As India sees the sprouting of accelerators to help start-ups build their firms professionally, the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-Hyderabad) has teamed up with incubator T-Hub and 50K Ventures to establish Avishkar.

Avishkar is a niche accelerator that exclusively focuses on ‘deeper technologies’ such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. Backed by the research strengths of IIIT-H, Avishkar is planning to pick 10 start-ups in the first year, five each in two six-month batches. To start with, in the next few days, it will call for applications from early stage start-ups (with a basic prototype in hand).

“We will run them through a customised curriculum to suit the specific requirements of each of the start-ups. One side doesn’t fit all. They will be given focussed handholding,” said IIIT-H Dean Vasudev Varma, who is also the Chairman of the Board of IIIT-H Foundation. Addressing a press conference here on Friday, he said the accelerator will invest ₹10 lakh as seed money, giving an option to start-ups to allow it to convert it into equity.

The start-ups will be working on issues like speech-recognition technologies for local languages and self-driving solutions for road conditions in the country, he added.

“We will help them present their products to venture capital funds and other investors at the end of the programme, giving them an opportunity to raise further funding,” said Sanjay Enishetty, founding partner of 50K Ventures.

“We are confident at least 50 per cent of the start-ups will be able to raise Series-A funding,” said Ramesh Loganathan, President of Hyderabad Software Exporters’ Association, who is also on the board of the foundation.

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