– selected from a pool of 713 applicants, incubation starts from 28th May –
Press Release – May 29, 2018, Bangalore: N/Core, an incubator exclusively for nonprofit startups, today announced its N/Core tech cohort with 8 early stage nonprofits selected for a 6-month incubation program. N/Core tech is a technology focused track in partnership with Cisco. The organizations were picked from a pool of 713 applications at a selection rate of ~1%. The applicants include graduates from institutions such as IITs, IIMs, Northwestern University, UC Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University, Harvard Business School, London School of Economics, and universities like Harvard, Stanford, Pennsylvania, Cornell, Duke, California, Melbourne, Paris and more.
The applicants work in diverse sectors such as agriculture, disaster management, education, employability, energy, financial inclusion, gender equality, healthcare, human rights, nonprofit ecosystem, sanitation, water and others. The geographies where the applicants work ranges from remotest of villages like Dankuni in West Bengal, Sadri in Rajasthan to cities like Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore.
One of the selected nonprofits, Intelehealth founded by Neha Goel, has developed an open source telemedicine platform that empowers health workers to facilitate tele-consultations with remote doctors and works predominantly in rural parts of India. Change with One Foundation founded by Kiran Verma is solving the blood shortage problem by connecting nearest available suitable blood donors with blood seekers in just few seconds. Another nonprofit is Lakeer that works with state governments & municipalities to identify data-driven solutions to local challenges in areas like air quality, emergency response, healthcare, sanitation and more.
“N/Core tech has selected some of the best tech-entrepreneurs in nonprofit space to incubate, and we are excited to discover such talent and support their aspirations. Through this partnership with N/Core, we seek to inspire and empower a generation of global problem solvers who can combine tech know-how, ingenuity, and social consciousness to solve some of the most pressing social challenges,” said VC Gopalratnam, Senior Vice-President for IT and Executive Sponsor – Cisco India CSR.
Each selected nonprofit will be receiving an innovation grant of INR 10 lakhs. In addition to the innovation grant, the nonprofits will have access to a set of mentors and technology experts from Cisco along with renowned N/Core Partners namely, Sanjay Purohit, ex-Chairman of Infosys Consulting; Maneesh Dhir, COO of Meta Co and current Partner of Social Venture Partners; K R Lakshminarayana (LAN), Chief Endowment Officer of Azim Premji Foundation, and Ujwal Thakar, ex CEO of Pratham and GiveIndia. Each N/Core Partner will invest their time and expertise to provide in-depth support to the startups throughout the six months of incubation, and beyond.
Talking about the diversity of applicants and the overall applications, N/Core CEO Sudha Srinivasan said, “I am delighted to see these young women and men from varied areas of work creating, or applying technology to improve quality of life for the bottom of the pyramid. Cisco has been a deeply invested partner in our efforts to seed technology based solutions in the development sector. As N/Core plans to focus on highly underserved thematic areas of poverty alleviation, we are looking for progressive, visionary partners like Cisco to work with us and bring the required support for early-stage nonprofits in the sector.”
The incubation kickstarts from 28th May in Bangalore. Launched in Apr 2018 in exclusive partnership with Cisco, N/Core tech is a track focused on incubating early-stage nonprofits that leverage digital technology to positively impact society and solve some of the world’s most pressing social and economic problems. The track will support up to 20 organizations during the first year. N/Core is currently accepting applications for the open cohort.
