The accelerator was founded by 18-year-olds Kei Hayashi from Tokyo and Suhas Sumukh from Bengaluru with Toronto-based Hardeep Gambhir, 22. Entrepreneurs from cities across the world come together at LocalHost’s founder labs to build in technical and creative fields spanning media, software, and hardware.
In India, LocalHost runs a 50-day fellowship in Bengaluru, selecting 15 founders per cohort. The accelerator also operates in Tokyo and Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and has invested $1.2 million across 15 startups so far.
“India has a massive STEM talent pool and is even larger than the EU and the US combined, with a lot of it coming from tier-2 and tier-3 cities,” said Sumukh, who is the COO of LocalHost. “But the problem is that investors and institutions tend to focus mainly on metro cities, and the bureaucracy can make it tough for young people to turn their ideas into something real, so localhost is a platform for builders from such cities.”
Since starting its India programme, LocalHost has run cohorts that brought in venture partners and ecosystem participants. Startups that have come out of the accelerator include Maya Research (AI and research tools), Prava Payments (fintech and payments infrastructure), Dawn Labs (product and engineering development), Whisperwave (audio and media technology), and Markov (AI and data-focused tools).
“The fresh funding will go toward expanding infrastructure, building stronger hardware capabilities, growing teams across different regions, and supporting more early-stage founder cohorts around the world,” Sumukh added.