Kochi: Neetu Mariam Joy, the first woman founder of GenAI from the Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM), has been selected for the prestigious Antler Entrepreneur Residency programme to further the company’s goal of building next-generation e-commerce solutions.
Neethu is the founder of ‘Mila’, a GenAI startup that provides online shopping experiences that enhance personalised shopping, customer satisfaction and engagement.
Headquartered in Singapore and operating from 27 locations across six continents, Antler Residency is an intensive, face-to-face talent development program that provides a platform to grow an idea into a global, venture-backed startup in just a few weeks.
This year’s residency program attracted 9,200 applicants, including solo founders and early-stage teams. Of those, approximately 7,700 applications were reviewed. Ultimately, 110 founders were selected to participate in the residency program and build their companies.
“This is a big boost for me and the entire ecosystem,” said Neetu, noting the high selection rate of 1.4%. Neetu said her interest in AI began during her PhD studies at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. “It continued through my postdoctoral studies at King’s College London, where I focused my research on ASR (automatic speech recognition).”
Neetu then worked as an AI scientist in two international companies for a total of three and a half years. In March 2023, she quit her job to found an AI startup. It initially focused on enterprise search but later pivoted to e-commerce. The KSUM-incubated company, which aims to transform the way customers interact with online platforms, received Startup India’s seed funding in September 2023.
Antler is a day-zero investor that helps great founders build startups and amazing companies from the ground up. The program provides a global community of co-founders, access to talent, expert advisors, worldwide scaling support, and capital to help founders launch and scale their companies faster.
KSUM is a nodal agency of the Kerala government established in 2006 with an objective of developing entrepreneurship and incubation activities in the state.
