Fremont: What started as a novel idea; has become an accelerator, and a hub which nurtures early-stage talent, entrepreneurs, and sprouting new ideas. The Startup Centre opened its doors in May, which saw two batch of Resident Programmes, a six months hands-on mentorship programme. The goal of the programme is to enable high caliber teams with amazing ideas to work out of the Centre and receive timely advice to build out the first versions of their product that will find its way into the market.

“Market validation becomes a crucial aspect of building a technology startup; if you don't find that customer-product fit early on, it becomes a second priority, when that is the crux of understanding what business you are in,” says Vijay Anand, Founder, The Startup Centre. The centre helps the residents refine their ideas and significantly extend their network.

The Centre charges a nominal fee from the residents to filter the applicants based on seriousness and as a sign of commitment to make things happen, instead of taking an equity in the companies. The intake is very selective and two residents are admitted for each batch from around 30-50 applications. The curation ensures that the teams have an amazing peer-learning experience during the programme.

The application process for the third batch is already on and would close by the end of the month; with the batch starting from the 10^th of December. Since the Centre has been able to crystallize its process internally, the intake might be around four teams for the new batch.

The process is simple as the teams come with their ideas and build a market validated version of their product offering. Once they have figured where they are heading in terms of business, value proposition and the market, the mandate absolutely becomes one of acceleration, and that’s where capital, the right advisors and such make apt sense. The Centre aims to invest upto $20,000 in each of the teams in the programme, with a probation period of two months—especially to get to know the teams directly applying to the accelerator (without going through the resident programme).

Though there is a lot of stress for the teams, with a large investment in them, and it is rollercoaster ride for the company and the stakeholders to make a leap; and the resident programme ensures that the teams get the liberty to do that, with ample support from the mentors

"The first six months of a startup are probably the hardest phase and most startups fail because of bad execution and lose morale. What is needed is great advisors to provide focus and a place where the founders can hack together both of which TSC provides,” says Vivek Ravishankar, the founder of Interviewstreet, the first startup out of India to get into the acclaimed Y Combinator Programme.