CometChat, a Mumbai based CpaaS (communication platform as a service) start-up has become the first Indian company to be accepted to Techstars Boulder accelerator programme in the US.

As part of the three month programme that will begin this month end, Techstars will seed fund CometChat $120,000 and provide the start-up access to its resources such as mentors, financial, legal and infrastructure for life. This includes access to Techstars’ network of over 10,000 entrepreneurs, 2,700 investors and 1,200 alumni companies. At the end of the 3-month programme, selected companies will showcase their progress and refined product to investors as part of demo day, that will open up opportunities for further growth stage funding and global visibility.

“Ours is a bootstrapped company employing 50 people. With the Techstars network and mentoring programme we will be able to scale CometChat faster. We will also be expanding on our AI/ML and bots platform allowing our customers to include artificial intelligence in their communication layer with great ease” Anuj Garg, co-founder and CEO, told BusinessLine.

Originally started as a licensed model nine years ago, CometChat was launched as a pure play subscription model in 2018 by Anuj and twin brother Anant. The start-up’s communications platform serves over 50,000 customers globally, allowing them to add, voice, video, text chat and bots to their websites, web apps, mobile apps and IoT. Natty Zach, Managing Director, Techstars Boulder said “This is the first Indian company accepted into the programme. We hope the learnings about building great companies will flow in both directions.”

The start-up launched CometChat Pro, an SDK (software development kit) for expert developers, who are looking to build bespoke in app/web chat solutions in their final offering to the end users. The product is priced at $499 a month. CometChat Go, a ready to use plug and play solution for beginner developers and business owners looking to add a communication layer in their product has also been launched.

“As the decision making power has gradually shifted from CIOs of companies to developers, there is a booming market of B2D (Business to Developer) start-ups like ours, which are looking to empower developers and catch a slice of the pie of the growing developer mindspace. Companies such as Stripe, Github, PagerDuty, AuthO and New Relic are stellar companies built solely on a developer focused product” said Garg.

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