our rich history of innovation and expertise in data management, we have been able to provide the right mentorship, both technical and sales related, to the start-ups in our first cohort. We leveraged expertise from across NetApp to help the six best start-ups selected from the 250 applications received. In addition, we got them the best-in-class global industry experts to help them qualify the target markets better and supplement their technical capabilities,” said Ajeya Motaganahalli, Director and leader of the NetApp Excellerator program.

Commenting on the program Deepak Visweswaraiah, Senior Vice-President & Managing Director, NetApp India, said, “Mentoring the start-ups in our very first cohort was a valuable learning experience for us. It allowed us to reconnect with the start-up that we remain at heart. We will continue to support the start-ups through the NetApp Excellerator program and provide them with the best ecosystem to achieve success.”