First batch of 9 start-ups graduate from Citrix's programme

The programme, which was focused on entrepreneurs and intra-preneurs, included five internal teams and four external ones

US-based cloud solutions provider Citrix on Wednesday announced the graduation of the first batch of its start-up innovators’ programme in India, which was launched in August 2014 and included nine teams.

The programme, which was focused on both entrepreneurs and intra-preneurs at Citrix, included five internal teams and four external ones. The company said, it has given a combined grant of $10,000 (around Rs 6.2 lakh) to the four external teams. The internal teams are supported as the employees who venture into building a startup, and they continue to draw their salaries.

The external teams that were incubated at Citrix’s Innovator’s Program include InstaSafe (which provides private cloud network), Karmasnap (a marketplace for social good), Maxerience (that designs and develops electronics for intelligent systems) and Parablu (that ensures secure enterprise adoption of cloud).

“The core focus of the start-up accelerator programme is to enable entrepreneurs create the next wave of disruptive technologies,” said John McIntyre, managing director of Citrix Startup Accelerator. “India is a gold mine of talented startups, and these nine teams are a testament to this very fact.”

While Citrix has not yet decided on when it will launch the second batch, McIntyre said the company definitely plans to do it this year. “We may do it in the second half of 2015, or may be sometime earlier. There is no final decision on this as yet,” he said.

With start-ups and associated systems in India evolving quickly, the country is increasingly seeing entrants wishing to participate in this wave. While the likes of Microsoft have been running accelerator programmes for start-ups in India for a few years now, Citrix launched its incubation programme last year.

While the Innovator’s Programme is focused on early-stage start-ups, Citrix has been running an Accelerator Programme in the US from 2010.