Off-Campus Ventures are More Realistic: Angel Investors

Bangalore: Investors in India are increasingly warming up in this brave new startup ecosystem in India. In recent times, a bunch of Startup Accelerators like Morpheus, GSF, Freemont, Hatch, 5ideas, VentureNursery, TLabs, Seed Firm, Angel Prime, and Indian Angels have been founded.

VCs, who are known to be cautious of returns from campus-incubated start-ups, have also started short listing candidates for campus-incubated start-up plans.

However, according to angel investors, with the bunch of private professional incubators and accelerators coming up, the attention is again shifting to the latter, reported Economic Times.

"There is a flight of good quality entrepreneurs from campuses to incubators outside. Most on-campus incubators do not have a culture of success. The space and mentoring support that campus incubators were providing are now available in plenty outside," says Lunia, founder of India Quotient.

Companies born outside campuses are seen as more realistic in their approach to business. On the other hand, campus incubators are more academic and focused primarily on research, patent and invention rather than assessing the viability and profitable viability of a product or an idea. Also, the outside accelerators are seen as more practical in inviting talented entrepreneurs to be a part of their team compared with academic institutes where one has to go through a complicated application process.

Of the 65-66 start-ups being incubated at CIIE (IIM Ahmedabad), only six to seven are on campus, while the remaining are at remote locations. Institutes say the business profiles that angel investors and venture capital funds look at are different in terms of scalability and potential revenue generation. More than commercially viable projects, they focus on fundable projects.