VentureNursery readies for acceleration program Season-3 in May ‘13
Start up applications to be evaluated using tech platform from VentureNursery
Season-2 graduate InterviewMaster
Mumbai April 19, 2013
Up to eight differentiated ideas of passionate start-ups, from Media and Entertainment, Retail, e-Commerce, Consumer Technology, Education and CleanTech sectors, will get an opportunity to be mentored and groomed by the team at VentureNursery. The Season-3 of the acceleration program by VentureNursery, India’s first angel-backed startup accelerator begins May 2013 in Mumbai.
Four start-ups participating in the Season-2 of the acceleration program--InterviewMaster, Klip, Smart Sample and The Venturator--graduated last week.
The first two acceleration boot camps of VentureNursery attracted over 300 applicants from 27 cities. One of the portfolio companies at Venture Nursery, Oravel, an online value stays portal, secured seed funding from VentureNursery angels in September 2012.
For the convenience of startups from distant locations like Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Calicut, Chandigarh, Kanpur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Nasik, Patna among other, VentureNursery will use a technology platform from InterviewMaster to seek responses from the shortlisted startups from the comfort of their work places, asynchronously.
InterviewMaster platform will help VentureNursery to get to know the applicants, understand the team's clarity on the concept and gauge their passion and commitment.
In addition, it will allow the team to evaluate the lot of applicants via video rather than a text-based application.
Inviting new applicants, Ravi Kiran, Co-founder, VentureNursery said, “Enabling fledgling ideas to bloom into business opportunities is a wonderful experience. Transferring the experience of VentureNursery’s 50 angels, experts and mentors to the start-ups will help us create many such opportunities.”
VentureNursery helps in five broad areas: active mentoring by successful entrepreneurs and senior executives, access to good quality business support partners at a competitive price or gratis, business connections, opportunity to learn from other start-ups and an opportunity to raise seed funding.
Shravan Shroff, Co-founder, VentureNursery added, “VentureNursery’s active acceleration approach helps budding start-ups to work on their weak areas in a focused manner. More and more start-ups are approaching us to bridge their business gaps.”
Entrepreneurs whose ideas have been in the making for 6 to 9 months can apply online (http://www.venturenursery.com) this month.
VentureNursery team will review and shortlist start-ups for interview using InterviewMaster. Up to eight start ups will be selected for the Season 3 and announced in May 2013.
VentureNursery set up by well known entrepreneur Shravan Sarnoff (who founded Fame Cinemas) and eminent marketing and management expert Ravi Kiran (former CEO, South East and South Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group) in March, 2012 was joined by 10 Individual angel investors and two Institutional investors as the country’s first Charter Angel group dedicated to an accelerator.
VentureNursery Executive VP, Apoorv Ranjan Sharma says, “VentureNursery will offer a customised mentoring program for 13 weeks. The program begins with identification of the key gaps and challenge areas in each participating start-up by the Angels-in-Residence.”
“These challenge areas are then addressed through multiple mentoring sessions by experienced serial entrepreneurs, Charter Angels, VCs, technologists and senior corporate managers. The feedback given by each advisor and investor is then collated and incorporated into the business plan of the participating start-up,” adds Sharma.
VentureNursery leverages its strong network and introduces startups to potential co-founders, if needed. On successful completion of the program, each start-up is given an opportunity to present its business idea to Charter Angels and Angels-in-Residence for feedback and potential seed-funding. VentureNursery continues to support start-ups even after the acceleration program is over.
Brief on VentureNursery Graduates from Season-2
InterviewMaster
InterviewMaster, the next generation ‘Candidate Pre Screening’ tool, is an innovative web application which helps conduct Interviews without an Interviewer. It creates one-way video interviews where job applicants respond to pre-set questions without a live person on the other side. The job applicants can record the interviews anytime convenient to them and hiring managers can watch and share the interviews with their team when they have time, thus providing complete scheduling flexibility.
InterviewMaster's advantage is it helps ensure companies meet meritorious candidates for face to face round, avoid interview scheduling conflicts, fraud telephonic interviews and location constraints. Using Interview Master for recruitment can lead to 90% savings in time and cost compared to traditional methods. The estimated savings is more than Rs 10 million per 1000 hiring. InterviewMaster is co-founded by a group of dedicated enthusiasts from IIT Bombay and NMIMS having experience of working with MNCs like KPMG, National Instruments and Larsen & Toubro.
Klip
Klip is a Social Curation tool that helps users discover interesting lifestyle and fashion products. The past couple of years have seen a lot of new players in e-commerce space in India. It has made interesting and offbeat products accessible to the consumers. However, the consumers, not exposed to all the products and stores, spend time searching for things that match their taste. Klip, aggregates all the products on one platform, and curates them based on the users social connections and interest graph and simplifies the process of product discovery.
