Startup investment and speed-scaling platform Anthill Ventures, has partnered with the Andhra Pradesh government for its market access programme called A-Scale. This partnership will help the government support the Smart City Mission by identifying smart city solutions across Asia. In turn, startups will also get to pitch to their prospective customers, network with the investor community, and expand their growing business horizons with Anthill’s support.
Anthill Ventures’ A-Scale programme is an Asian market access programme for startups based in Singapore, focusin on health technology, media technology and urban technology. The programme is targeted to benefit 18 startups every year by giving them the required capital as well as access to use cases on business scaling.
Deep technology and deep science startups will be identified from across the globe and will receive targeted mentoring on business model refinement, pricing, go-to-market and sales distribution strategies combined with capital funding from Anthill’s sector-focused funds.
“Creating a world-class infrastructure and a strong set of smart cities are vital for India’s development and we believe innovation is the only way to achieve that effectively. Anthill Ventures with their market access program, speed-scaling capabilities and funds could act as a great stimulus to the startup ecosystem. Andhra Pradesh is looking to create a sandbox that will serve as a platform for rapid product development and prototyping, which enables us to remain agile and responsive to fast-changing needs of the state,”Nara Lokesh, Minister for Information Technology, Electronics & Communications (ITE & C), Government of AP, said in a statement.
The partnership with the AP Government is testimony of Anthill’s efforts to find the right prospects for start-ups and an innovation partner for government entities as well as corporates. Anthill is developing a ‘speed-scaling programme’ for growth-stage startups to enable them to enter large markets like India and Southeast Asian regions.
Prasad Vanga, Founder of Anthill Ventures said, “Anthill Ventures’ commitment to contribute to the innovation ecosystem in India has been strong and is meeting new milestones. Our A-Scale programme, which is a Singapore-based market access programme is strategically designed to help corporates and governments, and through this programme we will be enabling the state of Andhra Pradesh to connect with start-ups that develop leading-edge, urban tech solutions from across the world.”