Google supports women-led AI startups in tech innovation, sustainability

Google for Startups Accelerator programme is designed to enable women entrepreneurs who are using technology to solve complex problems and are making a positive impact on society

Tech giant Google is backing women-led startups which are using artificial intelligence (AI) technology in their innovations ranging from making electricity distribution smart, and managing building operations autonomously to enabling organ transplantation.

The company is backing them up through its Google for Startups Accelerator (GFSA) Program for women founders. The programme is designed to enable women entrepreneurs in India who are using technology to solve complex problems and are making a positive impact on society.

“From a technology perspective, a lot of them (women founders) have focused on AI,” said Paul Ravindranath, Programme Manager, Google for Startups Accelerator Programme. “But here we are looking at companies that are not necessarily AI-first firms, but it can be part of their solutions. We keep it broad so that we can find more amazing companies that are solving interesting problems.”

Among them is TekUncorked, which is making electricity distribution smart, connected, and predictive with the objective of reliable outage-free electricity for all. The key innovation from TekUncorked is LVIoT which leverages AI and the Internet of Things (IoT), a technology where devices communicate with each other intelligently. The firm’s devices continuously monitor the grid for faults, power quality issues, and environmental risks. IoT works in tandem with AI engine to predictively maintain and automatically heal the grid through actionable alerts, smart dashboards, and remote actuation.

Meenakshi Vashist, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of TekUncorked said that as part of the GFSA programme, the experts helped the firm to improve tech stack and server architecture and provided inputs on cloud security, connectivity, and device security.

“Google played a critical role in a significant utility bid by formally backing us up as a technology partner,” said Vashisht.

Meenakshi Vashisht, TekUncorked

TekUncorked is now working with over six utilities across India and has deployed several pilots to demonstrate its innovation and execute commercial orders in 2023. With a strong pipeline for 2024, TekUncorked is steadily enhancing its footprint in electricity distribution by reducing grid losses, and electricity outages and enabling a smooth transition of the grid to net zero.

GFSA is a three-month programme that includes mentorship, workshops, and access to resources and networks for startups from across all sectors. Ravindranath of Google said that in the last two years, the company has increased its focus on women founders in India through this programme for many reasons. For example, they are facing a lot of challenges in terms of access to capital and mentors. Other such challenges include pitching their ideas and hiring and retaining technology talent. “All of this motivated us to look hard at having a dedicated programme for (women), besides our core philosophy of (building) inclusive products,” said Ravindranath.

This is the second year for the women-focused accelerator programme which has supported about 40 companies.

Through GFSA, Google has backed Metamagics, a Pune-based health tech company. It is focused on enabling and empowering organ transplantation. This is important because organ transplantation is an extremely difficult and long-running area of medical treatment. This starts from the early onset of the disease to end-stage organ failure. It also includes travelling to multiple cities, hospitals, and many specialist doctors. Typical hospital Electronic Medical Record (EMR) solutions are not designed to cover and support this long winding patient journey. Transplant doctors are scrambling for data and insights to treat patients with accurate longitudinal data, with trends and shifts.

“We got first-hand insight into these challenges and decided to fix them,” said Anita Kulkarni Puranik, founder and CEO, Metamagics. Puranik said that the company’s ‘myTransplant’ is a preventive, and proactive platform for organ transplant care. It is working with every major institution in organ transplantation in India. Through this platform, the company said that it has touched the lives of more than 15,000 patients in India.

The firm has leveraged AI and machine learning (ML) in building transplant risk analytics. With the impetus it received from GFSA, it is now geared up to leverage Google's large language models (LLMs) in creating clinical decision support tools for transplant doctors. It has also built conversational agents for the patients, leveraging Google’s technology. The firm is now also working on delivering voice agents in Indian languages, which will be a game changer for transplant patients. Puranik said the interactions with Google mentors for fundraising have been extremely hands-on and useful.

