Techstars Shortlists 10 Startups for 2nd Batch Accelerator, Including Nigerian Fliqpay

TechInAfrica — Techstars, a US-based accelerator platform, announced on Sunday (January 26) that it has shortlisted 10 startups for the second batch of the Techstars Bangalore Accelerator, which including eight startups from India, and another two startups from Nigeria (Fliqpay) and Canada respectively.

The shortlisted startups are in the field of cloud computing, media, sports tech, and logistics among others.

“We have founders in this class who have previously amassed audiences reaching millions of consumers, founders who have successfully exited companies, and founders who’ve already bootstrapped their way to businesses that generate close to $1 million in recurring revenue,” said Ray Newal, managing director of the Techstars Bangalore Accelerator.

Founded by David Brown, David Cohen, Brad Feld, and Jared Polis in 2006, Techstars claimed to be one of the largest accelerators in the world. In 2019, Techstars had concluded the first cohort of the Bengaluru accelerator program.

Here are the 10 shortlisted startups:

Broadsheet

Founders: Lakshmi Chaudhry and Shuba Visweswaran
Headquarters: Bengaluru
Founded Year: 2018
Category: Media and Entertainment

Broadsheet curates content from over 200 global news sources and sends them in a newsletter to subscribers. The newsletter features stories on culture and lifestyle, advice on critical debates among other issues.

ChintaMoney

Founders: Uday Wagh and Narahari Rao
Headquarters: Bengaluru
Founded Year: 2017
Category: Fintech

ChintaMoney is a personal budget management tool with integrated payments and investment options as well. The startup offers UPI-based payment options and has tied-up with an Indian private bank.

Fliqpay

Founders: Oluwasegun Adeleye and Ayowole Ayodele
Headquarters: Laos
Founded Year: 2019
Category: Fintech

Fliqpay is an online payment gateway platform for cryptocurrency in Africa. It helps businesses in Africa receive payments from all over the world through cryptocurrencies.

Game Theory

Founders: Gaurav Chhabra and Sudeep Kulkarni
Headquarters: Bengaluru
Founded Year: 2018
Category: Sports Tech

Game Theory is a sports tech startup that brings video game-like experience to live sports. Additionally, Game Theory also runs and manages sports facilities and coaching programs.

GSTInput

Founders: Rohit Anand
Headquarters: Mumbai
Founded Year: 2017
Category: Tech Enterprise

GSTInput helps corporate clients to claim the right amount of goods and service tax (GST) credit for their airline or hotel travel expenses. Brands such as Coca Cola, IKEA, United Colors of Benetton, Godrej, and WHO are some of the notable clients of GSTInput.

Lightwing

Founders: Ravitej Yadalam and Navaneeth KN
Headquarters: Bengaluru
Founded Year: 2019
Category: Tech Enterprise

Lightwing helps clients to optimize their monthly expenditure on cloud hosting on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and DigitalOcean.

Odwen

Founders: Vijay Anand Bhagavatula
Headquarters: Noida
Founded Year: 2018
Category: Logistics

Odwen is an on-demand and pay-per-use booking platform for warehouse spaces. The startup eliminates factors such as middlemen and security deposits to help users get easy access to warehouses.

Picxy

Founders: Jitendra Emmani, Vamsi Krishna and Satish Madala
Headquarters: Hyderabad
Founded Year: 2018
Category: Consumer Services

Picxy is an online platform where it provides stock images related to India. The platform offers stock photos at a starting price of INR 75 per image.

Q Blocks

Founders: Gaurav Vij and Saurabh Vij
Headquarters: Ontario, Canada
Founded Year: 2019
Category: Tech Enterprise

Q Blocks is building a distributed supercomputer for companies to get access to affordable high-performance computing. The company is planning to achieve so by connecting all the idle computing sources around the world to build powerful supercomputers that can be accessed from anywhere.