A joint accelerator program run by Google and venture capital firm Accel has selected five promising startups for its latest artificial intelligence cohort in India, deliberately excluding a large number of applications categorized as “AI wrappers.”

The decision follows a review of more than 4,000 submissions, many of which were considered superficial products built on top of existing AI models without creating genuinely new solutions.

According to Accel partner Prayank Swaroop, about 70 percent of the rejected applications simply layered AI features such as chatbots onto existing software systems. While these products incorporated artificial intelligence, they failed to redesign workflows or introduce meaningful innovation.

Investors are increasingly cautious about such startups because advances by major AI companies could easily make them obsolete. The accelerator, known as the Atoms program, was launched in November to support early stage companies building AI solutions connected to India’s growing technology ecosystem.

Selected startups will receive up to two million dollars in investment from Accel and Google’s AI Futures Fund, along with up to three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cloud and computing credits to help develop their products. Despite the surge in applications, many proposals fell into crowded sectors including marketing automation and AI recruitment platforms.

These areas already contain numerous competitors, making it difficult for new entrants to stand out. Swaroop noted that while India’s AI sector continues to grow rapidly, the majority of applications focused heavily on enterprise productivity tools rather than consumer facing innovations.
The five startups chosen for the program include K-Dense, which is developing an AI “co-scientist” to speed up research in chemistry and life sciences; Dodge.ai, focused on autonomous enterprise agents.

Persistence Labs, building voice AI tools for call centers; Zingroll, creating AI generated film content; and Level Plane, which applies artificial intelligence to industrial automation in sectors such as automotive and aerospace manufacturing.

Source: TechCrunch