DARE - Because Entrepreneurs Do

For the guidance starved Indian entrepreneurs, the session of Apoorv R Sharma, AVP, Indian Angel Network & Chief Mentor, IAN Technology Incubator, at DARE Entrepreneur Week Webinar was a must attend event. Apoorv started the session describing the topic as close to his heart. He provided a short introduction of Indian Angel Network (IAN). He said IAN has set up an incubator to support startups. He structured his talks in 2-3 parts. In the first part, he talked about the successful Incubators and what they have done across the world and in India also. Second part he talked about how the incubators have been helping the start up companies. Finally he talked about how IAN incubator is being engaged in these activities with some examples.

He said companies like Facebook, Google, Paypal etc and IDEO the company which has been instrumental for designing the first mouse; all they have been cut out from the technology incubator business across the world. Next he talked about the most successful incubators from the valley like plugandplaytechcenter.com incubators which has invested into Paypal and Google and they run 280 start ups, 50 out of them are very successful ventures. YCombinator is much talked about in India recently; they also have equity morales, do investment in ventures. Talking about the India story, he said there are real estate incubators which have added some value added services, and then there are incubators which are offering equity proposition like CII etc. The next type of incubator he said, are in hybrid mood, they have great real estate and also they have got some equity propositions for the start ups. There are state run incubators like ICICI Knowledge Park (IKP) which is largely driven by the state points and uppers. In India the incubators are divided also by the sectors. There are incubators like IKP which is only focused to Life Sciences, so it varies from incubator to incubator and mostly they are government supported.

Talking about the IAN incubator he said, their primary focus is to create very high quality innovative startups. They basically deal with the start up at the very entry level up their business life cycle. They have very strong mentors and they have 200 plus mentors associated with the incubator.Their incubation periods are 6-12 months.

Sharma said, “We are basically a business accelerator; focusing more on high quality mentoring that is helping start ups probability of success. By high quality mentoring we mean, say for example if you are mobile venture start ups, we have investors who has worked in mobile funds and who has huge expertise in the mobile sectors, and they are also investing in mobile ventures. So the probability of success of a startup incubated from IAN gets high because of the expert mentoring and also the probability of funding also gets high because the investor has seen every chip of your venture. In these six months we are structuring and helping your venture through multiple sessions.”

IAN helps enabling and accelerating growth through different mentors who help you connect to different persons in industry. They also help in multiple channels funding as they have tie up with SIDBI, common players apart from their own angel support which comes to you when your deal is right and it has been taken to the next level. Sharma said, “If you do the competitive analysis of this space there are academic incubators, there are real estate incubators, private incubators, state run incubators etc. Then there are supportive networks like TiE to support start ups. So the space is divided in this and that.”

IAN provides end to end solution capturing you in the pre-operative stage, mentoring you and then taking you to the level where you can be considered for the angel or the next round. So the IAN incubator provides you the one stop solution with more focus on mentoring. “We give you business advisory, IP advisory, funding raising advisory, so the bouquet is quite huge and it’s a handholding support that’s given to you for 6-9 months, “assures Sharma.

In short IAN incubator is in the process of value creation through the whole set up. The companies that are reaching to them are provided with high quality mentorship-and the high quality mentorship is taking the company to the next level by their expertise and guidance. Sharma feels there is a lot of value added in the process and these companies after 6 months when they go to market with lot of improvements happened in multiple paramours whether it is revenue line, number of clients line etc. “All these parameters are closely observed and the companies are taken to the next level,” asserted Sharma.

The companies approaching to IAN incubators vary in their objectives as few come for funding, few for strategy and few for other support. Sharma concluded by saying, “To take you to the journey IAN focuses on two factors-one is we help you build the capacity through different workshops and through one to one session. We also help build the deal for any company which has much more marketability at the end of the process.”

Some of the various questions answered in the session were:

Q. Could you please give some background about JSS Noida incubator?
Apoorv: JSS incubator Noida is the first incubator of the country, supported by the government of India. I was personally involved there because that was my first incubator and they have good infrastructure and lot of value added services to start ups companies. I think there are 15 startups currently operating from there, they offer subsidized renting there. This incubator got the President's award in 2005.

Q. Why all incubators focus on Technology start ups alone?
Apoorv: Because of the government supported incubators, there is technology business incubator program run by the government of India. They are mostly intervened by the government mandate but at the same time there are incubators who are sector elastic also. Another reason is for the lack of expertise available amongst the associated mentors. Though it is not the case with us, we have expertise from robotics to life science, so we don’t worry about the sectors. That may be one of the reasons. Also it is of the fact that real innovations was happening in technology sector, why they were focusing in technology alone. But if something good coming in from other sectors we are fine to look at.

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