Google-backed Accelerator to Mentor Two Mexican Start-ups

Mexico City-based  firms HostSpot and Qritiqr are among the seven start-ups selected by the incubator Manos as part of its start-up mentoring program. The selection is a huge victory for the Mexican companies as they can now plan for worldwide growth using the resources and technological know-how available in Silicon Valley.

Business advisory firm HostSpot, according to the Accelerator, provides insights that help enterprises to optimize the performance of their customer engagement, marketing, merchandising and operations. “It does for the brick and mortar stores what Google analytics does for the online world,” said the Accelerator about HostSpot. Qritiqr is a business intelligence provider which gives insight on services, products and market opportunities in real time.

The Accelerator, backed by the search-engine giant Google, says it selected the seven best start-ups from 75 applications received over a 30-day period. Manos will now connect start-ups with seasoned mentors, corporate executives, angel investors, venture capitalists and a network of technology and business contacts in Silicon Valley.

Reports say the Accelerator has set aside a huge sum of money to help small but creative Latino entrepreneurs to “turn their innovative ideas into reality.”

“This is exactly what I wanted to see – big, bold and creative solutions,” said Edward Avila, CEO of Manos Accelerator.  “I know there are Latino entrepreneurs out there doing amazing things and I’m pleased to have such a diverse group of start-ups both in technology and backgrounds as our very first batch.”

Applications, Manos said, ranged from e-commerce, entertainment, digital media, education, enterprise, cloud to mobile solutions. The start-ups selected include two international companies from Latin America, three Silicon Valley-based companies, and two companies who traveled to San Jose from across the country.

Notably, five out of the seven companies have at least one female founder, Manos stated in a press release. The other start-ups are Blyve, BoomZip, Hemheist, Interesante and Sleek-geek.