Tag: Startups and Investors

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Startup

Modi Govt Launches ‘Chunauti’- Next Generation Startup Challenge Contest, to Identify Around 300 Startups in India

Startups in India (Photo Credits: Pexels)

In a bid to give a major fillip to startups in India, the government on Friday Launched ‘Chunauti’- Next Generation Startup Challenge Contest. Under this programme, the government aims to identify around 300 startups working in identified areas and provide them seed fund of up to Rs 25 lakh among other facilities.

Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad launched the contest to further boost startups and software products with special focus on Tier-II towns of India. The Startups can apply by visiting the website of STPI or by clicking at the link https://innovate.stpinext.in/

The government has earmarked a budget of Rs 95.03 Crore over a period of three years for this programme. It aims to identify around 300 startups working in identified areas and provide them seed fund of up to Rs 25 Lakh and other facilities.

Under this challenge, the Ministry of Electronics and IT will invite startups in the following areas of work:

  1. Edu-Tech, Agri-Tech & Fin-Tech Solutions for masses
  2. Supply Chain, Logistics & Transportation Management
  3. Infrastructure & Remote monitoring
  4. Medical Healthcare, Diagnostic, Preventive & Psychological Care
  5. Jobs & Skilling, Linguistic tools & technologies

How Will Chunauti Help?

  1. The startups selected through Chunauti will be provided various support from the Government through Software Technology Parks of India centers across India.
  2. They will get incubation facilities, mentorship, security testing facilities, access to venture capitalist funding, industry connect as well as advisories in legal, Human Resource (HR), IPR and Patent matters.
  3. Besides seed fund of up to Rs. 25 Lakh, the startups will also be provided cloud credits from leading cloud service providers.
  4. Start-ups who are in the ideation stage may be selected under the pre-incubation programme & mentored for up-to six months to evolve their business plan & solution around the proposed idea.
  5. Each intern (start-up under pre-incubation) will be paid Rs. 10,000/- per month up to a period of 6 months.

Speaking at a virtual event, Prasad said that the launch is a bold initiative under the clarion call for Atmanirbhar Bharat given by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He urged the young, talented innovators of India to come forward and avail benefits of Chunauti challenge of Government and create new software products and app.

 

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Finance Startup

Why Do Investors Invest in Startups? Here’s How Investors Add Value to Startups and Help Entrepreneurs

Startups and Investors (Photo Credits: Pexels)

For any business to flourish, there needs to be good investment and planning that will help the firm reach its target audience and go beyond! Here’s where the role of an investor comes into picture. An investor puts capital to use for long-term gains, while an entrepreneur seeks to generate profits by using those funds. Thus an investor is a crucial aspect for any startup, who typically generates returns by deploying capital. Investing in startups is a risky proposition. However, the low requirement for overhead capital along with high upside potential, makes it lucrative for the investors to put their bets on startups.

Basically, an investor is a person that allocates capital with the expectation of a future financial return or to gain an advantage. An investor can choose to invest in-equity, debt securities, real estate, currency, commodity, token, derivatives such as put and call options, futures, etc.

According to the official website of Startup India- startupindia.gov.in, investors particularly venture capitalists (VCs) add value to startups in a lot of ways. Some of them are listed below:

  1. Stakeholder Management: The investors are the ones who manage the company board and leadership to facilitate smooth operations of the startup. Moreover, their functional experience and domain knowledge of working and investing with startups imparts vision and direction to the company.
  2. Raise Funds: Investors are best guides for the startup as they help to raise subsequent rounds of funding on the basis of stage, maturity, sector focus etc. The investors aid in networking and connection for the founders to pitch their business to other investors.
  3. Recruiting The Best to Achieve Business Goals: Finding great talent and best-fit human capital is critical for startups, especially when it comes to recruiting senior executives to manage and drive business goals. The venture capitalists, with their extensive network can help bridge the talent gap by recruiting the right set of people at the right time.
  4. Proper Marketing of the product: The venture capitalists (VCs) assist with marketing strategy for your product/service.
  5. Merger and Acquisition (M&A) Activity: VCs have their eyes and ears open to merger and acquisition opportunities in the local entrepreneurial ecosystem to enable greater value addition to the business through inorganic growth.
  6. Organizational Restructuring:As a young startup grows to an established company, they help with the right organizational structuring and introduce processes to increase capital efficiency, lower costs and scale efficiently.
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Startup

What is a Startup? How Do Investors Add Value To Startups? All You Need To Know

Startups | Representational Image (Photo Credits: Pexels)

India is now becoming the world’s fastest growing startup ecosystem. In order to understand a startup ecosystem, one needs to know what a startup means! A startup is a young company that is usually founded by one or more entrepreneurs to develop a new and unique product. These entrepreneurs launch a service and bring it to market for people to use and benefit out of it. Startup, as the name suggests, begins with initial funding from the founders, their friends, families, relatives, among others.

Startups are becoming very popular in India. A start-up is basically a company or project begun by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. Startups face high uncertainty but some of them do go on to be successful and influential and become unicorns. The startup process can take a really long period of time and can go up to years to be successful. Hence, sustaining effort is required.

Over the long term, sustaining effort is especially challenging because of the high failure rates and uncertain outcomes. One needs to understand the basic concept that an entrepreneur is an individual while startup is an entrepreneurial team, and needs to work accordingly to achieve the desired goals.

How do Investors add value to Startups?

According to Startup India Portal, which is India’s largest online entrepreneurship, the investors, particularly venture capitalists (VCs) add value to startups in a number of ways. The Startup India Portal platform allows startups to network, access free tools & resources and participate in programs & challenges.

  1. Stakeholder Management: Investors play a key role in building up the startup. They help by managing the company board and leadership to facilitate smooth operations of the newly started firm. In addition, their functional experience and domain knowledge of working and investing with startups imparts vision and direction to the company.
  2. Raising Funds: Investors are best guides for the startup to raise subsequent rounds of funding on the basis of stage, maturity, sector focus etc. and aid in networking and connection for the founders to pitch their business to other investors.
  3. Recruiting Right set of people: Sourcing high-quality and best-fit human capital is critical for startups, especially when it comes to recruiting senior executives to manage and drive business goals. The venture capitalists, with their extensive network can help bridge the talent gap by recruiting the right set of people at the right time.
  4. Proper Marketing of the Product: VCs assist with marketing strategy for your product/service.
  5. Merger and acquisition opportunities: The venture capitalists should be alert about the merger and acquisition opportunities in the local entrepreneurial ecosystem to enable greater value addition to the business through inorganic growth.
  6. Organizational Restructuring: As a young startup matures into an full-fledged established company, the venture capitalists help with the right organizational structuring and introduce processes to increase capital efficiency, lower costs and scale efficiently.

In India, the Government, under the leadership of PM Narendra Modi, has started and promoted Startup India initiative to recognize and promote startups. This initiate is aimed to develop Indian economy and attract talented entrepreneurs.