Ready. Set. Accelerate!: Announcing the 4.0 Cohort of the WiC Microsoft Cloud Accelerator

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Women in Cloud’s Microsoft Cloud Accelerator is back! The Women in Cloud team is immensely happy to announce Cohort 4.0 after three successful cohorts which have expanded knowledge, access and inclusivity of entrepreneurs, while adding dollars to the economic system in the technology sector. 

Since inception, Women in Cloud’s mission has been to create Access for Acceleration to promote Action. Women In Cloud’s Microsoft Cloud Accelerator is designed as an immersive 6-month program to assist women-led tech companies to co-build, co-market and co-sell with Microsoft and their distribution channels. This program is expertly designed to help women entrepreneurs win enterprise opportunities, get access to Azure credits, an advisor community, and a global stage to showcase your business.

The 4.0 Cohort Immersive Kickoff session held on on Friday, August 28, 2020. The first session featured curated speakers, Chaitra Vedullapalli, Co-Founder and President of WiC; Karen Fassio, Marketing Director of Microsoft OCP and Co-Founder of WiC; Rahul Thakkar, Director – Advanced Services Development, Digital Enterprise, IT & Digital of Boeing; Allie Knull, Founder & CEO of Resume Free Inc.; 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. 

The cohort 4.0 is different from the previous editions for a number of reasons. The 4.0 cohort in the time of global pandemic requires us to depart from in-person programming for the immersive kickoff session. This cohort program, as usual, empowers entrepreneurs to more effectively connect as a community and access necessary resources to ultimately grow their business. COVID-19 has had a direct impact on our accelerator program and the way we conduct the program itself, but the pandemic has not stopped us. We have creatively found our way around it using effective digital tools to achieve more efficiency. The connection that we have found by conducting the Accelerator in a completely digital platform has built a family of women tech entrepreneurs to work together to achieve success in the enterprise space. Our weekly office hours, monthly live chats with industry leaders, and continued access to industry stages, has elevated our programming to an unmatched scale.

Our previously conducted in-person kick-off session will be conducted digitally. Going digital has let us expand our horizon and open this program to people from around the world rather than just a region. Cohort 4.0 boasts a diverse participation of companies from the United States, Canada, and Germany. The Digital Cloud Accelerator online course launch is on the agenda next. There is a positive shift in the attitude of entrepreneurs to continue learning, working towards growing their companies and bettering themselves in this time of uncertainty. 

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 cohort 4.0 will continue with various digital lessons, live speaker interviews, weekly digital office hours, and monthly team working sessions with everybody involved. The syllabus is shaped in a way to make it easier for entrepreneurs to seek answers and find success individually. Until we are safe to meet our leaders and entrepreneurs in person to celebrate the progress we will have made, we are all committed to taking part in this journey together. 

The flexibility and commitment to launch the program by our entrepreneurs during this turbulent time is greatly appreciated. We will become the force for change by building solutions not crippled by this chaos. We continue to look forward to this journey with this great group.

Presenting the Women in Cloud Microsoft Cloud Accelerator Cohort 4.0:

  • Priyansha Bagaria, Inviz AI
  • Tiasia OBrien, Seam Social Labs
  • Susan Sanders, Velaku
  • Emily Craven, Story City
  • Isabelle Lopez, MySmartJourney
  • Emmanuelle Tavernier, Oxia initiative inc.
  • Janice Omadeke, The Mentor Method
  • Joycelyn David, AV Communications
  • Kiyeon Nam, Smart B’zT LLC
  • Maret Thatcher, Argyle Inc.
  • Lisa Brown, PUG Interactive
  • Carmen Nazario, ELYON International
  • Linda Holliday, Citia
  • Katina Kenyon, Applaudo Studios
  • Humaira Ahmed, Locelle Digital Inc.
  • Heidi Watson, Canadian Electronic Health Information System Inc
  • Nataliya Tetruyeva, eKidz.eu
  • Garnette Weber, itracks
  • Yuan Karppanen, UNpkl

This year, Global Affairs Canada underwrote 50% of the accelerator fees for 8 Canadian companies that were approved to participate. Their generous support has allowed 8 of our 4.0 entrepreneurs to have the opportunity to scale their businesses to become co-sell and co-market ready with enterprise partners.

Economic Access is the tide that lifts all boats. Together we rise.

