Another year of the NetApp Excellerator programme came to an end, with the much-awaited Demo Day for Cohort 12. The event, held in Bengaluru, focused on data and how innovation is at its peak in India today.

The programme included insights from NetApp leaders - Ravi Chhabria, MD, NetApp India, Gagan Gulati, (Vice President of Data Services, NetApp), and industry leaders including Santonu Sarkar, Professor and Head, Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, BITS Goa, and Arnab K Paul, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, BITS Goa.

The Demo Day spotlighted five startups from India , that are making a difference across industries through their data-driven approach. The startups are Zeron, Kensu, NEMA AI, Blockfenders, and ChaosGenius.

Speaking about the motivation behind NetApp Excellerator programme, Ravi Chhabria, Managing Director, NetApp India, highlighted how they had experienced success with 77 startups in the last seven years.

“If the tools are getting bigger, the ideas are getting bigger. Data is what enables intelligence. It has just come to the forefront in the last few months,” said Chhabria.

Gulati added, “At NetApp, we focus on two aspects. Cyber resilience, which is all about protecting our customers from ransomware and they always have access to data. The second one is how do we think about NetApp leading the way for customers to get the best out of their data in their AI projects.”

The impact

Chhabria said NetApp was the first organisation in India to create a programme linked to diversity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives. “We didn't do it because it was simply a feel-good thing; we understood the need for an inclusive programme. If you look around India, you can see a lot is happening in startup programmes.’

However, everything boils down to innovation. Chhabria spoke about NetApp’s engagement with academia and industry organisations like NASSCOM.

“The intersection is very much visible. Also, many of us in the tech space come from very humble backgrounds and one thing we value is a meritocracy-driven business. We wanted to be able to take that across the industry to students in metropolitan cities like Bengaluru or even schools,” he added.

Chhabria said NetApp has been able to gain recognition from valuable organisations like Startup India. “We get invited to events where the focus is on sustainability. Here, we see breakthrough ideas coming from people across age groups,” he said.

While it's already happening, businesses in India will continue focusing on hard problems for the next decade, understanding tools that are AI-driven and more.

“And the vast amount of power that we bring through human resources is also growing bigger,” he said.

Meet the startups

The startups that were part of the 12th cohort and impressed with their pitches on NetApp Excellerator Demo Day are:

1.Chaos Genius is a data fin-ops and observability platform, backed by Y-Combinator and Elevation Capital. Its AI-driven platform is revolutionising cost management across multiple data clouds like Snowflake and Databricks.

2. Blockfenders is a venture-backed, cross-border data orchestration startup with offices in Palo Alto, United States, and Pune, India. It empowers data engineers to orchestrate workflows by helping automating tasks like data collection, ingestion, encryption and more.

3. NEMA AI is a leading innovator in the inclusive learning solutions space.

4. Zeron is a cyber-risk posture management platform that offers a comprehensive solution to empower organisations to proactively manage and mitigate cybersecurity risks.

5. Kensu offers a Data Observability solution that lets organisations monitor data in real-time and cut resolution time in half.

Apart from these pitches, there was also a mention of women-led startups like BrainsightAI and Arintra, who get support through NetApp ExcellerateHER.