Four start-ups receive angel funding

By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 21 September 2006, 19:30 IST
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BANGALORE: Owing to the efforts of industry body, The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), four Bangalore-based start-ups have received angel funding and incubation support in terms of space, legal help for processing patents and manpower search. The companies in question are: RedBus, an online ticketing firm, PicSquare, a photosharing portal, Salesguru, a corporate training portal and Experience Commerce, an e-commerce portal. Each one of the companies will get an initial seed money of $25,000 from investors like Kumar Malvalli, KB Chandrasekhar, Ashok Narasimhan and Sridhar Mitta. Besides assisting in finding investment, TiE also helped the companies find space at incubators such as NS Raghavan Center for Entrepreneurial Learning, IISc and STPI. Companies will also be offered services of a law firm for processing patents. A few TiE members would also serve as mentors for the start-ups. A panel of TiE charter members selected these four promising start-ups from around a hundred applications for the Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (EAP) program. Since it is a risky proposition for venture capitalists to commit millions of dollars in a start-up that is yet to prove its mettle, lack of access to early stage proves to be a stumbling block for many entrepreneurs in India. To solve this issue for both the parties, industry body The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), has rolled out an initiative called the Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program or EAP. In this unique model, TiE becomes the interface between the VCs and the start-ups. “In India, we have no angel investors. Usually it takes a good team, business plan and proof of concept to get funding. The investors take care of the chosen companies for around nine to twelve months until they receive Series A funding,” said Dr Sridhar Mitta, former president of TiE Bangalore chapter. Mitta hopes to make this initiative a continuous one and wishes to rope in at least one woman-led start-up into this program. “The investors appreciate this program since it allows them to keep track of the entrepreneur’s progress.” While this program is now limited to TiE Bangalore, plans are afoot to roll this out globally. Nishant Malhotra, who looks after the TiE-EAP program said that the industry body is open to more entrepreneurs.