Hyderabad, 24 October 2018: Anthill Ventures, an investment and speed-scaling platform for early growth stage startups, today announced that it is collaborating with corporate giants like Accenture, ITC Infotech and PwC for the startups of its accelerator programme ‘Anthill Studio’. Anthill has designed the programme such that, each of the startups gets direct market access and live projects.
In July this year, Anthill announced a cohort of seven startups that bring in exciting solutions for the media and entertainment industry that got selected from over 150 applications received from across the world. Powered by Anthill Ventures & Suresh Productions, Anthill Studio is a market access programme focused on accelerating business growth of technology startups in Media & Entertainment.
Prasad Vanga, Founder and CEO of Anthill Ventures said, “Anthill’s accelerator programs have always stood up to its commitment of helping the selected startups raise investments, increase their customer base and generate more revenues. We are excited with the extensive interest received from leading corporates for our startups of Anthill Studio. Each of them offers smart solutions that can resolve challenges in the media and entertainment industry and create new business models and products to radically transform the sector.”
Anthill Studio’s seven startups ComicFlix, NewsPlus, RecoSense, Saranyu, Scapic, Woodcutter and Rooter will get to scale with speed to the global markets as they will now work on real use cases and deploy their products in real client engagements through the programme partners. These corporate collaborations have enabled over 40 proof of concepts (POC) opportunities for the startups so far.
Avnish Sabharwal, Managing Director – Accenture Ventures, India said, “Anthill Studio brings together a mix of innovative and disruptive startups in the space of media and entertainment. Through Anthill’s collaboration with Accenture Ventures, these startups will get opportunity to pitch to Accenture’s clients globally and in India, which will help them with market access and scaling up of their solutions. We are excited to welcome them to our strong open innovation ecosystem.”
Sushma Rajagopalan, MD & CEO, ITC Infotech said, “As a specialized global technology services provider, ITC Infotech helps clients win in the Digital age by enhancing customer experience and driving deep organizational efficiencies. We focus on technology innovations which create significant and sustainable business impact. Our approach is a very collaborative one. We co-create and co-innovate with our clients, partners and a vibrant ecosystem of startups. We are happy to associate with Anthill Studio and are looking forward to engaging with startups in Anthill’s roster.”
Raman Kalra, Entertainment, Media & Sports Advisory, PwC, said, “Media industry is poised for exponential growth in years to come on the back of deeper, faster & cheaper bandwidth and smartphones penetration in country & that makes it the most exciting times for tech start-ups in media space. There are some great minds & technologies at work to solve some of the pertinent issues of industry & we are very happy to be working closely with Anthill Ventures to mentor and help grow these exciting ventures”.
In addition, Anthill Ventures has also got on-board corporate giants like Cognizant, Qualcomm, ALT Balaji, KWAN and Viacom 18 to provide market access opportunities to the startups. Anthill plans to continually explore such exclusive partnerships to benefit startups.
The programme will conclude in December wherein the startups will get an opportunity to pitch their successes with the POCs offered by the corporate partners.
