NetApp Excellerator Cohort-14 Demo Day Showcases India’s Deep-Tech Startups Driving AI and Cloud Innovation

NetApp, the Intelligent Data Infrastructure company, today hosted the Demo Day for the 14th cohort of its flagship accelerator program – NetApp Excellerator. The event brought together some of the most promising deep-tech startups working at the intersection of AI, data, and cloud. The event showcased how the selected startups are redefining possibilities in enterprise technology, responsible AI, and digital infrastructure.

The Demo Day marked the culmination of an intensive, mentorship-driven journey for Synthefy, Filo Systems, TrueFoundry, Sentra, and Genloop.ai — five innovative startups that were part of the current cohort. Over the past few months, these startups worked closely with NetApp’s global leadership and technology experts to fine-tune their solutions, build scalable go-to-market models, and explore proof-of-concept (PoC) opportunities with NetApp customers and partners.

“Through NetApp Excellerator, we aim to nurture innovation that has real-world impact — supporting startups building the next generation of data and AI infrastructure. Each cohort reinforces our belief that collaboration between startups and established enterprises can accelerate meaningful change,” said Vasanthi Ramesh, VP & Engineering Head, NetApp India. “As we celebrate another successful Demo Day, we’re proud to see how these founders are pushing boundaries and strengthening India’s position as a global innovation hub.”

Speaking about the impact of the program, Anuraag Gutgutia, COO, Co-Founder, TrueFoundry, shared, “NetApp Excellerator has been instrumental in refining our platform which will help us scale our business vision. The mentorship, technical guidance, and access to NetApp’s network with real business value delivered, helped us accelerate faster than we imagined while building for global markets with confidence.”

Since its inception in 2017, NetApp Excellerator has emerged as one of India’s leading corporate accelerator programs, dedicated to empowering deep-tech and AI-led startups. To date, the program has accelerated 90 startups over eight years and 13 cohorts. Its alumni have collectively raised over USD 600 million, and eight startups have achieved successful exits. Recognized among the top five accelerator programs in India for corporate innovation by the NexTT Awards, NetApp Excellerator continues to play a pivotal role in building innovation-driven businesses.

As the Demo Day for Cohort 14 concluded, the spotlight was on collaboration, responsible innovation, and the power of India’s deep-tech ecosystem to drive future-ready solutions. With each new cohort, NetApp continues to strengthen its mission to empower startups that are building for scale, sustainability, and global relevance.

About NetApp

For more than three decades, NetApp has helped the world’s leading organizations navigate change – from the rise of enterprise storage to the intelligent era defined by data and AI. Today, NetApp is the Intelligent Data Infrastructure company, helping customers turn data into a catalyst for innovation, resilience, and growth.

At the heart of that infrastructure is the NetApp data platform – the unified, enterprise-grade, intelligent foundation that connects, protects, and activates data across every cloud, workload, and environment. Built on the proven power of NetApp ONTAP, our leading data management software and OS, and enhanced by automation through the AI Data Engine and AFX, it delivers observability, resilience, and intelligence at scale.

Disaggregated by design, the NetApp data platform separates storage, services, and control so enterprises can modernize faster, scale efficiently, and innovate without lock-in. As the only enterprise storage platform natively embedded in the world’s largest clouds, it gives organizations the freedom to run any workload anywhere with consistent performance, governance, and protection.

With NetApp, data is always ready – ready to defend against threats, ready to power AI, and ready to drive the next breakthrough. That’s why the world’s most forward-thinking enterprises trust NetApp to turn intelligence into advantage.

NETAPP, the NETAPP logo, and the marks listed at www.netapp.com/TM are trademarks of NetApp, Inc. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

From Cloud Security to Custom LLMs: NetApp’s Cohort 14 Powers AI’s Boldest Leap Yet

• 90 startups now benefit from this flagship program
• 29 POCs executed by participant startups

NetApp, the intelligent data infrastructure company, kicked off a new chapter in innovation with the launch of Cohort 14 of its flagship startup accelerator program - NetApp Excellerator. The cohort reflects the growing influence of AI in business, featuring five high-potential startups—from pre-seed to Series B funded, focused on cutting-edge innovations in AI infrastructure and allied offerings.

The five startups that form Cohort 14 include: Synthefy, Filo Systems, Sentra, TrueFoundry, and Genloop.ai. The startups were chosen for their works across areas including customisable LLMs, cloud security, multi-modal generative AI models, and more. The startups from Israel and the USA demonstrate India’s mettle as a global hub of innovation and its leadership in advanced technologies.

The participating startups bring to the table a range of innovative solutions that support the growth of AI infrastructure. Synthefy develops advanced algorithms, neural networks, and deep learning models, including the world's first foundation model for multi-modal time series data. Filo Systems’ offerings are designed to optimise storage and bandwidth usage, while Genloop.ai enables rapid deployment of LLMs, transforming proprietary data into tailored AI solutions.

