“A start-up for start-ups,” is how Ravi Kiran, Co-Founder of VentureNursery, simply sums up his business idea. Launched to mentor new start-ups and help scale up their growth through its customised accelerator programme, the venture was set up by entrepreneur Shravan Shroff, founder of Fame Cinemas, and marketing and management expert Ravi Kiran. Kiran was the CEO (South East and South Asia) of Starcom MediaVest Group till March 2012.

The accelerator was joined by 10 individual angel investors and two institutional investors and is now gearing up for expansion by bringing more advisors on board and extending the duration as well as the number of batches in its mentorship programme.

So if you are a budding entrepreneur under VentureNursery’s shade you will have access to mentoring by successful entrepreneurs and senior executives, to quality business support partners at a competitive price or gratis, business connections, opportunity to learn from other start-ups and even an opportunity to present the business idea to angel investors for feedback and potential seed-funding. Although designed to be sector-agnostic in the long run, VentureNursery currently focuses on six sectors – media and entertainment, retail, e-Commerce, consumer technology, education and clean technology.

Stepping on the accelerator

The accelerator, which started last year with just one start-up in its maiden batch, aims to move to three batches in a year each comprising five to eight start-ups in each batch depending on their quality.

The batch duration in the second batch too has been increased to six weeks from 11 weeks earlier and the team of advisors has more than doubled to 36 from 17 in the first batch.

“The parameters for their selection into the programme range from how good is the team, strength of the idea, whether it is solving a real problem or not, among others. Our focus is on pre-revenue and idea-stage start-ups that are self-funded and in the experimental phase. We are also increasingly looking at founders who are confident, committed and open to receiving new inputs for their ventures,” Kiran said.

Interestingly, the company has decided to adopt the technology platform developed by InterviewMaster, one of the start-ups from its latest batch of graduates, to evaluate the next season of start-up applicants via video rather than a text-based application.

Settling down for a casual chat, Kiran recalls that it was while being part of several venture capital networks that he got an insight into the dismal mortality rate of young start-ups and thus was planted the seed of the idea behind ‘VentureNursery’ in his mind.

Providing biz savvy

While these start-ups are strong on the technology side, their understanding of customers and finances is weak.

“Young entrepreneurs are tech-savvy but their understanding of the commercial aspect of business, profit and loss account and strong financial fundamentals.”

Venture Nursery is completely self-funded for three years with a membership fee from the angels and a revenue model comprising a five per cent equity stake in the start-up company’s business once it kicks off.

The first two acceleration boot camps of Venture Nursery attracted over 300 applicants from 27 cities.

One of the portfolio companies at Venture Nursery, Oravel, an online value stays portal, secured seed funding from VentureNursery angels in September 2012. The latest batch comprises four companies - Klip, InterviewMaster, Venturator and Smart Sample.

What is an Accelerator and how does it work

In an accelerator program, start-ups have access to the mind of gurus – advisors, angels and other experts. They propel the start-ups to an accelerated path of business building, via their vast experience and guidance. If the start ups respond to the Guru’s inputs and create a potentially viable business, the Gurus may invest seed money which could be used to develop a product prototype or a service offering framework. However, only the angels invest money, while others mentor the start-ups during the difficult phase of launch and expansion.

manisha.jha@thehindu.co.in

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