Microsoft Accelerator ties up with Indian IT titan to help startups grow

L-R : Bala Girisaballa, CEO Microsoft Accelerator India, Zack Weisfeld, GM Microsoft Accelerator, KR Sanjiv, CTO Wipro, and Narendra Bhandari, GM developer experience, Microsoft India. Photo credit : Microsoft Accelerator.

Wipro, the third biggest Indian IT firm, has tied up with Microsoft Accelerator to give “enterprise-ready” startups a boost to grow their business.

Startups are considered enterprise-ready when they have achieved product-market fit and are ready to service clients.

Microsoft Accelerator focuses on later-stage startups with a proven product-market fit. It already has a partnership with India’s biggest IT company, Tata Consultancy Services, where “an open innovation framework will be created to mentor and engage with startups.”

With Wipro, Microsoft Accelerator hopes to open business channels to the startups in its roster.

See: Microsoft Accelerator picks 13 startups for its latest batch. AI is a recurring theme

“We have enterprise-ready startups, but they do not have access,” Bala Girisaballa, CEO of Microsoft Accelerator in Bangalore, said. Wipro is already helping startups with investment and clients, he said.

Wipro has invested in Altizon, an internet of things startup, he said. The companies did not reveal the quantum of investment.

Wipro, like other IT services companies in the country, has been looking for various ways to integrate startups into their work systems. Last year, the company’s corporate venture arm Wipro Ventures said it wanted to invest in early-stage venture capital funds based in the US. It is also buying minority stakes in startups to help fill gaps in its own range of offerings.

“Startups are a big component of our innovation journey, and when you look at Microsoft’s [Accelerator] portfolio, we see great synergies,” K.R. Sanjiv, chief technology officer at Wipro, said.