Startups Funded by the Microsoft Accelerator Program

invest in startups

Ansh Mehrey

Feb 27, 2021 — 6 min read

Entrepreneurship is one of the growing professions in the recent times, and more individuals are gearing up to work on their own startups with unique and actionable ideas. Startups with a practical solution, and a roadmap to build a fortune out of it are often funded by venture capital and investment firms. Such firms offer private equity finances to startups in need of funds, for a fraction of the company itself. While there are discrete firms for such investment, larger corporations including Google and Jio haven't held back from this either.

Microsoft offers an accelerator program, called the Microsoft Co-founder's fund for venture capital to startups with great potential. Microsoft has so far made about 147 investments in different funding rounds along with over 200 acquisitions. The numbers place Microsoft in one of the top startup investors in the industry. So here we discuss 10 promising startups that Microsoft has invested in, and the solutions they have to offer.

Bindwise
HealthifyMe
xCloud
Springboard
AppyWay
Cloudflare
Cognisess
AppsFlyer
The Fabulous
Sentri

Bindwise

Bindwise is an E-commerce based platform, and has raised about $86K in a total of 5 funding rounds, with the latest round held in the May of 2020. Bindwise offers robust E-commerce solutions for online merchants and sellers assisting them in time, stock, and inventory management. Workflow is an ever changing regime, and Bindwise knows exactly how to eliminate most of the manual work and manage orders as well as the inventory. Bindwise keeps you posted in regards to the latest Amazon trends that are likely to impact your sales, while also warning you of the defects in listing, policy violations, and other important issues, hence giving you a head start.

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HealthifyMe

Co-founded by Tushar Vashisht, Mathew Cherian, and Sachin Shenoy, HealthifyMe was included in Microsoft's Incubator program for its quality results in eating habits and fitness. With a user base of over 19 million, HealthifyMe has delivered and made its presence felt in the community of fitness enthusiasts, and helped users with weight loss, leading a healthy lifestyle, diet plans and other health sensitive issues. Users can communicate with certified fitness coaches, and monitor their progress by tracking food intake, workout routine and water intake, and witness the change steadily.

xCloud

xCloud has raised a total of CN¥ 5M in 2 rounds of funding, including one lead by Microsoft Accelerator. xCloud is supposed to be a cloud-based gaming platform for web browsers, and will allow Xbox players to access their games through a browser. While currently, the xCloud works on android devices as well as tablets, the web version is in the works and will include a simple launcher with various functionalities including game recommendations, resume recently played titles, and more. The web version is currently supported by chromium browsers such as Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, but is scheduled to be previewed soon.

Springboard

Springboard, the online workforce training and learning platform has secured funding from various investors, Microsoft Co-founder's fund being one of them. Springboard offers part time bootcamps, that serve as a great help for professionals getting ready for their career within months. Once enrolled in a course offered by Springboard, users are assigned a mentor and are provided with the best in class curriculum, curated with diverse perspective by experts. All the lessons are taught to implement in the real-world with problems and project based assignments, while also offering the users valuable insights and feedback by the mentor on a weekly basis.

AppyWay

AppyWay, a kerbside management, mobility, and parking solutions provider, has secured an investment of over $12 million in different funding rounds from 12 investors, Microsoft being one of them. The parking solutions that AppyWay has to offer are meant to enable intelligent mobility and provide accurate off-street parking information. AppyWay also offers a traffic mapper, a traffic order tool meant for high performing authorities, as well as a traffic engagement tool for digitizing public consultation. It also furnishes users with Parking API and a Last Meter Navigation for enabling creaseless journeys with destination and drop-off data.

Cloudflare

Cloudflare is a web infrastructure and website security platform, and has raised about $332 million in funding up till its Series E funding from some big name in the industry including Google and Microsoft. Cloudflare offers an integrated global cloud network that users can deploy to boost and secure their websites. The security options that Cloudflare has to offer include advanced DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) along with intelligent Web Application Firewall, along with performance boosting with intelligent routing and mobile optimizations. Moreover, its serverless platform and reliability has attracted investments from various venture firms.

Cognisess

Cognisess, a market leading software provider, has been funded by 4 investors including the Microsoft Accelerator, and acquired Meet The Real Me in 2015. The solutions that Cognisess has to offer help businesses all over the world recognize, nurture, and retain talented individuals for a strong and productive workforce. Cognisess brings together the power of data science and the intelligence of machine learning, and helps make more informed and data driven decisions. It helps track employee performance and productivity and keeps them engaged with real-time feedback to manage the workforce.

AppsFlyer

AppsFlyer, a SaaS mobile marketing analytics and attribution platform, has raised over $290 million in various funding rounds and from 12 investors, including the Microsoft Accelerator. AppsFlyer is known for furnishing users with accurate data combined with a customer centric approach. Be it marketing analysis, cost aggregation, or even fraud protection and deep linking, AppsFlyer has all the solutions for industries including E-commerce, Entertainment, Finserv, Gaming and others. Moreover, the resources that AppsFlyer has to offer include Blogs, reports, podcasts, boards and a MasterClass with avant garde training for mobile attribution.

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The Fabulous

The Fabulous is a health, wellness, and fitness platform as well as your own personal coach, and has been funded by Microsoft Accelerator in the Venture Round. While some of us hardly find any time to hit the gym, The Fabulous helps us build and follow a strict and effective daily routine. Be it a coach that assists you throughout your transformation journey, or the discipline you need to endure it, The Fabulous is as good as the name suggests, and helps you achieve your set goals. One other perk that it has to offer is that you also get to connect with others with similar interest and hence become part of an organized community directed and motivated to the same goal.

Sentri

Sentri, an AI powered access governance control system, has secured a strategic investment by the Microsoft Accelerator along with some other investors, and has raised over $855K in 3 different funding rounds. Sentri offers enterprise grade security services that include detection and prevention of security breaches, digitization of employee onboarding and off-boarding, as well as monitoring data security risks. Sentri also allows users to automate access controls, customize workflows, monitor real-time risks, and all that with the most intuitive and efficient UI. Moreover, integrations such as Oracle, Google Apps, Salesforce, and Office make Sentri all the more seamless and viable.

Conclusion

Microsoft, for the next couple of years has pledged to invest about $500 million in visionary startup ideas through its Microsoft for Startups program, dedicated to helping B2B startups to scale their company. Likewise in the years to come, worth of revolutionary startup ideas is going to be recognized by larger corporations and investment firms. Hence, startups with high potential will be more than welcome in the time that lie ahead, and more investors will be inclined to empower entrepreneurship than ever.

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