The Citrix Startup Accelerator, a Silicon Valley-based seed investment initiative launched in December last year, has committed an undisclosed amount of seed financing for the Cambridge-based company.

Handy Elephant aims to improve people’s networking productivity by analysing users’ interaction across phone, email and social networks to establish the contacts they need to follow up with, the best time to get in touch with them and which channel to use. It will initially target salespeople and recruiters using Android-based smartphone platforms or customer relationship management systems such as Salesforce.com.

Focused on entrepreneur-led innovation, the Citrix Startup Accelerator Programme looks for new technologies and business models that leverage emerging technologies to enable virtualisation, cloud, mobility, networking, security, storage, collaboration and software-as-a-service. It invests up to $400,000 (£253,000) in seed money and sponsors an invested business in Silicon Valley for up to 18 months.

Benjamin Wirtz, founder of Handy Elephant, says, ‘We have created a solution that makes it simple for professionals to manage their personal and professional networks from any channel and at any time.’

Michael Harries, senior director at Citrix Startup Accelerator, adds, ‘When we launched the Startup Accelerator Programme last year, we wanted to choose seed investments that would be at the forefront of industry trends.

‘Handy Elephant is ahead of the curve with social collaboration, providing users with a simple, automated way to manage personal and professional networks. By providing key resources, our aim is to help Handy Elephant achieve the rapid market and customer validation that will enable it to transform into a successful business.’