Five start-ups complete 24-week programme under guidance of 'CoWrks'

Five start-ups have successfully completed a 24-week programme by the CoWrks Foundry aimed at helping the companies lay the foundation for their success.

The CoWrks Foundry is an acceleration programme driven by Bengaluru-headquartered shared office space provider CoWrks.

The Foundry's framework nurtures durable and scalable businesses by investing in the ideas and the minds behind them.

Out of the over 350 start-ups that applied for the programme, the final five that were selected to be a part of the accelerator were Wagonfly, Understand Better, Ayasta, Betterly and T-Scale Hub.

These companies were assisted with everything from initial seed capital and client acquisition to the art of crafting a stellar pitch, CoWrks Foundry said in a statement.

"We have spent around $80,000 on the programme. This is excluding the co-working space cost that we provide our founders at no cost," Nruthya Madappa, Managing Partner, The Cowrks Foundry, told IANS.

Each of the five startups was assigned dedicated mentors and experts from relevant industries, to provide targeted coaching and guidance.

The Foundry said it would continue to aid these start-ups in terms of mentorship and guidance as a part of its post-programme support.

By participating in the programme, the five startups got the opportunity to pitch their products, ideas and business models to venture capitalists, and prominent industry leaders.

The programme for the first cohort concluded on Wednesday with a "Demo Day" that allowed selected start-ups housed within the CoWrks community to pitch their products.

"What drew us to the Foundry was the team behind it. They have an inherent understanding of what start-ups need in order to succeed and what sort of help is required at various stages," said Ravi Teja Avasarala, Co-Founder of Ayasta, a company that uses data to track anomalies in the electrical grid.

"The Foundry programme made us better founders which would eventually lead us to become successful entrepreneurs," Avasarala said.

The CoWrks Foundry said it is now inviting applications for the second programme by the end of this month.

The 24 week-long programmes aimed at nurturing 10 start-ups will commence in January 2019, it said.

"The investment will be 10 times higher than what we did on the first cohort," Madappa said.