Samsung mentors 20 Indian startups as part of its 'Employee Volunteer Program'

Samsung Electronics has organized the Global Startup Acceleration Program in Bangalore in partnership with the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B) to mentor startups in varied fields. The program aims to support sustainable growth of local entrepreneurs in the country.

Thirty one employees from Samsung’s global headquarters in Korea and five university students from Korea have been mentoring 20 shortlisted startups remotely for the last two months as part of the Samsung Employee Volunteer Program. These volunteers are using their own vacation time for this program.

From August 6, these startups and their assigned mentors came together for a five-day bootcamp at IIIT-B to better understand the hurdles faced by startups in developing products and services.

The startups and their mentors showcased their business models to several Venture Capital firms present at the bootcamp.

Hexpressions, which offers affordable, ready to assemble homes made out of Composite Paper Honeycomb panels, was the winner of the Global Startup Acceleration Program award and was given a prize of Rs 200,000. The first runners up Ziroh Labs that works in the area of privacy engineering and runtime encryption of data was given a prize of Rs 150,000 while the second runners up Olly Credit, with a business model around mobile micro credit cards for millennials was given a prize of Rs 100,000.

Social enterprise Geriatric Care Network, which provides preventive and wellness focused healthcare solutions for the elderly, and BrownPacket, a mobile app for hyperlocal medicines and wellness products delivery, won the Best Improvement Award for showing the most improvement through the two month mentoring process.

Geriatric Care Network also won the Best Potential Award, which was also given to Mr. Susurla VS Suresh of Startoon Labs, which offers a solution that assists physiotherapists to accurately measure recovery of mobility and muscle strength of patients undergoing physiotherapy.

The Best Social Impact Award was given to Avidia Labs that offers immersive learning experiences for schools using augmented reality and virtual reality