VentureNursery, India’s first angel-backed accelerator, has invited early stage startups from across the country to apply for the 9th Season of its 13-week acceleration program. The intensive program will include mentoring by experienced members of the accelerator.
A maximum of three startups will be chosen after a five-stage rigorous selection process. Only startups that are at the inception stage and are focussed on solving an urgent and pervasive customer need will be considered. Once selected, the budding entrepreneurs will get access to the most relevant advice from VentureNursery’s 30 members.
In addition, they will also get to tap the rich resource pool of VentureNursery’s Mentors-in-Residence drawn from the best in business, in marketing and finance, strategy and execution to technology as well as domain experts.
VentureNursery’s co-founder Shravan Shroff stated, “VentureNursery network of 30 experienced professionals and entrepreneurs is committed to helping start-ups reach ‘pole position’ in their area of business.”.
So far 16 startups have graduated from VentureNursery’s eight previous acceleration programs successfully which include budget hotel chain OYO Rooms, video interview platform Talview, fashion and lifestyle social commerce platform Klip, crowdfunding platform Catapooolt, travel startup SeekSherpa, artificial general intelligence company InvenZone, last minute hotel booking company Hotels Around You among others.
VentureNursery focuses on maximising the success potential of the start-ups through its intensive and immersive coaching and mentoring role in the chosen start-ups helping them with end-to-end infrastructural and learning support. Most of the mentoring is done face to face and the curriculum is customized for each startup team.
Even though its members have made angel investments in nearly a dozen startups that have been through its acceleration program in the last 3 years, it does not entertain start-ups looking only for funding. Since 2012, it has accelerated 21 start-ups from a wide range of sectors, of which 16 have graduated and 12 start-ups are active and growing well.
Dhruv Raj Gupta and Sukhmani Singh, co-founders, SeekSherpa had this to say about the program, “We joined the VentureNursery program as two starry-eyed entrepreneurs with grand visions of Googlesque offices and free lunches. In turn we left as battle hardened, wizened and humbled business folks with a key eye on innovation and metrics at the same time. We learnt a lot from our network of mentors at VentureNursery, honed our business idea, and raised money to initiate a transformational concept in the sightseeing industry.”
SeekSherpa, which connects travellers and locals over unique experiences, has also been selected to the Google for Entrepreneurs Exchange Program to be held in Dubai by Astrolabs between December 5 to11, 2016. The startup is one of the 12 selected from a batch of over 100 applicants from the USA, Europe, Middle East North Africa, and rest of Asia, and the only one to be selected from India.
Meanwhile, Tufayl Merchant, co-founder, Fixy, an on-demand service platform stated, “As aspiring entrepreneurs taking early steps to build scalable businesses, VentureNursery’s acceleration program helped us to take on real world scenarios. An invigorating experience, highly recommended for both first time entrepreneurs and even those who’ve built and sold businesses in the past.”
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