GSF mobile Accelerator announces next batch of eight Mobile, IoT startups

GSF India’s Mobile Accelerator Program began on the April 15 with eight startups that were selected from a pool of more than 500 applications from across the world. GSF aims to provide a world-class platform for Indian tech startups to develop key relationships and kick-start growth in the fast growing Indian and global markets. The mobile accelerator program will connect entrepreneurs to peers, mentors, advisors and investors in India, Singapore, SF, Hamburg and Berlin. Startups will go through a mentoring and coaching program starting with seven weeks in India, followed by four weeks in SF, one week in Germany, and finally a week in Singapore.

The 14-week mobile Accelerator program will provide the startup teams an opportunity to interact with some of the brightest digital minds from across the world. The startups will be mentored by a diverse group of successful entrepreneurs and industry experts. They will connect with angel investors, different seed and venture capital firms, through rigorous workshops, one-on-one office hours, office visits and informal networking mixer. GSF Accelerator provides support to the startups in five key areas: product development (MVP), go-to-market strategy, global expansion, PR & marketing and fund-raising.

The eight startups:

Joolz is a virtual mobile jewelry store, gathering top brands on a intuitive and interactive application. Leveraging a network of partnerships with top Indian jewellers, they aggregate and curate inventory to offer consumers an enjoyable and rewarding shopping experience online. The company is led by experienced entrepreneurs from Israel with deep experience in the social application and jewellery markets, and is preparing to beta launch in India soon.

NewsBytes: Started by IIT, IIM and Ivy league alumni, NewsBytes aims to reduce the information overload in your everyday news consumption. Their intelligent back-end engine and talented editorial team work in tandem to provide concise and contextual news along with logic-driven sentiments."No lengthy articles, only contextual timelines; one byte at a time."

Gamezop is creating an mobile app-based social network for addictive casual games. It seeks to remove the friction of game discovery and downloads. Each user will be given a handful of new games each week, which can be played without downloading. The highlight of the app is its social layer: users will be able to share games with friends as links, whether or not they are using the app, and challenge them.

TalkMore is a mobile app with a mission to simplify using mobile phones. It analyzes all calls, messages and data usage on the phone to recommend the cheapest mobile plans (saving up to 30%). The team comprises three IITians (Mumbai) with 10+ years of product experience each.

Magictap offers a cloud based IOT platform that provides tools and services required to build smart mobile applications. Their solution combines mobile proximity technology and analytic platform to connect physical media to digital content via NFC and QR codes.

Playselfie is a mobile camera app to share your story through selfies. Users can discover and share selfies with friends all around the world. The app is about being creative and spreading the love with a perfect picture, getting artistic with the camera and having fun.

Rentongo is an online and mobile marketplace for rental of goods such as motorbikes, scooters, bikes, adventure gear, furniture, appliances and more. It’s mission is to encourage renting of goods and promote collaborative consumption. The Rentongo platform is active in five cities – Bangalore, Pune, Delhi/NCR, Hyderabad and Mumbai. The 'renters' can find the right product to rent and then take the product on rent from owner of their choice.

Townista is a mobile app to discover and book interesting things to do in the city. Currently focused in Bangalore and started by IIT Mumbai graduates, Townista is building a platform for event organisers to reach out to youngsters with interesting and innovative last minute offerings. They claim that six out of every 10 youngsters of Koramangala, Indiranagar and Whitefield area are using Townista to plan their outings.

GSF Accelerator has funded 33 startups in 3 batches so far since its inception in 2012. Mobile companies in the GSF portfolio from earlier batches include Little Eye Labs, Pokkt, Silverpush, Zapr, Timesaverz, Daily Rounds,Customize and Airstream.

GSF Founder, Rajesh Sawhney explains,

The selected startups have diverse business models and target markets. However, the common factor between all the startups selected for GSF Mobile Accelerator is their vision to build compelling mobile experience. Ranging from a mobile commerce startup building a marketplace for jewelers, to a mobile startup providing analytics to optimize mobile phone usage, to another one developing an innovative NFC platform, for mobile marketing, this cohort is set to establish new benchmarks in the mobile- tech world.

Website: GSF