The National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) has received 4,000 applications for Angel Funding and Acceleration under the 10,000 start-up programme. It had begun inviting applications on April 5 and closed them on May 30.
Som Mittal, President, Nasscom, said: “We are overwhelmed with the response. We have close to 14,000 entrepreneurs from over 80 cities registering with the programme who submitted about 4,000 applications. We will now select about 20-25 start-ups for Angel Funding and Incubation.”
He added that through a comprehensive evaluation process carried out by its partners, Nasscom will also select about 150 start-ups which would undergo rigorous mentoring by its members, programme partners and other industry partners.
The application procedure has revealed interesting insights about the emerging tech entrepreneurship landscape in India.
Close to 23 per cent of the applicants were from Bangalore, followed by 20 per cent from Delhi NCR. Also, one in every five applications was filed from smaller towns; over 70 per cent came from applicants under the age of 30, and around 15 per cent applicants were women.
About 25 per cent start-ups aimed at providing solutions pertaining to education and skill development. The retail vertical had 18 per cent applications followed by media (15 per cent) and healthcare (11 per cent).
A whopping 66 per cent of the applications came for Web/Internet start-ups, followed by mobile start-ups with 24 per cent share. Applications from Cloud and Big Data were at 16 per cent and 11 per cent, respectively.
Nasscom had commenced the 10,000 start-up programme with the support of Google, Kotak, Microsoft and Verisign.