Collaboration advances both companies’ commitment to UN Sustainable Development Goals, providing startups with access to cutting edge technology, know-how and innovation capabilities offered by Microsoft and Accenture
New Delhi and Bangalore, November 17, 2021 – Accenture (NYSE: ACN) and Microsoft in India are supporting 10 startups, which focus on social impact and sustainability, by helping them to scale their emerging solutions and business models. The joint initiative, called Project Amplify is Asia Pacific-wide and accelerates the growth of 33 startups from across the region. The initiative extends activities launched in South Asia in 2020 welcoming business ventures from Singapore, Australia, Japan, Sri Lanka, and more. The initiative has a long-term goal of accelerating Asia’s potential and improving millions of lives in the region and globally, by addressing diverse societal challenges.
Purpose-driven startups from India participating in Project Amplify include Jaljeevika, eKutir, Everwell, Fluxgen, Docturnal, BrainSight AI, Fresh On Table, FreshR, Rocket Learning and Blink Foundation. These startups selected for the program have demonstrated how their product, service, and operations address a significant social or environmental problem and have shown early signs of impact.
Through Project Amplify in India, all 10 startups will have the opportunity to access the latest technologies, as well as know-how, expertise and mentoring from both Accenture and Microsoft. The companies will help startups test and validate proof-of-concepts to re-envision and expand the impact and social benefit of their solutions.
“Social enterprises face many challenges, including access to technology and innovation expertise to scale their solutions,” said Sanjay Podder, managing director and Technology Sustainability Innovation lead at Accenture. “By leveraging the technology expertise and networks of both Accenture and Microsoft, we can help bridge this gap. As these social enterprises expand their reach, we hope to see significant improvement in the status of vulnerable groups in our communities that need support in sustainability, healthcare, education and agriculture.”
“At Microsoft, we empower organizations and individuals to achieve more, through co-innovations and trusted partnerships. We’re committed to addressing some of India’s most pressing challenges, including expanding access to healthcare, education and finance. Many of the social enterprises in Project Amplify are focused on solving these issues, and we’re honored to support them with the technology, expertise and ecosystem they need to scale and make meaningful change,” said Lathika Pai, Country Head, Venture Capital and Private Equity Partnerships, Microsoft India. “I am confident that equipped with the right tools and support from Microsoft, these startups can grow and accelerate India’s future as an engine for global innovation, while driving societal progress. Collaborating with Accenture will help turn lifelong passions of mission-driven enterprises into reality and deliver greater positive change for millions of people in India.”
Accenture will focus on helping startups apply technologies to address critical challenges facing environment and society and to advance organisations’ sustainability agendas. Microsoft’s involvement in Project Amplify is part of its Global Social Entrepreneurship programme designed to help social enterprises build and scale their companies to do good globally. The Global Social Entrepreneurship programme offers qualified startups access to technology, education, customers and grants.
About Accenture
Accenture is a global professional services company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries, we offer Strategy and Consulting, Interactive, Technology and Operations services — all powered by the world’s largest network of Advanced Technology and Intelligent Operations centers. Our 624,000 people deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity every day, serving clients in more than 120 countries. We embrace the power of change to create value and shared success for our clients, people, shareholders, partners and communities. Visit us at www.accenture.com.
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Microsoft set up its India operations in 1990. Today, Microsoft entities in India have over 16,000 employees, engaged in sales and marketing, research, development and customer services and support, across 11 Indian cities – Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, New Delhi, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Noida and Pune. Microsoft offers its global cloud services from local data centers to accelerate digital transformation across Indian startups, businesses, and government organizations.
See Appendix A for more details of the social enterprises in the programme.