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Announcing the Finalists for the #CloudInnovateHERxDigital Pitch Challenge 2.0!

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Women in Cloud is announcing the following finalists for the #CloudInnovateHERxDigital Pitch Challenge, and we are proud to present their solutions

Special congratulations to our 7 finalists that will be pitching their solutions on Friday, September 4 as they compete for the chance to win $5,000 in cash and cloud credits. Click here to see video teasers from the finalists!

  • UNpkl empowers customers to own and control their network data and puts network security on auto-pilot.
  • Captain’s Care takes the hassle out of boat ownership and gives you a trouble-free day on the water. We offer a variety of options to suit every need for marine maintenance and care. We fill the need for the owner operator that does not require a full-time captain or who needs expertise and assistance with marine services needed for their vessel.
  • The Scientific Data Engine (SDE) is a drug development platform that expedites delivery of safe and effective scientific innovations (drugs, vaccines & diagnostics) using disease specific, real-time clinical data powered by AI.
  • RevWork Platform has the intention to change the face of learning forever by providing actionable learning content that can be practiced around day to day events.
  • illuxi Intelligence is a cloud based, hosting and content delivering platform. We also produce, advise and support clients using our business intelligence tools for their content delivery.
  • Proverbs Events and Conferencing – Event managers and event marketers seek better, integrated tools that give us the right data we need to deliver meaningful, engaging events. “Integrated” is the keyword here as it’s not just about the event itself, it’s about tying the event into the brand experience all year round to build trust, loyalty and excitement. In 2020, there’s been a growing appetite for aggregated analytics dashboards. These dashboards pull data from multiple sources such as CRM’s, registration solutions, marketing platforms and social media.
  • iWeb IUMS has created a unique student universe that provides students, professors and administrators an amazing academic experience through a comprehensive digitized educational application provided on a FREEMIUM model that brings banks, fintech, edtech and several other student service players on a common platform.

With this pitch challenge, we wanted to go one step forward as we did in the last #CloudInnovateHERxDigital and give our audience a chance to choose their favorite solution among the lot. We are very happy to announce that, of the above finalists, the audience will get to vote for a solution they believe is revolutionary during the #CloudInnovateHERxDigital Pitch Challenge on Friday, September 4, 2020. As an added benefit, all attendees will have the chance to participate in up to one hour of open networking in the virtual lounge! Click here to register to attend and have your chance to vote. Use Code WIC2020 to access sponsored tickets!

The #CloudInnovateHER Pitch Challenge which was designed to help women tech entrepreneurs across global markets develop, showcase and win enterprise customers. This competition was designed to provide economic access and industry visibility to women tech entrepreneurs while also giving them an opportunity to present technologies that create a sustainable impact in today’s world.

The digital pitch challenge event will kick off with a special keynote by Seema Chopra, Global Technical Leader of Boeing on “Innovating Tech Solutions in a Turbulent Landscape”. Following that, our distinguished panel of judges will listen to each 3 minute pitch and ask questions to learn more about each solution before voting for the overall winner.

Our virtual pitch challenge is breaking the geographical barrier during the COVID-19 era while incorporating new-age technology like Remo. Remo is designed with a focus on large events to be hosted online with a special focus on community networking capabilities at small “roundtables”. The event is supported by Microsoft, M12 – Microsoft’s Venture Fund, Global Affairs Canada, The Boeing Company, Meylah and Remo.

This pitch challenge gives opportunities for women around the world to showcase their cloud solutions to industry leaders and cloud experts. Women in Cloud’s mission is to help bridge the access gap through this pitch challenge and help women technology entrepreneurs reach their goal and contribute to economic growth.

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Digital Etiquette: Showing Up Well for High Impact Virtual Networking Events

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The era of virtual events is here. We are living a life in the outside world without stepping out of our pajamas or homes thanks to the internet and technology. 

Since March 2020, the world is witnessing an indefinite standstill and the internet has become our haven. According to Forbes, Virtual events are up 1,000% since Coronavirus, says a virtual events platform. 6Connex platform has seen more than 52,000 events and subevents since COVID-19. While virtual life and events are convenient, there are still some digital etiquettes one must follow.

