Bharti Airtel announced the launch of its Startup Accelerator Program to support growth of early stage Indian tech startups.
Airtel aims to support the creation of a vibrant start-up ecosystem that contributes to Digital India with the launch of its Start-up Accelerator Program.

Airtel’s Startup Accelerator enables early startups to get access to Airtel’s online and offline distribution network ecosystem of strategic partners.

Airtel has also developed in-house capabilities around machine learning and artificial intelligence which could be leveraged to aid the growth of startups. Startups also get access to advisory services from Airtel’s executive team.

Airtel announced the induction of Bengaluru based technology startup Vahan into its Startup Accelerator Program.

Airtel will acquire a stake in Vahan and partner with them in building significant scale to achieve their vision of enabling jobs for the next billion internet users.

Vahan is founded in 2016 and backed by YCombinator and Khosla Ventures. Madhav Krishna is the founder and chief executive officer of Vahan.

Vahan uses Artificial Intelligence to match job seekers with employers inside messaging apps such as WhatsApp. It is focused on finding blue collar jobs for young Indians in Delivery, Driving, Retail, BFSI, BPO and Hospitality sectors with companies such as Zomato, Swiggy and Dunzo as clients.

Adarsh Nair, chief product officer of Bharti Airtel said: “With Airtel’s scale and digital capabilities around distribution and payments, we have the potential to drive accelerated growth of emerging startups that are solving hard problems.”