Speaking on the launch of the cohort, Vasanthi Ramesh, Managing Director, NetApp India, said, "We're excited to welcome and partner with startups that are building transformative solutions using advanced technologies. The maturity stage and the focus area of each of the participating startups reflect our ongoing commitment to innovation with AI. Through the program, we offer resources, mentorship, and technological expertise they need to scale. I am looking forward to the collaborative success and witnessing how these AI-focused startups will shape the future of tech on a global stage."

The NetApp Excellerator program was launched in 2017 and has evolved to become one of the most sought-after accelerator programs in the country. Alumni from the program have collectively raised over $600Mn, out of which $25Mn was raised in the last three months alone - serving as a testament to the success of the program.

Talking about the expectation from the program, Yoav Regev, CEO, Sentra, said, "As organisations rapidly adopt AI, the need for intelligent, scalable, and privacy-first security is pivotal. We see this program as an incredible opportunity to combine forces, deepen our technology, provide better solutions to our customers, and help global organisations safeguard what matters the most: their data. And we are excited that we are partnering with a leader in the space that shares our vision!”

The program, recognised as one of the top five accelerator programs in India for corporate innovation by NexTT Awards, includes a proof-of-concept (PoC) model that allows entrepreneurs to demonstrate the effectiveness of their solutions in the real world. In collaboration with NetApp, the startups refine their minimum viable products (MVPs) and identify new use cases. This information is then used to develop their go-to-market strategies.

For more information or to apply, please visit http://startup.netapp.in/ and follow #NetAppExcellerator on social media at @NetAppIndia

NetApp Excellerator Cohort 14 startups, at a glance:

S.No.	Startup	Focus Area	Website	Brief Description
1	Synthefy	advanced algorithms, neural networks, and deep learning models	https://www.synthefy.com/	Synthefy develops advanced algorithms, neural networks, and deep learning models, including the "world's first foundation model for multi-modal time series data?. Their GenAI technology allows customers to unlock insights from their time series data. They synthesize a digital twin for a network based on application traffic types, network topology, cell location, and system logs.
2	Filo Systems	Data compression technology	https://www.filo.systems/	Filo Systems offerings are designed to optimise storage and bandwidth usage. Their flagship product offers a high-performance compression engine that significantly reduces data size, improving download speeds and network efficiency. By leveraging cutting-edge technology, Filo Systems helps businesses lower operational costs, accelerate data transfers, and enhance overall system performance.
3	Sentra	Cloud security	https://www.sentra.io/	Sentra employs advanced ML techniques for autonomous classification of both structured and unstructured data, ensuring accurate identification and management of sensitive information across diverse environments, including cloud and on-premises systems.
4	TrueFoundry	ML training and deployment	https://www.truefoundry.com/	TrueFoundry provides a cloud-native Platform as a Service designed for machine learning teams to build, deploy, and manage ML and LLM applications on their own cloud or on-premises infrastructure, offering significant scalability and cost efficiency
5	Genloop.ai	Customised LLMs	https://genloop.ai/	Genloop.ai?s platform enables rapid deployment of LLMs, transforming proprietary data into tailored AI solutions while ensuring 100% data privacy through secure ingestion and automated data cleaning.

The NetApp Excellerator Program Rocket-Fuels B2B Tech Startup Ecosystem With Cohort Five

NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP), the leader in cloud data services, today announced the graduation of its fifth cohort as a part of the NetApp Excellerator demo day. NetApp Excellerator is the company's flagship startup accelerator program. On this occasion, five technology startups, CloudSEK, Senseforth.ai, Lightwing, Coralogix and Curl Analytics, showcased their technology impact and market opportunity to an eminent audience comprising of venture capitalists, industry leaders and the NetApp leadership team.

The program has so far mentored 29 B2B technology startups through five cohorts and has evolved to focus on a sponsored proof-of-concept (PoC) model. The PoC model gives the startups a platform to prove the potential of their solutions in the real-world. The startups and NetApp explore technology adjacencies to go to market together and help create technology that changes the world with data. All five startups are engaged in PoCs with NetApp.

The pitch presentations made by the entrepreneurs at the demo day saw innovations in the space of AI, machine learning-powered log analytics, conversational AI, intelligent automation and digital risk management. These startups have been extensively mentored to strengthen their technology solutions and product market fit while also enhancing the overall user experience. This is already creating significant business impact for their clients through solving challenges related to unstructured data, big data, customer support, reduction of cloud costs and cybersecurity.

"The fifth cohort marked the launch of an evolved model where the startups built paid PoCs, which will give them stronger go-to-market opportunities and drive exponential growth. We too have made great strides since our first cohort. Today, we are attracting new-age disruptive companies from around the world," said Madhurima Agarwal, leader, NetApp Excellerator. "We've engaged deeply with 29 pioneering startups, including three who have had successful exits. This is the proof of the value NetApp has added to our alumni, enabling them to create tangible commercial success in terms of funding, customer acquisitions and successful exits."