Smart Sample
Smart Sample is an evolving community of new product enthusiasts. The platform enables the user to not only voice her feedback but also try and experience new products and services. Marketers generate trial, awareness and advocacy through SMART SAMPLE community of more than 1,00,000 plus trained volunteer brand evangelists by providing them free samples and accelerating word of mouth to drive sales. The start-up is founded by marketing professional having experience of working with leading FMCG majors and is also a serial entrepreneur.
The Venturator
The Venturator is an online marketplace that connects start-ups with eco-system enablers. With its exclusive start-up business driven focus, it aspires to be the first of its kind of social media portal that helps early stage start-ups to connect to the right resource pool, thereby accelerating their growth in the shortest time span. It works on an invite-based model and signing up is free. The Venturator is founded by an experienced start-up media professional.
What is an Accelerator and how does it work
In an accelerator program, start-ups have access to the mind of gurus--advisors, angels and other experts. They propel the start-ups to an accelerated path of business building, via their vast experience and guidance.
If the start ups respond to the Guru’s inputs and create a potentially viable business, the Gurus may invest seed money which could be used to develop a product prototype or a service offering framework.
However, only the angels invest money, while others mentor the start-ups during the difficult phase of launch and expansion.
About VentureNursery [@venturenursery]
Venture Nursery is India’s first angel-backed start-up accelerator. It 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 and Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Friends of Ambition.
Based on its belief that the angel ecosystem must focus primarily on maximising the success potential of start-ups, VentureNursery undertakes an intensive and immersive coaching and mentoring role in the chosen start-ups and helps them with end-to-end infrastructural and learning support.
VentureNursery conducts a minimum of two boot camps annually in Mumbai and targets to accommodate up to eight start-ups in each program. At the end of each program, successfully graduating start-ups are evaluated for investment by a dozen strong group of committed and seasoned angel investors.
Although designed to be sector agnostic in the long run, VentureNursery focuses on six sectors at present, – Media & Entertainment, Retail, e-Commerce, Consumer Technology, Education and CleanTech.
In addition to the Angels-in-Residence and Charter Angels, VentureNursery works with a group of 40 Advisors-in-Residence and Executives-in-Residence to provide complete support to the start-ups.
For queries, please contact:
Sanjiv Kataria, Strategic Communications and PR Counsel
Sanjiv dot Kataria at gmail dot com +91 98100 49095
Start up applications to be evaluated using tech platform from VentureNursery
Season-2 graduate InterviewMaster
Mumbai April 19, 2013
Up to eight differentiated ideas of passionate start-ups, from Media and Entertainment, Retail, e-Commerce, Consumer Technology, Education and CleanTech sectors, will get an opportunity to be mentored and groomed by the team at VentureNursery. The Season-3 of the acceleration program by VentureNursery, India’s first angel-backed startup accelerator begins May 2013 in Mumbai.
Four start-ups participating in the Season-2 of the acceleration program--InterviewMaster, Klip, Smart Sample and The Venturator--graduated last week.
The first two acceleration boot camps of VentureNursery attracted over 300 applicants from 27 cities. One of the portfolio companies at Venture Nursery, Oravel, an online value stays portal, secured seed funding from VentureNursery angels in September 2012.
For the convenience of startups from distant locations like Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Calicut, Chandigarh, Kanpur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Nasik, Patna among other, VentureNursery will use a technology platform from InterviewMaster to seek responses from the shortlisted startups from the comfort of their work places, asynchronously.
InterviewMaster platform will help VentureNursery to get to know the applicants, understand the team's clarity on the concept and gauge their passion and commitment.
In addition, it will allow the team to evaluate the lot of applicants via video rather than a text-based application.
Inviting new applicants, Ravi Kiran, Co-founder, VentureNursery said, “Enabling fledgling ideas to bloom into business opportunities is a wonderful experience. Transferring the experience of VentureNursery’s 50 angels, experts and mentors to the start-ups will help us create many such opportunities.”
VentureNursery helps in five broad areas: active mentoring by successful entrepreneurs and senior executives, access to good quality business support partners at a competitive price or gratis, business connections, opportunity to learn from other start-ups and an opportunity to raise seed funding.
Shravan Shroff, Co-founder, VentureNursery added, “VentureNursery’s active acceleration approach helps budding start-ups to work on their weak areas in a focused manner. More and more start-ups are approaching us to bridge their business gaps.”
Entrepreneurs whose ideas have been in the making for 6 to 9 months can apply online (http://www.venturenursery.com) this month.
VentureNursery team will review and shortlist start-ups for interview using InterviewMaster. Up to eight start ups will be selected for the Season 3 and announced in May 2013.