The Women in Cloud #CloudExecConnect is right around the corner and will be the biggest virtual event we have hosted so far. #CloudExecConnect solves a specific need within the community to stimulate cross-pollination and bi-directional conversation that can make a meaningful difference in whether or not these businesses are able to succeed. The two-day event is a curated virtual experience which will let you connect with industry leaders from Microsoft and tech giants. The #CloudExecConnect consists of two different events #CloudEnterpriseConnect and #FemaleCloudFoundersBrunch.

We wanted to share a few tips and tricks with our attendees to make their experience seamless and memorable.  

  1. Stable Internet Connection – This is our number one advice, ensure you have a stable internet connection to enjoy the event without missing any bit of the event. This also helps to keep the event flow without any disruption. Another addition to this point would be ensure your hardware is ready to roll. Laptop, chargers, webcam, speakers, earphones are all within reach to help you fully commit to the event.
  2. The Right Spot – We think it would also help to find a nice corner with no noise or disturbance at your home to enjoy any event like you would if you were attending it in person. It would also help if you would mute yourself unless required to help reduce the background noise for everybody attending. 
  3. Know the Platform – There are hundreds of virtual event platforms, each different from the other. When attending an event it is advisable to understand how a certain platform functions, and what are its features to ensure you get the best virtual experience.

On July 20 – 21, #CloudExecConnect will take place on Remo, an immersive virtual space that empowers people to communicate, connect, and collaborate with each other just like they would in real life. We want to help you understand Remo’s features and interface so you enjoy #CloudExecConnect with no hassle. 

Some of the interesting features Remo offers are, 

  1. A roundtable experience which allows 6 people at a table to interact with one another. 
  2. The floor bifurcation which allows you to experience different hubs at the same time like you would in-person
  3. A biocard option that lets you access people’s LinkedIn and other social media profiles for instant connection
  4. It allows you to have a table chat, personal chat or general chat. It also lets you ask questions anonymously, without fear of judgement. 
  5. There is a whiteboard facility for every table which allows the participants of that table to  draw, write, upload content, add mind maps and diagrams, etc. 

Remo is also extremely easy to use and navigate, and if you would like to familiarize yourself with the platform here is a quick video. 

The Women in Cloud team is excited to bring the #CloudExecConnect to your doorstep this July and we are hopeful that this 2-day virtual event will be an experience like none other and we look forward to your presence. 

For more information on #CloudExecConnect, click here. 

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The SheTrades Invest Course: EQUALS, the International Trade Centre and Women in Cloud are bringing webinars to your home

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Earlier this year Women in Cloud joined the EQUALS Global Partnership, which brings together more than 90 stakeholders including, governments, private sector, United Nation entities, academia and not-for-profit organizations to accelerate efforts towards bridging the gender digital divide and fostering gender equality in the digital age.

Last week, we were happy to announce that our very own Co-founder and President, Chaitra Vedullapalli joined forces with the International Trade Centre (ITC) to deliver a SheTrades Invest course webinar in support of EQUALS. 

Earlier this year Women in Cloud joined the EQUALS Global Partnership, which brings together more than 90 stakeholders including, governments, private sector, United Nation entities, academia and not-for-profit organizations to accelerate efforts towards bridging the gender digital divide and fostering gender equality in the digital age.

The SheTrades Invest course is a 5-part webinar series designed by ITC’s SheTrades Initiative to help women entrepreneurs succeed in the technology sector by improving their access to finance. The SheTrades initiative aims to connect 3 million women entrepreneurs and women-owned businesses to international markets by 2021. The initiative offers a blueprint of seven global actions to unlock markets for women as well as a web and mobile app for women entrepreneurs to connect to buyers, investors, and new markets. 

On 23 June 2020, Chaitra Vedullapalli presented the fifth and final webinar in the course on the topic of, ‘How to get ready for corporate contracts: The art of winning & keeping enterprise customers’. Chaitra as the Co-founder of Meylah Corporation has had her ups and downs in the tech industry in terms of securing customers and contracts during her initial days and was well placed to share her learnings with course participants during the live 1.5-hour interactive webinar.

There are also other course webinars including , ‘Identifying the right financial instruments for your technology company’ co-hosted by Dr. Gitanjali Swamy, Managing Partner at IoTask & Representative to the EQUALS Leadership Coalition that can be accessed via the EQUALS website here.

