Eight startups who were part of Zeroth.AI’s first-ever accelerator programme in India concluded their three-month long cohort with a demo day in Bengaluru on Tuesday.
Zeroth.AI is a leading early-stage investor for AI and ML startups in Asia and as part of #Z04, their fourth and the first ever accelerator programme in India , 28 startups from Japan and Hong Kong, including eight Indian
Speaking about the success of #Z04 to AIM, Tak Lo, the founder of Zeroth.AI said, “This is our first time in Bengaluru and I couldn’t be more proud of all the founders in terms of how they have grown. India is a very diverse country, that’s the amazing thing and technology can be a pioneer in vastly different ways — that’s why we want to be here, solving different problems.”
The startups included med-tech startups which look into unstructured data for precision medicine to autonomous drone delivery company started by two undergraduate students.
For the demo day, which marked the end of the programme, the startups were required to pitch their products to potential investors. Zeroth, which has been actively involved from funding to providing requisite mentorship has also been training these startups to make the perfect pitch.
“There is innovation in India and the only that we lack is support. Through programmes like this, we aim to create an AI community and I want more people to understand what AI is and know why we invest. About the event, I strongly feel that it has been a success,” says Sachin Unni, Partner, India, Zeroth, AI when asked about the difficulty in finalising the set of startups from India.
Speaking about her experience in the demo day, Dr Mrudula Kulkarni, Chief Medical Officer of Kvinna, a participating startup said, “Our experience with Zeroth has been amazing and the environment here has been very encouraging. They have played a very vital role in mentoring us. For the demo, my pitch was 25 slides long and it is because of their guidance that we were able to make it more compact and concise.” Kvinna is Pune-based startup that leverages AI and ML to make timely medical advice for women.
Why India?
Established in 2016, the Hong Kong-headquartered company has been actively involved in identifying niche startups that are addressing unique issues in society. Ever since its inception, Zeroth.AI has admitted 63 companies in 18 countries.
“We want to solve problems using technology that are uniquely Indian and that’s what we want to do. Also, What is interesting about this market is the ability for analytics to proliferate and we want to aid this process,” says Lo.
The Eight Startups Who Participated In #Z04 Are:
Codeplay Labs: The startup developed bolo, a voice-assistant technology that facilitates user interactions with smartphones and other IoT devices. F
Deepsight AI Labs: The startup’s SpuerSecure uses computer vision platform using advanced AI and proprietary algorithms to detect a potential threat from CCTV video streams in real-time.
Deepsync Technologies: Uses voice-cloning technology to enable developers to build voice applications using existing apps like Alexa, Google Home etc to create custom voice or use a famous voice in their app.
Kvinna: Kvinna works towards building healthcare products with a vision that no woman should be deprived of the right and timely medical advice. The company has several patents related to the product on topics such as context-based machine learning, reverse hypothesis machine learning and intent action ontology.
MikeLegal: Has built an AI-powered legal associate to create an ecosystem of legal tools to help teams be more efficient, make better sense of the legal data and strategies better.
The Solar Labs: The startup’s SaaS platform helps solar firms analyse and optimise solar panel layouts by automatically creating construction-ready blueprints
Unreal AI: Its platform makes it easy to deploy computer vision models to edge devices. Its platform helps technical teams optimise their models and scale their edge device infrastructure so that their models run smoothly.
Vizbee: Creates an autonomous drone delivery system for the purpose of emergency response and last mile deliveries. Their platform allows drone operators to automate the deployment and recovery of drones in the field so that they can complete their tasks more efficiently.
