The concept of a Startup Centre has been in my head for a while now. Working with events, and showcasing startups, one of the things realized was that, these startups needed more support, and some effort in strengthening their internals. While at showcase events, we were able to quickly give them a make over and make them presentable, at a core, too much was wrong about the way startups were being built in India. Teams struggle to find market validation, end up building products in isolation, find it extremely hard to make their revenue mark, are confused about how to build a company in India (Everyone knows how to build one in the valley), engaging and deploying the wrong kind of capital etc etc etc. Some of these mistakes do make a startup unfundable for the forseeable future.
Statistics say that in a mature market, an average startup goes through 2.5 iterations in building a product. Venture capitalists believe that one out of ten of their portfolio companies will make a massive return as well, but truthfully if we look at the metrics of reality, I believe it is somewhere in 1:100 or so. Very few companies exit, and the exits also have not been glamorous by any measure.
The agenda with the Startup Centre was to do something about these things. Simple as that.
Today we run events, host community meets, and are ramping up an effort to build up the knowledge base from experience entrepreneurs as to how to build companies in India (Under the effort named TSC Classes). The goal? Move an entrepreneur from being unaware to being aware of what it takes to build a company in India. Atleast folks will get into this with their eyes open, and that will make a lot of difference. The difference between going into something with your eyes open, vs swinging a bat in the dark.
The second effort we realized, we had to do was sheer product management. Through the resident programme, we wanted to help teams with awesome potential and a great idea, and put them through a programme of building a product that works and makes sense. We had the network, the resources, and the clout to get attention. The question was as to whether we can help a company to quickly iterate and build a value proposition that would be able to generate revenue. Thats what the TSC Resident Programme is about. We are calling for applications, and we do have a limit on the number of companies we intake in each batch, so if you are serious about starting up, apply for it, now. We have some rather exciting and big news coming up on that front, so stay tuned.
The one thing, i should say we are blessed with is the quality of people we have been able to bring around this effort. We have quite a few names which will get added this week, and knowing whats coming, this is probably the best thing a startup could ever ask for. Each startup over the resident and accelerator programme will get atleast an hour of the time of these experienced entrepreneurs. If you can’t get it right then, we really do have a problem. But we’ve seen such amazing talent, that we believe we’d be blown away by the outcome.
The last bit that we want to do is the Accelerator piece, and from what we are seeing by the people visiting the site, that seems to be what’s catching a lot of folks’ interest. We can reveal one piece of info: Yes we will be investing in the companies that we will be accelerating and it will be in the tune of Rs. 10Lakhs per team. The companies from the resident programme will be prioritized to get into the Accelerator programme, simply for the fact that we would have built a great rapport with the team, and would know whether and how well we work together. All the reason why you should apply to be part of the Resident Programme – in a very simple way, its for both the teams and The Startup Centre to “court” and test out the process before we go swinging into the accelerator, which will focus into ramping up the startup.
In our books, its not the funding, nor a set time period but revenue generation capability which dictates the “graduation” of a company. That said, we would want to get a company to that stage within 6-8 months, and our focus will square go into enabling that. A startup with a product which is market validated, as a revenue and business model, has a trickle of revenue coming in, and knows what and why it needs cash for, is in no dearth of funders. That’d be our value proposition.
What kind of teams and ideas are we looking for?
If you are a team with an idea in the Web, Mobile, or Application Space (essentially anything that rides a platform for scale and customer acquisition), we would be very interested to talk to you. We are also interested in enterprise companies – we have seen a few very promising companies in that space, building apps on top of social platforms, facing enterprises and in our opinion that’s where the opportunity is in the enterprise space in the near future. About 20% of our focus will be on “agnostic sectors” which are still tech driven.
Want to know more? Catch us on twitter @startupcentre, or write to us. We’d be happy to answer any questions you might have. There is only one question left then. Think you have an amazing idea? What seriously can your excuse be, for not moving on it?
Act on it.
– Vijay Anand (@vijayanands)