The SheTrades Invest course on access to finance is very timely as the International Finance Corporation (IFC) estimates that MSMEs face a financing gap of approximately $5.2 trillion dollars annually. According to the World Bank, women led enterprises receive only 3 percent of all venture capital funding. The SheTrades invest course aims to close this gap by equipping women entrepreneurs with the skills, tools and knowledge to meet the needs of investors and securing financing. 

Women in Cloud as a community is striving through the collaborative efforts of our partners and members. In this regard, we are extremely honored to contribute to the SheTrades Invest course webinar and the efforts of EQUALS Global Partnership and the International Trade Centre. Furthermore, to watch a recording of Chaitra’s session and access other webinars in support of EQUALS,  please visit:  https://www.equals.org/leadership-webinar.

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ApertureData Awarded Competitive Grant from the National Science Foundation

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ApertureData has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant for $225,000 to conduct research and development (R&D) work on scaling ApertureData’s visual data management platform for enterprise scale applications. 

The proposed research will take ApertureData closer to realizing the vision of a unified data backend for all stages of machine learning (ML) from edge to cloud, removing inefficiencies introduced by repurposing systems designed for other workloads. Capturing business value from data via ML comprises multiple steps (data collection, curation, training, etc) and is currently being addressed by multiple siloed solutions that, when integrated, result in an inefficient system. Given that each of the different steps interacts with data in one way or another, offering a unified and efficient way to interact with the data regardless of the stage reduces the complexity of ML pipelines as they scale.

“NSF is proud to support the technology of the future by thinking beyond incremental developments and funding the most creative, impactful ideas across all markets and areas of science and engineering,” said Andrea Belz, Division Director of the Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships at NSF. “With the support of our research funds, any deep technology startup or small business can guide basic science into meaningful solutions that address tremendous needs.”

“Improvements in ML have made it possible for businesses to extract rich insights from visual data (images, videos). Handling big-visual-data for ML requires storage and access methods that are designed with visual ML in mind. With the current off-the-shelf alternatives, ML engineers and data scientists are forced to glue data solutions not designed for visual data management. With our focus on the data side of ML deployments, ApertureData is well positioned to be the technical leader in addressing the next generation of challenges for ML based applications. This NSF grant will enable us to address the scalability challenges that are particularly magnified when dealing with image, videos, and its corresponding metadata like annotations and embeddings”, said Vishakha Gupta-Cledat, CEO and Co-founder of ApertureData, who will serve as the Principal Investigator for this grant.

Once a small business is awarded a Phase I SBIR/STTR grant (up to $256,000), it becomes eligible to apply for a Phase II grant (up to $1,000,000). Small businesses with Phase II grants are eligible to receive up to $500,000 in additional matching funds with qualifying third-party investment or sales.

Startups or entrepreneurs who submit a three-page Project Pitch will know within three weeks if they meet the program’s objectives to support innovative technologies that show promise of commercial and/or societal impact and involve a level of technical risk. Small businesses with innovative science and technology solutions, and commercial potential are encouraged to apply.All proposals submitted to the NSF SBIR/STTR program, also known as America’s Seed Fund powered by NSF, undergo a rigorous merit-based review process. To learn more about America’s Seed Fund powered by NSF, visit: https://seedfund.nsf.gov/

About the National Science Foundation’s Small Business Programs: America’s Seed Fund powered by NSF awards $200 million annually to startups and small businesses, transforming scientific discovery into products and services with commercial and societal impact. Startups working across almost all areas of science and technology can receive up to $1.75 million to support research and development (R&D), helping de-risk technology for commercial success. America’s Seed Fund is congressionally mandated through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The NSF is an independent federal agency with a budget of about $8.1 billion that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering.

About the Author – Vishakha Gupta

Vishakha is Co-founder and CEO of ApertureData. Prior to that, she worked at Intel Labs for over 7 years where she led the design and development of VDMS (the Visual Data Management System) which forms the core of the ApertureData Platform. Vishakha holds a Ph.D in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a M.S. in Information Networking from Carnegie Mellon University. Her research interests encompass systems in general with particular inclination towards virtualization, embedded and real time systems as well as distributed systems. She has worked on graph based storage and applications on non volatile memory systems. She loves to work on systems which impose stringent requirements in terms of software design and coding and call for innovative solutions. She has served on the program and steering committees of several premier systems conferences.

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