The program's focus on mature startups and global outlook offers a natural fit for startups from across the world. One such example is Coralogix, an Israel-based startup which is part of this cohort.

"Working with the engineering team at NetApp is delightful," said Lior Redlus, co-founder and CTO of Coralogix. "We found a team of professionals constantly monitoring their systems to make sure they are operating optimally, and eager to understand how Coralogix log analytics can help identify issues faster and reduce time to resolution. We learned about NetApp's technology, and are now evaluating Cloud Volume ONTAP with the innovation team in Israel. We want to work with cutting-edge technology in the cloud."

The strength of the program reflects in the success stories from the previous cohorts. Last year, Adya (first cohort), was acquired by Qualys, a leading provider of cloud-based security and compliance solutions. Similarly, ArchSaber, from the second cohort, and VitaCloud from the first cohort, have also had successful exits. Additionally, SigTuple, Anlyz, FirstHive and others have secured next round of funding.

"We started this program with our own unique outlook as a 27-year-old startup," said Ravi Chhabria, managing director of NetApp India. "We continue to innovate across our ecosystem and these young startups enable our customers to change their world with data. With our deep expertise in data management we are uniquely positioned to help them navigate next-generation technologies to scale up their business. Their ability to disrupt the tech ecosystem and their vision to drive economic growth is inspiring. Our role as an accelerator is to catapult them to achieve success in delivering compelling solutions to meet customers' needs. Most importantly, we offer them our trust and credibility, and that is the basis to build any business relationship with a young company."

NetApp Excellerator is a mentorship-driven startup accelerator focused on creating an impact in the startup ecosystem through association with a small, yet unique set of data-driven B2B tech startups. The NetApp team, in collaboration with industry-renowned external mentors, coaches the startups on cutting-edge technologies, platforms, tools and business acumen. The participating startups get access to investors and NetApp's customer portfolio. They also receive an equity-free grant of $15,000, or a NetApp-sponsored POC.

Registrations for the sixth cohort are open. Data-driven B2B tech product startups with interests in the areas of hybrid cloud, AI, IoT, DevOps, Kubernetes and data management are invited to apply. To know more, please visit http:tartup.netapp.in/ and look us up with #NetAppExcellerator on social media.

NetApp Excellerator cohort five startups at a glance:

1. CloudSEK - AI-Driven Digital Risk Management.


2. Senseforth.ai  -A leading Conversational AI Platform providing automated humanlike conversations between organizations and people.


3. Lightwing - Fully optimized dynamic compute to slash monthly public cloud bills by 70% or more.


4. Coralogix Curl - Coralogix automatically creates component level insights from log data so you can trust your logs to tell you the full story of your system. (from Israel).


5. Analytics - A tech start-up focused on leveraging emerging technologies to develop products and solutions for enterprises.

About NetApp

NetApp is the leader in cloud data services, empowering global organizations to change their world with data. Together with our partners, we are the only ones who can help you build your unique data fabric. Simplify hybrid multicloud and securely deliver the right data, services and applications to the right people at the right time.

NetApp Launches Its First Startup Accelerator in Bengaluru

NetApp Inc., a Fortune 500 American multinational storage and data management company on Wednesday announced the launch of the NetApp Excellerator programme in Bengaluru, the company's first startup nurturing initiative in India.

NetApp Excellerator is a startup accelerator program designed to help startups create world class products and innovative solutions that are market ready.

The programme was launched at the new 15-acres NetApp campus here in the presence of IT expert Mohandas Pai, partners, venture capitalists, startups and customers.

"The tech industry is going through a transformational shift with data right at the centre. Through the NetApp Excellerator programme, we would like to encourage and support start-ups and provide them with an opportunity to graduate to their next phase of growth," said Deepak Visweswaraiah, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, NetApp India, in a statement.

The applications for the four-month programme are now open for startups. NetApp will provide an equity-free grant of $15,000 to the startups after the completion of the programme.

Selected startups will receive technology and business mentorship as well as access to markets and investors to realise the full potential of their ideas and products in the global market place.

Applications are invited from startups working in the areas related to IOT, cloud, big data and analytics, machine learning, virtualization, data security, storage and data management, and other adjacent areas.

The NetApp Excellerator program will provide startups with access to collaboration and productivity tools, co-working space out of the company’s global centre of excellence in Bengaluru as well as networking opportunities with potential investors, partners and customers.

Selected startups will have access to NetApp platforms and technologies, tools, co-working space, HR, marketing, legal and tech support.

“Through the NetApp Excellerator programme, we seek to engage with promising entrepreneurs contributing to diverse set of tech areas,” added Ajeya Motaganahalli, Director, NetApp India.