Meet Whateo.com And The Home Salon; Startups From VentureNursery’s Sixth Batch

VentureNursery, India’s first angel-backed startup accelerator, has revealed Whateo.com and The Home Salon as the two startups that will be graduating from its 6th batch.

Whateo is founded by brother-sister duo Jay Sutaria and Shaili. It is an ‘assisted SaaS’ solution that aims to empower marketers to create entertaining, brand-sensitive animated videos in quick hours, through a freemium model.

The Home Salon is founded by Rishika Chandan, ex-investment banker & derivatives trader who has completed MBA from Indian School of Business. The startup addresses at-home wellness market. Its service seeks to replicate a salon and make hassle-free, professional treatments available at the customer’s doorstep. Its services are currently available in Mumbai, and expected to start in other tier-1 cities soon.

VentureNursery conducts a minimum of two boot camps a year in Mumbai, and aims to accommodate up to eight startups in each programme. At the end of each programme, graduating startups are evaluated for investment. The programme, which had started earlier this month, will complete in March 2015.

The accelerator, VentureNursery claims to have received 950 applications from multiple cities. Last batch graduates were FindURClass.com, a discovery engine for hobby class seekers, and HotelsAroundYou, a last minute hotel booking site.

VentureNursery has accelerated 14 startups out of which 10 had secured seed funding including Oravel, Catapooolt, Klip.in, Interview Master, InvenZone, Seek Sherpa, The Venturator, and Peter’s Pan, among others.

Mumbai based VentureNursery accelerator was founded in 2012 by angel investors Shravan Shroff, founder and former MD of Fame Cinemas; and Ravi Kiran, former CEO- Southeast & South Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group as well as co-founder & managing partner of Friends of Ambition.

The accelerator is currently focusing on six sectors – media & entertainment, retail, ecommerce, consumer technology, education and cleantech.