As part of strategic alliance between Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the State government, the second phase of flagship global accelerator and incubation programme ‘Xlr8AP’ was launched at the Sunrise Incubation Tower, here on Tuesday.
With the launch, the Xlr8AP, which was earlier located at Tirupati, will now function from Visakhapatnam. It is a joint venture programme between the A.P. Innovation Society, FICCI and IC2 of University of Texas at Austin. Space for the programme has been allotted in the Sunrise Incubation Tower at Rushikonda.
“We hope to give scope to several startups to scale up,” APIS CEO Winny Patro said, adding that the reason for relocation was the availability of robust industrial infrastructure in the city.
The Xlr8AP is aimed at establishing a world-class technology innovation ecosystem in A.P. through training, advanced capacity-building for innovators and entrepreneurs and incubation and acceleration of tech companies. The initiative will assist in the mobilisation of venture capital and provides access to the global network of both FICCI and IC2.
Second phase
Mr. Patro said Xlr8 has so far trained 132 startups in its first phase of operations. The phase-II will see another four cohorts. For every cohort, 33 startups will be short-listed out of which 25 to be declared eligible for attending the cohort for four months. Of these, eight will be considered for advanced acceleration with domestic and international business development support.
