Start-ups, Gig-it and Tyre Express, join Season 9 of VentureNursery's acceleration program
Mumbai Feb 24, 2016
VentureNursery, India's first angel backed accelerator, has announced the commencement of Season-9 of its acceleration program. Two start-ups with innovative ideas selected for the 13-week acceleration program are Gig-it, a social event discovery platform, and Tyre Express, a business to business (B2B) marketplace for lifecycle management for commercial vehicle tyres.
Gig-it, is the brainchild of husband and wife duo Kamal Trilok Singh, an advertising and marketing professional and a passionate stand-up comedian and Akshata Agarwal, an investment banker. Gig-it, a social event discovery platform, will address needs of all those who don't know what to do with their evenings or free time. Gig-it helps discover interesting events based on individual interests and passion.
Akshata and Kamal's research showed that lack of information about gigs, their overall quality, pricing and long distances discouraged many from venturing beyond a movie or going out for a meal.
By replacing multiple searches with one consolidated view, Gig-it aims to organise this segment and hopes to make their going out easy and exciting for people. Given Akshata and Kamal's close association with artists, events industry, venues across India and thanks to their comedy club 'The Awkward Fruit', it will be easy for them to build an innovative solution.
"We were clear that we needed to learn. And from experienced people…those who had been there and done it all with a passion for nurturing start-ups," says Akshata.
The selected start-ups will have access to a pool of 80 experienced mentors from a variety of business areas and 30 VentureNursery members who will, question business assumptions, help point out gaps, draw attention to potential minefields and prepare them to draw lessons for real world issues as they scale business.
The second start-up, Tyre Express, will work with its partners to offer a range of financial solutions for sourcing Tyres and leverage technology to enable lifecycle management for Tyres.
The start-up has been founded by three school mates and buddies who immersed themselves in engineering, strategic consulting and public administration.
Dinesh Wakale spent seven years as part of L&T M&A and engineering team and ran a venture for supplying on-demand concrete and products. Over the last eight years, Brijesh Shukla gained experience in Strategic Consulting and Business Development while working with Deloitte and CRISIL. For Vinit Palkar, who served as a Municipal Corporator at the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation for a five year term 2010-15, Tyre Express is a second venture that he is building.
The VentureNursery program will help the founders refine their business model and address specific start-up challenges.
"We chose to join VentureNursery program as it is an excellent platform with access to high quality mentors and designed to help us address specific challenges for scaling our business," says Dinesh Wakale.
About VentureNursery
VentureNursery (VN), India's first angel-backed start-up accelerator, aims to prepare start-ups and founders for #PolePosition.
VentureNursery was established in March 2012 by two like-minded Angel Investors--Shravan Shroff, Founder and former MD, Fame Cinemas and Ravi Kiran, former CEO-South East & South Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group, Co-Founder, Friends of Ambition and Co-Founder, DazzleToday.
Shravan Shroff and Ravi Kiran in their individual capacity have made scores of angel investments in sectors ranging from Hospitality, Enterprise Technology, E-Commerce, E-Services, EduTech, Cloud Telephony, Crowdfunding, TravelTech, to Mobile Solutions, Gaming, Social Commerce, Location Technology, Computational Science and Analytics and more. They are also limited partners in several Venture Funds and Private Equity funds.
VentureNursery has so far accelerated 23 start-ups, of which 16 have graduated and 12 are active and growing well.
Based on its belief that the venture ecosystem needs to focus primarily on maximising the success potential of founders and start-ups, VentureNursery undertakes an intensive and immersive coaching and mentoring role in the chosen start-ups and helps each with end-to-end infrastructural and learning support.
With an obsessive focus on quality, VentureNursery currently conducts four boot camps a year in Mumbai and accommodates two start-ups in each.
Following a customised curriculum, delivered by industry leading mentors, the three most important things each start-up learns during the program are identification of right problems, achieving product-market fit and decision making. At the end of each program, start-ups graduating successfully, are evaluated for investment by VentureNursery's members, a strong group of committed and seasoned angel investors.
Beginning with 10 members (including Shravan and Ravi Kiran) in 2012, VentureNursery currently has 30 members in addition to over 80 mentors-in-residence.
VentureNursery Alumni include branded budget hotel chain OYO Rooms, video interview platform Talview, fashion and lifestyle social commerce platform Klip,crowd-funding platform Catapooolt, travel start-up SeekSherpa, artificial general intelligence company InvenZone, last minute hotel booking company Hotels Around You and curated activity and hobby classes company FindUrClass, an on-demand home beauty and wellness services platform The Home Salon, andFixy an on-demand service platform for Handyman, Repair and Home Maintenance Services.
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