Six accelerator programmes for budding start-ups in India

Entrepreneurship sounds really fascinating at first; however, the road to becoming an entrepreneur is not everyone’s cup of tea. One has to encounter multiple hurdles and challenges on the way. And given these challenges, many freshers lack guidance and assistance and also get confused about how to start on the journey of setting up a company.

There the importance of incubators and accelerators comes in. The mentors of these programmes help budding entrepreneurs gain the know-how to form their startup ideas and convert them into reality. From the very initial phase of your startup journey, incubators and accelerators serve as a great platform to streamline your thoughts and plan the road ahead.

Basically, these accelerator programmes help the budding startups to reach the next level of development. From helping to furnishing the startup to garner funds for the business, accelerators/incubators help in every step of the journey.

We have listed 6 five accelerator programmes for startups in 2021:

1. Hubli Sandbox: The Hubli Sandbox in Hubballi, India is an ecosystem launched by Deshpande Foundation that supports mission-driven individuals to come up with sustainable and scalable enterprises having a social and economic impact. It's a co-creation of Dr. Gururaj "Desh" Deshpande, Indian American venture capitalist and entrepreneur, and his wife. Hubli Sandbox runs many programmes in the areas of education, student leadership, agriculture, micro-entrepreneurship, and maternal health.

 2. Supreme Incubator: Supreme Incubator has been active in the entrepreneurial ecosystem for the past 2 years as it was founded in 2019. The start-up has been organising regular events and mentorship meet-ups. With their Summer cohort last year, the program has transitioned to a fully digital/virtual model where the selected founders get together on regular video calls to share progress, meet mentors or join workshops. With a virtual programme, Supreme Incubator has been able to expand the scope of support offered and startups incubated. The mission is to make India the hub for entrepreneurial support, and for founders in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities to get the same level of networking and support opportunities as their counterparts in metro cities. The programme of SI has been receiving great reach with over 100s of applications in the last 1 year.

 3. Indigram Labs Foundation (ILF): One of the Key USPs of Indigram Labs is its host institution: Indian Society of Agribusiness Professionals (ISAP) which has set-up more than 1,800 agritech ventures through its ACABC program and is currently promoting 250 FPOs. The years of experience that ISAP brings with it helps shape the journey of agri-entrepreneurs through Indigram Labs even further. At present, the company is incubating 15 companies and accelerating three more. The duration of the incubation period ranges from three to five years.

 4. IAMAI: Industry body IAMAI has launched the country's first virtual incubator for short and mid-term needs of technology-related start-ups arising amid the global pandemic situation. The primary function of the virtual incubator is to address the needs of the start-ups located outside the major cities of Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, and Kolkata, the Internet and Mobile Association of India stated. The programme will be virtually accessible and will provide state-of-the-art incubation services to every Indian start-up and enable them to charter their success stories. 

 5. INVENT: Innovative Ventures and Technologies for Development (INVENT) is a joint collaboration of the Technology Development Board (TDB), Government of India and the Department of International Development (DFID), Government of the United Kingdom. INVENT aims to make a positive social impact by providing incubation support to technology-oriented start-ups.

 6. Techstars: Having invested in more than 2,300 companies, Techstars is one of North America’s largest investors, with a track record of providing market leaders such as Sendgrid, PillPack, Classpass, Digital Ocean, and Salesloft with the tools to build hyper-scale businesses. In their upcoming 2021 programme, Techstars Bangalore is going to provide 10 outstanding companies from South Asia with the tools and network to become market leaders in North America.

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