VentureNursery set up by well known entrepreneur Shravan Sarnoff (who founded Fame Cinemas) and eminent marketing and management expert Ravi Kiran (former CEO, South East and South Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group) in March, 2012 was joined by 10 Individual angel investors and two Institutional investors as the country’s first Charter Angel group dedicated to an accelerator.
VentureNursery Executive VP, Apoorv Ranjan Sharma says, “VentureNursery will offer a customised mentoring program for 13 weeks. The program begins with identification of the key gaps and challenge areas in each participating start-up by the Angels-in-Residence.”
“These challenge areas are then addressed through multiple mentoring sessions by experienced serial entrepreneurs, Charter Angels, VCs, technologists and senior corporate managers. The feedback given by each advisor and investor is then collated and incorporated into the business plan of the participating start-up,” adds Sharma.
VentureNursery leverages its strong network and introduces startups to potential co-founders, if needed. On successful completion of the program, each start-up is given an opportunity to present its business idea to Charter Angels and Angels-in-Residence for feedback and potential seed-funding. VentureNursery continues to support start-ups even after the acceleration program is over.
Brief on VentureNursery Graduates from Season-2
InterviewMaster
InterviewMaster, the next generation ‘Candidate Pre Screening’ tool, is an innovative web application which helps conduct Interviews without an Interviewer. It creates one-way video interviews where job applicants respond to pre-set questions without a live person on the other side. The job applicants can record the interviews anytime convenient to them and hiring managers can watch and share the interviews with their team when they have time, thus providing complete scheduling flexibility.
InterviewMaster's advantage is it helps ensure companies meet meritorious candidates for face to face round, avoid interview scheduling conflicts, fraud telephonic interviews and location constraints. Using Interview Master for recruitment can lead to 90% savings in time and cost compared to traditional methods. The estimated savings is more than Rs 10 million per 1000 hiring. InterviewMaster is co-founded by a group of dedicated enthusiasts from IIT Bombay and NMIMS having experience of working with MNCs like KPMG, National Instruments and Larsen & Toubro.
Klip
Klip is a Social Curation tool that helps users discover interesting lifestyle and fashion products. The past couple of years have seen a lot of new players in e-commerce space in India. It has made interesting and offbeat products accessible to the consumers. However, the consumers, not exposed to all the products and stores, spend time searching for things that match their taste. Klip, aggregates all the products on one platform, and curates them based on the users social connections and interest graph and simplifies the process of product discovery.
Smart Sample
Smart Sample is an evolving community of new product enthusiasts. The platform enables the user to not only voice her feedback but also try and experience new products and services. Marketers generate trial, awareness and advocacy through SMART SAMPLE community of more than 1,00,000 plus trained volunteer brand evangelists by providing them free samples and accelerating word of mouth to drive sales. The start-up is founded by marketing professional having experience of working with leading FMCG majors and is also a serial entrepreneur.
The Venturator
The Venturator is an online marketplace that connects start-ups with eco-system enablers. With its exclusive start-up business driven focus, it aspires to be the first of its kind of social media portal that helps early stage start-ups to connect to the right resource pool, thereby accelerating their growth in the shortest time span. It works on an invite-based model and signing up is free. The Venturator is founded by an experienced start-up media professional.
What is an Accelerator and how does it work
In an accelerator program, start-ups have access to the mind of gurus--advisors, angels and other experts. They propel the start-ups to an accelerated path of business building, via their vast experience and guidance.
If the start ups respond to the Guru’s inputs and create a potentially viable business, the Gurus may invest seed money which could be used to develop a product prototype or a service offering framework.
However, only the angels invest money, while others mentor the start-ups during the difficult phase of launch and expansion.
About VentureNursery [@venturenursery]
Venture Nursery is India’s first angel-backed start-up accelerator. It 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 and Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Friends of Ambition.
Based on its belief that the angel ecosystem must focus primarily on maximising the success potential of start-ups, VentureNursery undertakes an intensive and immersive coaching and mentoring role in the chosen start-ups and helps them with end-to-end infrastructural and learning support.
VentureNursery conducts a minimum of two boot camps annually in Mumbai and targets to accommodate up to eight start-ups in each program. At the end of each program, successfully graduating start-ups are evaluated for investment by a dozen strong group of committed and seasoned angel investors.
Although designed to be sector agnostic in the long run, VentureNursery focuses on six sectors at present, – Media & Entertainment, Retail, e-Commerce, Consumer Technology, Education and CleanTech.
In addition to the Angels-in-Residence and Charter Angels, VentureNursery works with a group of 40 Advisors-in-Residence and Executives-in-Residence to provide complete support to the start-ups.
For queries, please contact:
Sanjiv Kataria, Strategic Communications and PR Counsel
Sanjiv dot Kataria at gmail dot com +91 98100 49095
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