A quick look at the applicant trends for the Spring 2013 batch for the Microsoft accelerator.

1. Startup Application Trends
Spring 2013
Microsoft Accelerator Research
http://www.microsoft.com/india/acelerator
indiaaccelerator@microsoft.com
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2. Bangalore dominated, but we got serious applications
from Australia, Spain and London as well
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3. SaaS and Mobile applications dominated whereas Big
Data & Healthcare were minimal
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4. Nearly 20% of applicants were from the top 10*
engineering colleges in India
* http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?281299
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5. Most applicants were first time entrepreneurs, who
had never worked at a startup before
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6. # of fresh college grads applying was a very low 2%,
most were >2 years experience
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7. Nearly half of the applicatns worked in services
company before versus a product company
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8. Nearly a quarter of the applicants have worked
outside India and are starting companies here
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9. Most applicants were solo founders, followed by 3
founders, but few were > 3 founders
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10. Over half the companies had between 4 and 10
employees, with over 40% using contractors
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11. Half the companies were bootstrapped by the
founders, but many had raised some money
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12. A very even mix of B2B and B2C companies which
surprised us given how difficult B2B is in India
© Copyright Microsoft India Accelerator 2012 http://www.microsoft.com/india/accelerator

13. Takeaways for Entrepreneurs
• Bootstrapping is the only way Indian
entrepreneurs are getting started
• Whitespaces in Big Data and Cloud
infrastructure have very little competition
• Solo founders with contractors seem to be the
norm to get prototype & customer validation
© Copyright Microsoft India Accelerator 2012 http://www.microsoft.com/india/accelerator