Microsoft has committed $500 million for a new program to help nurture start-ups, offering resources such as Azure credits and sales support.
The Microsoft for Startups program will deliver access to technology, go-to-market and community benefits to help startups grow their customer and revenue base.
“We are committing $500 million over the next two years to offer joint sales engagements with startups, along with access to our technology and new community spaces,” Charlotte Yarkoni, corporate vice president, Growth and Ecosystems at Microsoft, said in a blog post late on Wednesday.
Microsoft has over 40,000 sales representatives and hundreds of thousands of partners.
Microsoft said the program provides dedicated resources to prepare start-up marketing and sales teams to sell their Cloud solutions to enterprise organisations in partnership with Microsoft’s global sales organisation and partner ecosystem.
The program provides start-ups with up to $120,000 in free Azure credits, enterprise grade technical support and development tools – supporting the languages of their choice.
Qualified start-ups also get access to productivity and business applications, including Office 365 and Microsoft Dynamics 365.
The software giant will open the doors on new Microsoft Reactor spaces in London, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Shanghai and Beijing. India is not a target for Microsoft for this start-up program.
Microsoft offers Reactor spaces to entrepreneurs, developers, investors and the business community to interact, learn and share.
