Ahmedabad: The Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), the well known business incubator, part of Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM Ahmedabad), has launched a premier programme for technology startups. As per reports, CIIE has recently gone into collaboration with Village Capital, to start a unique acceleration programme for innovative startups. This programme would focus on technology that has the potential to make an impact on an organization’s growth.
According to the sources, the “CIIE-Village Capital Accelerator” programme is a great alliance between the two esteemed institutions, which have a long record of identifying, supporting and funding budding companies, with peer support. This programme chiefly focuses on profit-making as well as business related Indian startups that exhibit an elevated social value in their tech-driven and tech-enabled contributions. Other technology based enterprises, such as firms operating in the filed of mobile / ICT, health, agribusiness, education, sustainability and livelihood solutions verticals etc. shall also be supported by the accelerator.
During the whole program, entrepreneurs would come together and asses each others proposals. The two top-ranking startups, emerging from this process will receive a grant of up to $50,000 USD, as investment. The proposed programme will commence from April 11, 2013. Apart from the financial support, the budding businessmen would also get great exposure, in form of online collaborations. Meetings and presentations with expert mentors, investors and sector practitioners will also be conducted during the programme.
To top it off, the young guns will get be able to get real-time feedback from the field experts. Furthermore, the participants will also get a chance to pitch their proposals to the leading Indian venture capitalists and international investors, at the end of the programme. Discussing about the initiative, Shashank Rastogi, Director of Operations at CIIE, explained that the centre has been supporting some of the leading social ventures in India, however, this new alliance with Village Capital would provide additional assistance to the centre in identifying and helping ground-breaking Indian startups in the technology.
The director went on to inform that this new programme is one of the several initiatives the centre is planning to introduce in order to reform the next generation of social enterprises.
