Six new-age tech startups on-boarded in the second cohort ofLodha Group’s Palava Accelerator

Established in November 2017 by Lodha Group in partnership with Zone Startups India, Palava Accelerator has on-boarded six startups for its second cohort from application pool of 80 startups. These include Faclon Labs Pvt Ltd, Calamus, Edge Canvas, Tilt, Russsh and One Wallet. Since the launch, the accelerator program has mentored 8 startups at various stages, of which 3 were able to convert Lodha as clients, one of them being UtopiaTech. The startups are from varied technology domains such as CleanTech, Governance, Ed-tech, Fintech to name a few etc. The second cohort of the Palava Accelerator comprises startups providing new-age tech & digital solutions such as electric bikes, bike sharing platform for e-cycles & e-scooters, asset automation solution for water, AI based learning management system, mobile-based same-day delivery service, and web applications for city vendors. Startups accepted into the Palava Accelerator program receive support and services including co-working office space, free residential options, business development support, an opportunity to pilot their products at Palava City, access to high quality investor networks, mentorship programs and networking events. The program provides early stage companies a test bed and launch pad for their businesses. ShaishavDharia, Regional CEO, Lodha Group said, "Palava is a great opportunity for emerging startups, given the scale of infrastructure and being home to over 100,000 residents. It is also home to fully functional international schools and retail mall; thereby presenting wide-ranging opportunities to emerging tech startups.” "Palava Accelerator has been working with a diverse set of startups, under multiple models of engagement, and enabling them to establish their product validation by providing them with a test-bed. Over the past 15 months, we have seen a steady traction in terms of awareness of the accelerator program across India, and startups aspiring to be a part of the same, which is a win-win situation.", says Ajay Ramasubramaniam, Director (India), Zone Startups. “It’s really difficult to validate product idea in the B2B domain and especially if it’s a hardware (IoT) product. Palava city was a great opportunity to pilot our product and understand user behavior. The best part of this program was that potential customer (Palava City) was hand holding us to devise a perfect solution.” says Ayush Jain, Co-Founder, Utopia Tech. In addition to attracting startups from Mumbai and other parts of the country for its accelerator program, Palava Accelerator has also conducted two editions of its pre-accelerator program called Ideathon. The focus of Ideathon is on idea stage companies and startup enthusiasts having commercially viable ideas which require support in product building. Till date, five startups have emerged from the Ideathon Pre-Accelerator program from which three have successfully built the product and are now in launch phase. One of the pre-accelerator startup Neuronet has also gone on to implement their AI based Chabot solution in Palava and get Lodha as first customer. Palava citizen and Founder, Neuronet, Vijay says "This has been a great platform at the right time to start building our vision. Accelerator has always pushed us to perform more and helped us to achieve the product milestones. Within 3 months we networked with several companies and got an opportunity to validate our product. All the workshops that we participated in this program helped us to define our roadmap."