Archive for category: Accelerator

We are excited to share that we have launched the 6.0 cohort of the WIC Microsoft Cloud Accelerator virtually on August 27, 2021. Announced ahead of the signature event #WICxUNGA, this Accelerator enables female tech founders to leverage the power of partnering with hyperscalers like Microsoft to become enterprise-ready.

Women in Cloud has successfully graduated 60+ women-led companies over 5 previous cohorts with a recent global expansion with a focus to 9 countries around the world: United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, India, Kenya, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. The program is designed to help women tech founders win enterprise opportunities, get access to Azure credits, an advisor & investor community, participate in MS Startup program and a global stage to showcase their businesses while co-building, co-marketing and co-selling with Microsoft and their distribution channels. 

The Cloud Accelerator combines training, access to industry leaders, structured training and office hours, industry events, self-learning content, and more, all via digital platforms making the Accelerator accessible to women-led business worldwide. Women in Cloud is excited to announce the following 10 companies from 4 countries as accepted in the 6.0 cohort of their award-winning Microsoft Cloud Accelerator:

Women In Cloud’s Microsoft Cloud Accelerator is designed as an immersive 6-month program to assist women-led tech companies to build stronger co-sell plans with Microsoft and their distribution channels . This program is expertly designed to help women tech entrepreneurs win enterprise opportunities, get access to Azure credits, an advisor community, and a global stage to showcase their business.

The 6.0 Cohort Immersive Kickoff session held on Friday, August 27, 2021. The first session featured curated speakers, Chaitra Vedullapalli, Co-Founder and President of WiC; Karen Fassio, Director of Microsoft WW Partner Marketing; Pradnya Desh, CEO of Advocat Technologies; Padma Subramanian, CEO of Fyrii.ai; and Patti Dobrowolski, CEO & Creative Activator of Up Your Creative Genius. The speakers consisted of founders, industry leaders and previous cohort entrepreneurs who set the tone for the new class about the current industry landscape, how to vision their cloud businesses, along with deliverables and takeaways by the end of 6 months. 

This kickoff focused on helping founders develop their future vision and this experience was led by Patti Dobrowolski, 3 Times TEDx speaker and inspired the founders to design their co-sell plan.

Here is the output of what a vision of equitable equity and access looks like for women founders.

The cohort 6.0 will be a digital accelerator with built in benefits including azure credits, listing on marketplaces, participating in global UN focused campaigns, bi-weekly office hours, monthly live chats with industry leaders, and continued access to industry stages, has elevated our programming to an unmatched scale.

Going digital has let us expand our horizon and open this program to people from around the world rather than just a region. Cohort 6.0 boasts a diverse participation of companies from the United States, Canada, India and the Netherlands.

This year’s WiC Microsoft Cloud Accelerator is more than just an effort to make economic contributions to the system by empowering entrepreneurs. It is about embracing the new normal and moving forward with a sense of community. It is about adopting self-empowerment and finding comfort in knowing where to turn for support with a community at your side. Most importantly, it is about collective growth and learning.

The Cloud Accelerator combines training, access to industry leaders, structured training and office hours, industry events, self-learning content, and more, all via digital platforms making the Accelerator accessible to women-led business worldwide. Women in Cloud is excited to announce the following companies as accepted in the 6.0 cohort of their award-winning Microsoft Cloud Accelerator:

• rThreat: rThreat is a breach and attack emulation platform that challenges your cyber defenses using real world and custom threats in a secure environment. Think of rThreat as your live fire exercise for cyber attacks.
• Plan Heal: The Plan Heal Smart Health Assessment uses AI/ML to continuously monitor the health of patients remotely for early disease detection and post-treatment monitoring. The solution can increase the quality of health outcomes and decrease the cost of healthcare for consumers, insurance companies, and employers.
• SaaSMAX Corp.: PartnerOptimizer is a robust intelligent software solution that enables sales teams and marketers in the B2B tech sector to identify new best-fit channel partners and optimize their indirect sales channels.
• Theta Retail: Theta Retail is a cloud-based platform for companies servicing big-box retailers under a VMI model. We specialize in providing advanced analytics and AI to companies that historically cannot utilize sophisticated computing to solve their supply chain problems.
• TRaiCE Inc.: TRaiCE is an early warning BUSINESS risk detection and monitoring system, for financial institutions – that lend and invest. Currently, there is NO one single gap free credit risk detection and monitoring system that allows a business’s risk profile to be computed daily. TRaiCE fills this gap, by combining internal financial data with external financial data APIs + Publicly available News Feeds 24×7 to compute a DAILY risk index, projecting it to the next 3 to 6 months, rank ordering businesses daily by risk and watch levels.
• Planimetron Inc.: Propidex is an effective, fully integrated space management solution for the Commercial Real Estate management professionals as well as independent architects and space planning firms. Propidex aims to satisfy the needs of the asset, property, marketing, tenant coordination, space planning, legal, lease administration and leasing manager.
• Inspace: An enterprise SaaS platform designed to help companies transform their offices into hybrid workspaces while cutting office rental and operating costs by up to 50% and increasing collaboration by 65%.
• Waves Process Intelligence: A platform to extract, transform and load all your process data.
• ioAirFlow: ioAirFlow’s digital analysis platform identifies indoor environmental quality issues in commercial buildings, including performance, energy efficiency, and air quality measurements. Using wireless sensors and our proprietary data analysis platform, we’re able to spot building problems faster and more accurately than manual energy audits.
• Zhennovate: Our human-centered ed-tech cloud-based platform codifies professional coaching intelligence and scales personalized career, leadership, & life coaching for mindset and behavioral shifts to empower organizational success, at a rate that is 10x cheaper than today’s professional coaching and training services.

This year, Global Affairs Canada underwrote 50% of the accelerator fees for two Canadian companies that were approved to participate in the 6.0 cohort. Their previous generous support has allowed 12 of our WIC Accelerator entrepreneurs to have the opportunity to scale their businesses to become co-sell and co-market ready with enterprise partners.

Women in Cloud’s Microsoft Cloud Accelerator programming is supported by Fortune brands and partners such as Microsoft, Accenture, Hitachi Solutions, IBM, Insight, Boeing, and Global Affairs Canada.

Women are the key drivers of the economy; by accessing the resources needed to launch and sustain businesses, Women in Cloud will address the economic inclusion to co-develop and co-market solutions by providing women the tools, knowledge, and networks they need to build a successful enterprise-ready cloud business.

For more information on Women in Cloud’s Microsoft Cloud Accelerator, please visit: https://www.womenincloud.com/founder-focused-initiatives/ 

We will be hosting a #CloudInnovateHER Pitch Challenge on October 15 as a part of #WICxUNGA. We invite you to apply. Click here to learn more: https://www.womenincloud.com/pitch-challenge/