If you are a B2B Industrial IoT startup developing a product or service that can disrupt the agri, health, logistics, retail, energy etc. then you are exactly what JA is looking to support. Jaarvis Accelerator is set to launch its 6 month B2B IoT accelerator program in Bangalore and Gurgaon in partnership with Incubate Fund, Japan’s leading seed fund upto $50,000 investment and option of $100,000- $300,000 post program funding.
Startups will get access to the right mix of investment, support, prospective customers in Asia Pacific and inbuilt investor connect to validate the idea and conduct pilots so what they develop is highly relevant and has traction with prospective markets.
Not only in India but JA is also spreading its wings into oversees as well. In an interaction with Soumya Gupta of BW Businessworld, Jaspal Sarai, Co-Founder and Director of Jaarvis Accelerator, shares JA’ present status and its future plans.
Excerpts from the conversation:How is Jaarvis doing in Hongkong and what is your future plans to invest in the global startups?We are doing pretty well and looking forward to see the Indian ecosystem getting maturer, especially after joining hands with Incubate Fund. We kicked off several ventures and we have had to consolidate some of them as well. Our partnership thread of course requires us to have an aligned approach on which sectors to invest in and look at growth opportunities simultaneously, things are progressing well from my perspective.
As of now our primary focus is to invest in IoT and Fintech startups, however we are open to anything unique that’s cutting across different sectors. We are interested, if it is a major disruptor, even in the enterprise technology or a business process. It’s hard to define startups by sector sometimes, as it can be a core solution which could be adopted by multiple business sectors.
How is the innovation going on- ‘Is it moving from Jugaad to Real Innovation?’I would say it’s moving at a reasonable pace. We cannot say that Indian startups are leading innovation, but definitely the Indian market has so much more opportunity that the idea could be absolutely normal in the market abroad and still do very well here.
Such as doing existing business in an efficient manner or introducing automation so that it’s easier for people to do things. Be it a store value card, it’s normal abroad however in India it will be a breakthrough, particularly in current circumstances where access to cash has become a major issue.
We have to accept that we have a lot of scope to grow up and we do not necessarily need to innovate but ideate more on organizing the existing businesses. We are not innovating at a speed at which most of the developed economies are but I think we don’t need to, we have so much potential just by making life easier for everyone.
What are your expectations with your new IoT B2B Accelerator Program? We have a lot of expectations from the IoT Indian startups. One is that we would like to get their concepts working in the market in the next six to twelve months. It might not be a ground up innovation of new type of component for example that may take much longer to commercialise, it might be a solution developed using existing components to solve an industrial purpose. (Device based solutions for the Industry segment)
And the second one, we want it to cater the networks of IoT, where it may be going away from SIM cards and wifi technology and work on different parameters and protocols to interconnect our electronic devices for an easy daily lifestyle.
(Technology Networks that are going run the future)What about the new batches and selections for the upcoming accelerator programme?Well, as of now we haven’t put an upper limit to restrict the number of startups that can participate but we usually see 6-10 startups coming in initially. We have Bangalore, Delhi/NCR, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Jalandhar, Kolkata and Chennai at our radar.
BW Reporters
Soumya is a young writer and journalist, with bachelors in Multimedia and Mass Communication. She is an alumini of the Asian College of Journalism, and finds politics and sustainability intriguing beats to work with.
