Registrations Open For Startup India Mentorship Portal MAARG

As part of its mentorship initiatives, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has given a call for registration of homegrown startups on the MAARG portal. 

The Mentorship, Advisory, Assistance, Resilience and Growth (MAARG) portal will serve as a single-window platform to facilitate mentorship for startups across the board.

“Startup India is focused on catalysing the startup culture and building a strong and inclusive ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship in India. In this context, MAARG portal…is a one stop platform to facilitate mentorship for startups across diverse sectors, functions, stages, geographies, and backgrounds,” noted an official press statement. 

Deploying artificial intelligence (AI)-based matchmaking, the platforms will bring relevant stakeholders including academicians, industry experts, successful founders, seasoned investors and other experts, from across the globe, under one roof. This will help selectees to effectively connect with them and get personalised guidance on scaling their startups. 

The MAARG portal has three-pronged objectives:

• To provide sector focused guidance and support to startups throughout their lifecycle
• To establish a structured platform that facilitates intelligent matchmaking between mentors and the mentees
• To build an outcome-oriented mechanism that allows timely tracking of the mentor-mentee engagements

“The key features of the portal include customizable mentorship programs for ecosystem enablers, mobile-friendly user interface, recognition for contributing mentors, video and audio call options, etc,” added the statement. 

The project will be operationalised in three phases. In the first phase, MAARG portal successfully onboarded 400+ experts across domains while the second phase will see onboarding of startups on the portal. 

The final phase will see the launch of the MAARG portal and will connect selectees with their respective mentors. 

In July this year, the department had underlined plans for a similar digital collaboration platform for startups and investors to help them sign investment deals faster. It was not immediately clear whether this was the same initiative.

A brainchild of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the project will be executed by Startup India. 

The new initiative is part of a clutch of other initiatives launched by the central government to spur startups in the country. While the government pegs the cumulative value of the Indian startup ecosystem at around INR 3 Lakh Cr, it has also taken other steps to further fuel the arena.

Last week, authorities earmarked INR 1,000 Cr to fund semiconductor design startups in the country. This is besides other production linked incentives that largely cater to startups and private enterprises. 

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has also announced schemes such as Digital India GENESIS that will promote more than 10,000 startups in the next five to six years. Previously, the government had also said that it was mulling offering financial assistance to bootstrapped startups. 

In addition, the centre also, last month, approved the credit guarantee scheme that will provide credit guarantees of up to INR 10 Cr against startup loans. 

In total, the country is home to more than 82,000 DPIIT-recognised startups and 107 unicorns.