Anita Kulkarni Puranik, founder and CEO, Metamagics

Google has also attracted the attention of GoCodeo, which is on a mission to transform the global software quality control landscape by harnessing the power of AI. The aim is to empower developers and testers worldwide with locally deployable AI agents, ensuring testing is not just efficient, but a model of effectiveness and security. Meghana Jagadeesh, co-founder, and CEO, GoCodeo, said that the GFSA programme has been a game-changer for the firm.

“Imagine having a squad of seasoned mentors shaping our strategies and connecting us with industry giants," said Jagadeesh.

Meghana Jagadeesh, Co-founder, and CEO, GoCodeo

The access to $100,000 worth of Google Cloud also provided the firm with the resources to train and refine testing-specific AI models. This also allowed it to carve out intellectual property. Its product boasts adoption by over 10,000 developers globally, achieved without any marketing expenditure.

Another company is Amply, an AI-enabled no-code platform, co-founded by Anshika Parihar and Anshul Goyal. It enables businesses stuck with paper checklists, excel forms, or chat groups for their field operations to consolidate all their SOPs (standard operating procedure) into a consolidated mobile app and dashboard within 15 minutes. Today, it is processing around 10 per cent of auto claims in India while working with leaders in retail and hospitality all around the globe including Europe and the Middle East. The firm has already impacted 150 million individuals through its public initiatives. “From the first interaction itself, the mentors at Google helped us pinpoint and solve the most crucial factors for Amply’s next phase of product-led growth,” said Anshika Parihar, co-founder of Amply.

Another firm LetsEndorse, co-founded by Monika Shukla and Varun Kashyap, is a collaborative ecosystem of social innovators. Its technology-enabled Udyamita platform enables individuals to become nano or micro-entrepreneurs or scale up their small enterprises. Udyamita builds capacity, enables access to affordable credit, and provides continuous handholding and market linkage support to micro-entrepreneurs, leading to sustainable incomes. It is working in about 115 districts across 5 states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Telangana. In the last 30 months, LetsEndorse has enabled over 6200 enterprises.

Monika Shukla and Varun Kashyap, co-founder, LetsEndorse & Shravan Srinivas, Technology Lead

Google is also backing companies building sustainability solutions through its GFSA programme. Among them is Bare Necessities, which is addressing the global garbage crisis. It offers zero-waste, toxin-free alternatives to personal care, home care, and lifestyle products. For instance, its waterless range of products requires customers to mix the 10 per cent active ingredients into the water from their own home, for the soap to be ready for use. This innovation reduces energy, plastic waste and carbon dioxide emissions by 80-90 per cent. Its compostable refill pouches and forever dispensers have helped reduce the environmental footprint. As of 2023, the firm sold 179,547 products, which has saved 103,096,156 plastic units either going into landfills or waterways. The firm has a 99 per cent women-run manufacturing team. It employs women from underserved communities to handcraft personal care products.

“During our time in the (Google) accelerator, we had the privilege of learning from some of the brightest minds, who guided us through some of our most pressing challenges,” said Sahar Mansoor, founder and CEO, Bare Necessities Zero Waste Solutions.

Sahar Mansoor, founder and CEO, Bare Necessities Zero Waste Solutions

Such innovations are seeing a huge demand. Public awareness about plastics has been on the rise. There are alarming forecasts that there could be more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050. Research shows that 150 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions could be eliminated, if we prevented 100 per cent of the plastic leakage from India and Indonesia by 2030.

GFSA programme has also supported Enlite, a startup whose goal is to create a sustainable and decarbonised built world. It has developed a cloud-native, wireless Building Management System (BMS) – Know Your Building. This includes a suite of wireless hardware devices integrated with an AI-enabled platform, designed to autonomously manage building operations with intelligence. The firm said that this system not only brings efficiency but also makes a tangible impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, without the need for manual intervention.

Garima Bharadwaj, co-founder, Enlite

“Enlite has already made a notable impact, just this year we have successfully implemented the solution across nearly 15 million square feet, taking 200,000 decisions per minute autonomously within these buildings,” said Garima Bharadwaj, co-founder, Enlite. “This capability is crucial in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, resulting in an impact of 2 billion kg of GHG emissions saved within just 12 months.”