Our enterprise chatbot provider company is getting on the next level indeed! From the 16th of July, Talk-A-Bot is participating in the Rakuten Accelerator Program, powered by Techstars. What’s more, the programme takes place in Southeast Asia, Singapore. Each year, 300 lucky companies are chosen to join their three-month mentorship-driven accelerator. This year, one of them is Talk-A-Bot: Singapore is waiting for us!

About the accelerator programme

Rakuten, a global leader in internet services, is collaborating with Techstars in a joint accelerator programme. Together they will help early-stage entrepreneurs who are advancing social messaging technologies. They invest $120K and provide hands-on mentorship, too. In addition to all this, they grant access to the Techstars Network for life. The focus is on the Viber application. This mentorship-driven accelerator will revolutionize how businesses and consumers use messaging: both to conduct business and to stay connected. Areas considered for the programme include:

• AI based chatbots
• chat commerce
• mobile wallet and cryptocurrency
• ad tech
• VR and AR solutions
• voice and image recognition
• translation
• content such as music and sports
• chat-based IoT
• enterprise integrated messaging.

This is Rakuten’s and Techstar’s first Accelerator Programme in Southeast Asia.
The new programme will help to grow their existing community in the region, where Startup Programs have been active since 2010.

Valuable support and resources: Rakuten Viber

Techstars’ worldwide network is connected with more than 10,000 mentors, partners, investors, and founders. Participants will also have access to resources from across Rakuten’s global ecosystem of more than 70 services. These include Rakuten Viber messaging and voice platform. With hundreds of millions of users around the world, Viber also recently became the official communication channel of FC Barcelona, Official Instant Messaging and Calling App Partner of the Golden State Warriors and an official platform for the National Basketball Association.

Finally, the 3-month intensive programme will conclude with a Demo Day. On this occasion, the participants will pitch their businesses to hundreds of investors from all over the world. Over the past 10 years, Techstars has helped over 1,274 companies grow and raise over $4.4 billion in funding, with a market cap of $11.4 billion.

There’s an often-repeated statistic that 90 percent of startups fail. It may be just a myth, but there’s no doubt that it scares entrepreneurs. On the contrary, they see the reverse in their accelerator portfolio at Techstars: 90 percent of their startups are active or have successfully exited. Talk-A-Bot is ready to support Techstars’ statistics. Let’s see how we move forward on the path! This is a major opportunity for startups like Talk-A-Bot – Singapore, here we come!