#BootUpINDIA: Giving Independence to Indian Startups, An iSpirt Initiative

We know that most business opportunities seeking venture capital are too small, and too slow growth to fit the venture model. Startups like FusionCharts, RateGain, Kayako, BrowserStack, Cosmic Circuits and HappyFox have shown that Bootstrapping can lead to successful companies. In fact, startups like Zoho have proven the fact that Bootstrapping can create Billion dollar companies too.

With venture funding, a startup gets media validation that often translates to customer traction. In the case of a good VC, it also gets mentoring and access to expert entrepreneurs in the portfolio of the VC.

“Since media and incubators in India tend to overplay the Venture funding pathway, bootstrapped companies end up being disadvantaged. Our focus on Bootstrapping is to redress this bias.”

Keeping the above said in mind, IT think tank iSPIRT has recently launched its BootUpINDIA initiative to offer similar benefits to the selected bootstrapped startups, with a goal to help them scale and become successful.

Startups which will get to select in the BootUpINDIA initiative will get group mentoring from entrepreneurs, media coverage, access to certified performance warrants for deeper customer relationships, amongst other help.

We believe that the whole BootUpINDIA package will have a dramatic impact on the enterprise value of the selected companies. This, in turn, will help the Software Product Industry grow faster even in the face of limited availability of early stage capital.

iSpirt will work with the selected startups throughout the year and help them scale and multiply their enterprise value through various BootUPIndia initiatives.

Sridhar Vembu of Zoho, Pallav Nadhani of FusionCharts, Bhanu Chopra of RateGain, Paras Chopra from Wingify, Girish Rowjee from Greytip, Saras Sarasvathy, the entrepreneurship Professor at Darden and Sramana Mitra, a blogger and evangelist will be involved in this initiative

Who can apply?

Right now applications are open for bootstrapped software product, it will be adding up more categories in the future. Startups should meet following criteria:

• Minimum annualized revenue of INR 25L based on last quarter’s revenue.
• At least 1 year in business.
• Must be selling to Indian SMBs (iSMBs).

Last date for applying is 15^th September, startups can apply here.

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