BENGALURU: Sharpening its focus on late-stage companies, Microsoft Ventures is talking to several venture capital firms to mentor their portfolio companies and help them tackle the problem of scale. “There are huge scaling problems that have never been addressed before,” said Ravi Narayan, director at Microsoft Ventures, which started operations in India in 2012. “Few startups have solved this problem.” To illustrate, Narayan said some startups were recording a million transactions a day, while others were getting huge traffic on their website, and not all had the wherewithal to tackle such problems. “Microsoft has been speaking to a number of venture funds for this initiative including Nexus,” said Sameer Brij Verma, principal at Nexus Venture Partners. Microsoft Ventures said it was in talks with Accel, Sequoia and Helion, among others. The three firms had not responded to email requests for comment at the time of going to print. Called Hi-Po, short for “high potential”, the programme will commence from July. The accelerator will pick Series A funded companies of VC firms to work alongside other startups for four months, sans any financial investment from either side. So far, 63 startups have graduated from Microsoft Ventures, of which 70% have raised funds. The accelerator has been constantly tinkering with its model to focus on startups that have grown to an extent. In March, it launched two new programmes— Scale Up and Accelerator Plus—for late-stage firms. “It’s a win-win for all of us. Startups get two parents to look after them. And we can get a bigger bouquet of offerings for our customers who use the Microsoft platform,” said Narayan. “For VCs, it is a great way to mitigate risk.”