My last post here on VentureWoods dwelt on the problems that early stage companies face in India and their requirements. One comment made on the post reminded me that all we are doing is analysis and seldom anything else (well, to be fair, HeadStart does quite a bit, it hosted 60 Startup Saturdays since last year and over 10k people have engaged in a variety of ways).
Well, here is something we also have done -I worked out a business incubator set up at the Centre for Electronics Development and Technology (CEDT) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore in partnership with the HeadStart Foundation.
The focus is very much on application areas where CEDT has expertise, applications where engineering and research requires investments in labs (that are provided free by CEDT) and expert project staff, and where we could engage prospective customers early on during incubation. The application areas are
1. Personal area networks: Multimedia delivery, Home security, Personal guidance systems, Authentication and Access control, Healthcare, Information synchronization
2. Automotive systems: Guidance and driving assistance, Entertainment, Traffic control and C2C (car to car) systems
3. Low cost embedded computing: Communications, Access control, Transactional systems (eg, ATMs)
4. Environmental monitoring: Energy management, Safety and Security, HVAC systems, Forestry and Farm management, Disaster management systems
5. Clean energy systems: Phantom power reduction, Distributed clean energy generation, Energy management and reduction
The incubator will admit its first batch of companies from June 2009 and it is hosted online on HeadStart’s collaboration portal here. Do pass on this information to people you know who can benefit from this initiative.
Prof Jamadagni, Chairman of CEDT, Jagannath Rao, advisor to CEDT and formerly Director of Motorola India’s mobile handsets business will help manage the incubator (I will be there as well) assisted by selected people from industry.
You can expect more such initiatives this year around establishing business incubators, industry linkages and investment support.
- Demystifying consumer hardware product development - February 14, 2014
- the First Startup Camp @HeadStart Ventures - July 24, 2010
- My experience of raising an Angel fund. - July 18, 2010
Sanjay, Avtar :
Thank you for your encouragement.
I agree that we will need to build ‘forward linkages’ – in fact, we are already doing that now albeit under the radar. We had 2 sets of presentations made by 4 startups to 2 large tech companies last week itself. And now we are formalising these outreach initiatives – you should see the first of these initiatives in public by the end of this month. They involve agreements between industry and headstart and that has taken time considering how things work within big cos.
These initiatives take care of the ‘gaps’ Avtar refers to.
This is welcome news, Kallol. Best of luck!
I believe one of the main challenges that you will face is identifying the key gaps of your incubatee companies: the gaps that will hinder completion of their product/value proposition, the gaps that will hinder acquisition of their first customers. If you (HeadStart) can rightly identify them and plug them early enough, that would be a great catalytic step for them.
In my experience, this is where several incubators/mentors/founders fall short. One feels and starts believing that one has got hold of those gaps but it turns out that the devil lay in further detail.
If I can help/contribute in any manner, let me know. Though I must tell you that I am entrepreneur currently in midst of the sea trying to save my ship, and I am very skeptical about angel/venture setups/money. There is no formula…
Best wishes.
This is really good news.
The challenge in initiatives such as these sometimes is what happens to the incubatee companies after the initial incubation period. I hope you will develop enough forward linkages such that the entrepreneurs in the incubatee companies get a “headstart” towards an eventual exit for some wealth creation through acquisition or an IPO.
Initiatives such as yours can help build an ecosystem in India so I wish you a lot of luck.
BTW I love your blog!
This is really good news.
The challenge in initiatives such as these sometimes is what happens to the incubatee companies after the initial incubation period. I hope you will develop enough forward linkages such that the entrepreneurs in the incubatee companies get a “headstart” towards an eventual exit for some wealth creation through acquisition or an IPO.
Initiatives such as yours can help build an ecosystem in India so I wish you a lot of luck.