How To Choose The Right Incubator To Fuel Your Entrepreneurship Goals?

Mukund Mohan,

CEO, Jivity

Mukund Mohan is the CEO of Jivity, an ecommerce company. Previously he had founded BuzzGain, and is currently the CEO of EOVL. Mohan has also served on the board of advisors for iConclude and the board of directors of Semantic Defense and Kinetic Brains.

A big trend I have noticed in the last few months is that almost every Venture Capital (VC) company in India is looking to either invest in or build an "incubator", which can help early stage entrepreneurs. There are already several of them in India, including Morpheus, The Startup Center, CIIE at Ahmedabad and others. I would imagine that by December of 2012, we will have at least 10 very well funded incubators all looking to guide, mentor and help young entrepreneurs through their initial stages. This will go a long way to help the startup ecosystem in India.

The flip side to this is the amount of choice that startup entrepreneurs will now have. I can easily see many entrepreneurs spending days and months trying to figure out which incubator is the best for them. The answer to the "right one depends on multiple criteria including your background, what space you wish to build a company in, how big do you wish to build your company into and other related factors. Outside of these criteria, there are others that are dependent on the incubator itself.

Most Indian incubators offer a combination of some cash and mentorship in exchange for 8-12 percent of your company. Some incubators require you go to their office location and spend three to six months with them, yet others will prefer you stay at your own office / location. Some do offer design talent, technical resources, and others offer a bevy of informal advisors.

So how does an entrepreneur evaluate incubators? I decided to put together a simple (not comprehensive, initial cut) spreadsheet of the list of things to consider before you decide on your incubator. I would imagine an entrepreneur would use this sheet to write down things that are important to them in an incubator by and then rank their choices by their evaluation of each incubator.

While I personally believe the top 3 criteria are (a) ability for the incubator to help your company gain momentum (customers, hiring, resources, etc), (b) ability for the incubator to help you raise money and (c) quality of the network the incubator possesses which provides you access to other entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and resources that you might need to scale.

1 2 Next

Reader's comments(2)

SiliconIndia StartUp City - View and post comment about this article

Post your comment

SiliconIndia StartUp City - Click here to explore the archives

Most popular Expert Talk

Suki Shah-SiliconIndia Startup City Entrepreneurial Lesson section

Personal Branding For Job Seekers: Beyond The 8.5 By Suki Shah,CEO and Co-Founder,GetHired.com

Suki Shah is the Co-Founder and CEO of GetHired.com, a video based social recruiting platform. The company was launched in January this year and has raised $1.75 million in its seed round of funding from private angel networks. Prior to this he was the CEO and Co-Founder at Statacor Biosciences.... more>>

Naveen Jain-SiliconIndia Startup City Entrepreneurial Lesson section

How Entrepreneurs Become Visionary Leaders By Naveen Jain,CEO,Intelius

As a child I experienced firsthand the severe effects of poverty and illiteracy, especially upon women and children. My parents taught me the importance of education and that it was a key to improving an individual's life. Very early, it made me understand that success is simply not doled out but... more>>

Krishnan Ganesh-SiliconIndia Startup City Entrepreneurial Lesson section

Lessons From My First Venture By Krishnan Ganesh,Founder and CEO,TutorVista

Krishnan Ganesh is the Founder and CEO of TutorVista, and the CEO of SMARTHINKING. He shares his experiences and the lessons he learnt from his first venture. TutorVista is an online tutoring company which was founded in 2005. It provides online tutoring at affordable prices, and has a tutor base... more>>

How I Saved the Day By Phaneesh Murthy,CEO,IGATE Global Solutions

Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it,” said Michael Jordan, the legendary basketball player. A memorable saying to recall when faced with a significant business challenge;... more>>

More>>