

Headstart Ventures - new seed fund with mentoring in India - drallison
http://www.headstartventures.in

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drallison
Via Kallol Borah:

HeadStart Ventures (<http://www.headstartventures.in>) is yet another small
beginning towards creating an organisation to support entrepreneurs and
innovators in India.

HeadStart Ventures is set up as a limited liability partnership (LLP) firm
with the objective of mentoring and seed funding startups in India. We are
supported by large technology companies and the first one I wish to announce
is Intuit, with whom we are launching an online brainstorming and
collaboration platform (available to use at <http://ideas.intuit.com>).

I have been involved in two successful community initiatives as co-founder of
the HeadStart Foundation which is a not for profit community platform that has
grown from 15 people in 2007 to over 15000 people now and the Association of
Computing Machinery (ACM) Bangalore which is a professional association for
computer science researchers and practicians which has grown to over 5000
people taking part in activities. What I have seen as 'gaps' in the startup
and innovation ecosystem is what HeadStart Ventures has been set up for. These
are -

1) angel investments : starting up and innovation is stifled in India due to
lack of seed stage funding available today. Not that India lacks high net
worth individuals, this is more due to lack of an effective organisation to
manage angel money. HeadStart Ventures is setting up an 'angel fund' where we
are involved in getting interested, experienced and able individuals to come
together and manage seed stage investments. As an entrepreneur myself, I feel
that going to angel networks that have slow decision making processes, too
many people to talk to and a risk taking aversion similar to VCs in India is
frustrating and the HeadStart Ventures fund will address this.

2) effective mentoring : mentoring startups in India is mostly done pro bono
and the results are not too encouraging barring a few exceptions. Again, as an
entrepreneur, I do not want 'help' from a mentor, I would much rather have a
mentor who sets some milestones for us to achieve together and works on them.
HeadStart Ventures is going to announce an incentive based mentoring
initiative very soon and we are starting with workshops in July to start
identifying startups to work with.

3) market access : one of the main reasons Indian startups reportedly do not
display much innovation is because of the lack of knowledge about markets.
'Problem spaces' need to be defined and worked upon in collaboration with
industry early adopters. HeadStart Ventures is therefore working on
partnerships with large industry organisations to help accelerate time and
relevance to market of Indian startups