Appendix A: Amplify 2.0 cohort
| Startup Name | Website | Vertical | Description |
| Jaljeevika | https://www.jaljeevika.org/ | Aquaculture | Founded in 2013, Jaljeevika supports small-scale fish farmers and builds community resilience and capacity to enhance livelihood opportunities using existing water bodies through technology. It aims to increase the potential productivity of water bodies, reduce distress of rural migration and improve the socio-economic status of the fishing community and farmers whose livelihood depends on the productivity of water bodies. It also enables farmers to learn affordable and sustainable aquatic farming practices and facilitate convergence of technologies, innovation and traditional knowledge systems. |
| eKutir | https://farm-ex.io/ | AgriTech | Founded in 2009, eKutir is India’s first Certified B Corp. Its goal is been to extend novel, technology-driven opportunities to people at the “bottom of the pyramid,” and to enable impoverished communities to develop sustainably. It has not only created a first of its kind smart farming platform for smallholders but has developed operational models which enabled the technology to benefit even secluded communities and illiterate farmers. eKutir has also started numerous initiatives which strengthened rural-urban linkages and yielded improved nutrition and health outcomes in both villages and cities. Wherever eKutir’s models have been adapted, the participation of women in the economy has increased substantially. |
| Everwell | https://www.everwell.org/ | HealthTech | Founded in 2015, Everwell invents, designs, builds, and deploys user-centric technology for healthcare programs across the world to ensure every patient has a healthy recovery. Its technology tools empower end-users and programs to think differently about healthcare. From new ideas in patient health management, to integrating tools into a unified global platform, Everwell tackles critical, challenging, real-world problems in health and engineering innovation. |
| FluxGen | https://fluxgen.com/ | Sustainability | FluxGen Engineering Technologies is an industrial water management firm, based in the Silicon Valley of India – Bangalore. It helps industries monitor their water usage in real-time, helping them use water resources more efficiently and reduce operational costs. Using artificial intelligence and Internet of Things technology, FluxGen helps reduce water waste and reduce costs to help save the planet, bit-by-bit, and drop-by-drop. Its vision is to build solutions for efficient and sustainable usage of water resources and to leverage technology to identify water usage and consumption patterns. Currently, 20+ industrial units like food processing plants, manufacturing plants and industrial towns are using AquaGen to monitor and analyse water consumption, leakage and excessive usage. Since 2016, the start-up has conserved approximately one billion litres of water. |
| Docturnal | http://www.docturnal.com/ | HealthTech | Docturnal Private Limited, established in 2016, is a point of care screening and diagnostics provider of non-invasive and proactive detection of diseases. Its flagship product provides TB screening and detection. Docturnal’s product portfolio also includes solutions for CoPD and asthma with a pipeline of lung-based ailments that can be identified by an aural component. Docturnal products are designed to make the detection of accessible and affordable to the last mile. Docturnal is a winner of the Uber Exchange Top 10 Award Innovation. Its pilots have benefitted close to 2,000 people and counting. |
| BrainSightAI | https://www.brainsightai.com/ | HealthTech | BrainSightAI’s goal is to help patients shorten the path to recovery and good health by taking the leap from informed estimation to data-assured diagnosis and data-predicted prognosis. Its artificial intelligence–enabled application suite provides evidence-based treatment hooks for psychiatrists and neurologists, and a private and empathetic digital aid for patients. It enables greater precision in diagnosis and prognosis for neurological and psychiatric disorders. It is a part of three Fortune-500 accelerator programs. |
| Fresh On Table | https://www.freshontable.com/ | AgriTech/Sustainability | Fresh On Table (FOT) has a mission complete the circular economy sustainability loop by recycling food/farm waste. It collects food waste and recycles it into biochar to help farmers increase their yield. Its focus is on ensuring that everything it does – from how produce is grown, transported, packaged, and recycled is driven by nature. FOT works with over 50 UAE farms to source fruits, vegetables, dairy products, poultry, and seafood. |
| FreshR | https://www.freshr.co.in/ | AgriTech/Sustainability | FreshR, by ZooFresh Foods, is a supply chain platform that helps farmers, distributors, restaurants and grocers sell and buy more local organic meat. It sets standards in fresh meat retail, aggregating farmer produce, and building rural and urban distribution networks for micro-entrepreneurs. ZooFresh Foods is recognised by Startup India and Startup Odisha, and was selected among the top 20 food start-ups at World Food India 2017 by Ministry of Food Processing Industries. It has also been shortlisted for the Agriculture Grand Challenge by the Ministry of Agriculture. It has 40 employees and has impacted 100 farmers and 100 rural and small-town micro entrepreneurs. |
| Rocket Learning | https://www.rocketlearning.org/ | EdTech | Rocket Learning is a non-profit ed-tech organisation with the mission to catalyse early childhood education and foundational learning in India. It partners with governments and parents to impact millions of young children between the age of 3-8 years old. Its vision is to ensure school and life readiness for all young children by enabling access to age-appropriate learning in school and at home. It has impacted 1,00,000+ students, 10,000+ schools in three states so far. |
| Blink Foundation | https://blinkfoundation.org/ | EdTech | Blink Foundation is a unique platform, bringing together knowledge seekers and renowned scholars from all over the world. It provides content and contact via a web portal that connects users and scholars. It offers value education program at schools, with the help of enthusiastic college volunteers and socially inclined tutors. Blink aims to lay a strong foundation for wellness education, reaching out to a wide range of young minds to enrich knowledge for a better future. It has impacted 24 schools, 12 colleges and 6,293 students. Its main objectives include creating a platform for highly effective and scalable programs to identify children suffering from dyslexia and to provide multi-sensorial remedial intervention through app-based and activity-based learning modules. |
