To provide funding access to budding entrepreneurs in emerging Tier 2 cities, IIM Indore and IIT Indore are co-hosting Venture-I, an angel funding competition for start-ups.

A part of the two-day i5 entrepreneurship summit that is scheduled to be hosted at the IIM Indore campus on August 22 and 23, Venture-I is open to all start-ups that are less than two years old and have not raised more than ₹50 lakh. Those with a business idea are also eligible to participate in the competition, provided they have a full time team and a ready prototype.

Venture-I

“At Venture-I, entrepreneurs can raise ₹15 lakh of angel investment just by selling a minority stake of 5 per cent of their start-ups to investors. For this, 15 finalists will be chosen to make a 7 minute pitch to investors followed by a 3 minute Q&A session. The finalists who clinch the funding will be guided, mentored and stewarded by the investors on their onward journey” Soumyadeep Chakraborty, Overall Coordinator, i5 Summit (IIM Indore), told BusinessLine . “We have received 500 applications from Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Indore, Bhopal and Lucknow and expect many more by July end” added Chakraborty.

Some of the participating investors at Venture-I are Dr Srikanth Sundararajan, Helion Venture Partners; Digvijay Gagneja, Matrix Partners; Neeraj Gutgutia, founder CEO, Guts Unlimited and Vivek Bajaj, Director, Kredent Enterprises.

Virtual mentoring

“While start-up fever has gripped the country, this region, despite having the potential, has not seen any successful start-ups, as it is not on the funding map. Venture-I should change this. IIM Indore has many plans for entrepreneurs including setting up an incubator, virtual mentoring for those who don’t need physical space, small business and start-up clinic to help entrepreneurs who get stuck” said Professor Rishikesha T Krishnan, Director, IIM Indore.

Key speakers

The two-day event will have Dr Ganesh Natarajan, CEO of Zensar Technologies delivering the keynote address followed by other speakers – Ronnie Screwvala, founder, UTV/Swades/Unilazer; Raghunandan G, co-founder TaxiForSure; Kunal Shah, co-founder Freecharge; Phanindra Sama, co-founder Red Bus, among others.

Time has been set aside for a ‘Walk with the Entrepreneurs’ where participants get to interact more closely with successful entrepreneurs as they walk around the sprawling campus. Participants will get to walk with Greg Moran, co-founder, Zoomcar; Pankhuri Shrivastava, co-founder Grabhouse.com; Anubhav Sonthalia, co-founder Sokrati Inc; Amitt Sharma, co-founder Futech, to name a few.

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