British Indians pool funds for Indian startups, open new accelerator in Bangalore

From left: Vinutha Rallapalli, Gouri Shankar Sridhara, Paul Smith, LN Parimi, and Atal Malviya of Spark10, Ankit Samadariya, CEO of The Hive, Divya Jyothi, Ravi Warrier, and Swati Suramya of Spark10, Sasikanth Chemalamudi of The Hive, and Rohnak Naidu of Spark10. Photo credit: The Hive

From billionaire steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal to London cabbies, England teems with people from its former colony, India. They bagged nearly 60 percent of British work visas last year and comprise the UK’s biggest overseas-born population.

One of them is Atal Malviya, who got a computer science degree from Gwalior, near Delhi, and went to England for an MBA after working for SAP Labs and Oracle. He became an entrepreneur during his MBA program, and launched his big data text analysis startup Odimax right afterwards.

The 13-week accelerator program is the best form of diligence we can provide to our angel investors from the UK.

A couple of years ago, he exited and decided to pool in funds from like-minded people in the UK who wanted to engage with the tech startup scene back home in India. Spark10 was born.

Last year, it launched an accelerator in the Engineering Staff College of India in Hyderabad, which provides continuing education to engineers. Nine startups were in the first cohort. And now, a second cohort of five startups is in the new Spark10 accelerator launched during the weekend in Bangalore.

“The 13-week accelerator program is the best form of due diligence we can provide to angel investors who are pooling a fund for Indian startups,” the Spark10 founder and CEO tells me during the accelerator’s launch party on the rooftop of VR Bengaluru, a swanky new mall in the tech suburb of Whitefield on the periphery of the city. The entire top floor of this mall is a new co-working space called The Hive, which will house the Spark10 accelerator along with hundreds of others already using the space.

“It will be an open-ended fund and we’re hoping for US$25-30 million for a start,” continues Atal. “NRIs (non-resident Indians) abroad feel affectionate about India, so we came up with a framework like Spark10 to help them feel comfortable about investing in startups here.”

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Gouri Shankar Sridhara, one of the investors in Spark10, seconds that. “We’re interested in investing in India because we understand the culture, mentality, and talent,” he says.

“We’d love to see global products from India,” adds Gouri, who heads the procurement division for a leading European bank. He bumped into college friend L N Parimi, who is a co-founder in Spark10, in a London mall. They got talking about what they were doing, and it soon became apparent that Gouri could align his expertise in procuring software for a multinational company with helping talented Indian startups who produce the software.

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Mentors from the UK

Rooftop of VR Bengaluru which houses co-working space The Hive and Spark10 accelerator. Photo credit: The Hive