The NetApp Excellerator Cohort 9 demo day was recently held virtually.

Octavian Tanase, SVP Engineering, NetApp, said change is the only constant. We can deliver innovation. NetApp has been very successful in delivering innovation agenda. There are four innovations for real outcome and innovation. Teamwork, as it is very important to achieve your goal. Learning, as something that never stops. Next is craftsmanship. As innovators, we must do work that stands the test of time. Lastly, you need to have a solutions-oriented mindset. You need to have desire to overcome adversity.

Ravi Chabbria, VP and MD, NetApp India, said NetApp brings all the data together in a data fabric. Our solutions work for our customers, regardless of where the data resides. For nearly three decades, NetApp has supported customers such as Dreamworks, Dow Jones, AstraZeneca, etc. We now know that data is going to grow more in the next three years than in the past 30 years. Clearly, NetApp is just getting started. For the last four years, 58 of the entrepreneurs have been part of this journey. In just the last few months, we have accomplished more than we have ever done before.

Ms. Madhurima Agarwal, Leader, NetApp Excellarator, and Director, Engineering Programs, NetApp, said innovation is part of everything we do. Of the 58 startups that have graduated so far, six of them have had successful exits. These are Adya, Aikaan, ArchSaber, Enclouden, Lightwing, and VitaCloud.

With NetApp ExcellerateHER, we have run three cohorts successfully. Some of the names are Arintra, BrainSightAI, FireCompass, Nife, Continual Engine, FireVisor, eCommerce Insights.AI, and Tongadive. NetApp is launching Spot by NetApp, which is a unique cloud cost optimization and automation solution. It is now offered to NetApp accelerator participants as a special benefit. We will soon be extending this to our alumi and partners.

NetApp also offers areas for PoC. These include accelerateML training and inferences using DGX box, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), cloud disaster recovery and ransomware recovery, blockchain, ONTAP AI, and metaverse. All of this would not have been possible without partners and mentors, such as Alchemist Accelerator, Nasscom Deep Tech Club, Nasscom, TiE Delhi NCR, TiE Bangalore, etc. NetApp has also called for applications for cohort 10.

Cohort 9 players
A business continuity plan is very important for businesses. DR-as-a-service has now evolved. Datamotive enables that customers build portability for customers. They guarantee an under-10-minute recovery time.

Yogesh Anyapanawar, Founder, Datamotive, said they are into hybrid, multi-cloud workload mobility. Increasing complexity of hybrid multi-clouds are posing challenges for all businesses. Infrastructure and service outages are on the rise, and business continuity is critical today. Cloud portability is a required innovation trigger. We are enabling seamless workload mobility across and between clouds. Datamotive is an industry-first proprietary platform purpose-built for hybrid, and multi-cloud. We reduce TCO by 300% per year. Datamotive is already deployed at two customer locations.

Puneet Badrinath, founder and CEO, Fabrik, said that everything and everyone will be on the metaverse. The path is complex and time consuming. Fabrik is a no code metaverse builder. You can see everything and everyone, everywhere, in 3D. You can build in 3D with Fabrik. We create 3D digital twins. There are no more silos. You can now make a metaverse in minutes. There are use cases across every industry, such as automotive. assembly lines, aviation, defence, energy, oil and gas, machine tools, mining, marine, etc. You can build fast, connect everything, and scale infinitely. Fabrik has grown over 400% in the last 12 months.

Tebogo Mogaleemang, Organizational Lead, Spectrum Analytics, Africa, said data is the prime driver of RoI for every industry. Data is everywhere, and growing fast. Yet, 75% of the data in most organizations stays unused. A client’s business continuity is at risk. There are prospective use cases across banking, mining, telcos, energy, public sector, etc. We provide digital innovation blueprint to weave your data fabric.

Disruptors with high RoI include storage cost reduction, increased productivity and efficiencies, more revenue and market share, risk mitigation, and regulatory compliance. Spectrum Analytics can increase data RoI through custom data management solutions. You can simplify, secure and avail reliable data for analytics, automation, and by workflow for the modern enterprises in Africa, and the world.

Raghu Bala, founder and CEO, NetObjex, said they aim to bring digital assets alive and give them super powers. It is providing digital asset-as-a-service platform. Blockchain is becoming mainstream. The platform is built on blockchain. All the building blocks for managing digital assets and services are on one platform. Digital assets are broken into four groups — digital assets, physical assets, dynamic assets, and financial assets.

We are an omnichannel platform. We serve customers across four continents and diverse industries. The digital twin management platform is called Neo. The other components are Authentify, Trinity, Artemis, and TruDocs. The solution offers single source of truth, fair exchange, inclusive revenue, transparency and clear titles, high liquidity, micro-metering and dynamic pricing, and funding mechanisms, and co-creation. There are 12 million assets on the platform.

Ms. Ruby Singh, co-founder, eCommerce Insights.AI, said they are helping brands sell way more with AI-powered ecommerce review insights. A small increase in product rating can help sell any product. We have had 350% growth in three months. The market opportunity is huge. Now is the perfect time for ecommerce insights.

Ms. Surbhi Singh, co-founder and CEO, FireVisor, said they are creating self-aware factories through AI. It is very hard to prevent defects. There are reactive process control and manual monitoring. FireVisor makes data explorable! It converts production data into a form that humans can understand. We also provide cognitive monitoring. We also aim to provide proactive process control. We capture the quality data via AI defect detection. This goes through the analytics platform, monitor anomalies, and finally, do root cause analysis. We are the first company in Singapore to build AI defect detection. We have best automated defect detection product in the solar/PV industry. FireVisor analyses over 1.2 million products daily. Manufacturing analytics is an $8.5 billion opportunity. We are raising $2.4 million for the next phase of growth.

Ms. Mousumi Kapoor, founder and CEO, Continual Engine, said they are transforming learning and accessibility using AI. ML has come a long way. However, they still struggle to handle some complex images. Continual Engine welcomed everyone to the future of AI. It is the Shazam for complex, image-rich content. It uses state-of-the-art AI-based feature extraction. We have two key products or mature API-enabled platforms. These are Invicta, that automates tagging, feature extraction and description of images, and Prep, that automates digitization, remediation and tagging of documents. We have activated new categories to financial and healthcare institutions.

Fashion industry is moving to new realms. Apparels can now be shown in any shape and size. NeuroPixel.AI is solving this problem for the industry. Arvind Nair, CEO and co-founder, NeuroPixel.AI, said they are amplifying the digital storefronts. Catalog images make all the difference. Cataloging is a long, slow, and expensive process. SMEs get lower revenues per apparel view than large players. NeuroPixel is now changing the game. We can shoot models that are synthetically generated. We attribute customization for synthetic models. We can reduce process time by 10X and reduction in costs by 40%. We are also enabling catalog image-based personalization. We are also going to introduce hyper-personalization or virtual try-ons. We are partnered by Myntra. We are also looking at international outreach. Our next product will be synthetic influencers, launching in April 2022.