)
For entrepreneurs from smaller cities who complain of not getting access to mentors and angel funding, there is good news. India’s first free-to-use virtual incubation platform StartupWave that was launched in April this year has been adopted by close to 190 entrepreneurs.
StartupWave is a virtual incubation platform that has been built as an infrastructure for the Indian start-up incubation eco-system, conceptualized by Intellecap in partnership with Government of UK’s Department for International Development in India and GIZ on behalf of the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
Ipshita Sinha - Manager, Intellecap; currently developing the StartupWave platform said that the platform was in the making since early 2013, but the thought process had started in 2012. “We had conducted a survey in 2012 and found that the rejection rate of entrepreneurs was about 90 per cent and most of these came from tier II and III cities. We found that they do not get access to mentoring or access to funds and hence, felt that there was a need to fill in this gap,” she added.
The 190 entreprenueurs that have joined belong to cities like Jaipur, Bhubaneshwar, Ahmedabad among others. Intellecap also found that incubation process or incubators at present were concentrated in metros and Tier I cities. Also lot of startups find it difficult to travel long distance to connect with mentors during scale up times.
StartupWave is a virtual incubation platform that has been built as an infrastructure for the Indian start-up incubation eco-system. “This platform will give access to mentors online. Startups now just need to have internet connection. Of course they can always connect offline as well. Secondly, they can now access capacity building module online,” said Sinha. As a collaborative platform, it aims to “democratise incubation” and is a one-stop service, providing a blend of virtual and in-person support to take start-up enterprises from idea to investment stage. This platform is designed in consultation with and is being used by incubators, corporates, funds and start-ups.
Stefanie Bauer, Project Manager, Private Sector Development at Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, who is a founding partner of this initiative said, “StartupWave has the potential to bring startup support providers on a common stage. We believe that we can help young entrepreneurs in a better way through collaboration in the eco-system and cooperation between incubators, investors, corporates and other support organisations.
StartupWave does not only make it easier for the entrepreneur to find the right support, it also helps incubators and investors to build a good pipeline for entrepreneurs.”
This platform is designed in consultation with, and is being used by, incubators, corporates, funds and start-ups. Though at present the focus is pre-incubation wherein entrepreneurs can connect via the platform and fine-tune their business plan before they are connected to mentors, Intellecap also plans to extend this to investment ready stage. The platform has 20 mentors and a network of 25 partner incubators, five of which are from low income states such as Jharkhand, Rajasthan etc.
According to Intellecap, India’s yearly job creation requirement over the next decade is predicted to be 10-15 million per year, which can be addressed by boosting Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). While there has been a steady growth of such enterprises, over 21 per cent of them failed in early years due to roadblocks to scale.
Nisha Dutt, Executive Director at Intellecap says, "We believe incubation support needs to be more democratic, and available to anyone with a business idea regardless of whether they are in Delhi or Ranchi or Imphal. StartupWave is still in early stages of working towards this vision; but given that it is an online platform, we think we will be able to scale it rapidly."
