Tradyl is proud to be part of the inaugural class of Google for Start-ups Accelerator – India Women Founders. To be part of a 20-startup cohort selected out of 350+ start-ups feels wonderful and is a validation of the progress we have made since inception in May last year.
All twenty start-ups gathered for a Boot Camp week at Google’s Bangalore office. There was a palpable buzz and excitement in the air from day one. We had access to a wealth of experience from within Google and outside on a multitude of topics that Start-ups wrestle with on a daily basis. Next to us was also a network of fellow start-up founders. We were all working on different problems but were united by the challenges that all start-ups face. Google structured this accelerator as a highly personalized program to deal with specific problems faced by each of the Start-ups. We jumped right in on day one with a diagnostic session with our mentors. We were able to pinpoint areas that were critical to us and where we needed help. This was followed by more in-depth sessions with experts. It was a great privilege to be part of the first cohort of Google’s Accelerator Program for Female Founders. Networking with other start-ups, helping each other solve problems really helped us.
Designed specifically for women-founded start-ups, the program addressed a variety of issues like social reasons, network access, access to capital, employment challenges, and mentoring, which are challenging to women. The session focused on many problems that arise due to the small number of representatives. There were also a lot of primer sessions on key topics including product, marketing, fundraising etc. which helped us in getting a broader perspective.
We realized the importance of defining the business and the operations from the customer point of view is one of the most important tasks any business has to focus on. The session on marketing made us think deeply about what are the paths to creating a blue ocean of a new market space. Case studies presented during the sessions explored in depth about strategic logic and methods of creating new market spaces using the blue ocean strategies. The sessions also gave us more insights about design thinking, the need of running design sprints often to understand the user experience and their journeys, rendering current competition, brand building and measuring the performance and most importantly the need of leaving physical evidence.
It wasn’t all work though, as we had ample opportunity to engage with each of our fellow start-ups and mentors and participate in some fun activities. Over the next few months as we dive deeper into the program, we expect to walk away with significant progress over some of the critical aspects of our business.
Read more about it at Google Blog or visit our Newsroom.
