With the upcoming People and Culture Accelerator, CIIE.CO aims to empower founders with foundational knowledge, tools, frameworks and first principles to safely scale to the next stage. The platform also claimed that it has mentored over 5000 startups, invested in around 350 startups and trained more than 2000 startups as part of its incubation and acceleration programs.
CIIE.CO launches People and Culture Accelerator for 30 startups
CIIE.CO at IIM-Ahmedabad announced that it has launched a first-of-its-kind People and Culture Accelerator to accelerate 30 startups. The 3-month program will include startups across pre-series A – Series B and will include an intensive bootcamp on IIM Ahmedabad campus, bespoke mentoring and various other benefits for startups to overcome a variety of HR-related challenges including hiring, performance management, attrition, formalization, etc.
The firm also added that during the program, startups will focus on various challenges, including but not limited to hiring, attrition, founder’s leadership abilities, culture-building, compensation and benefits, and performance management and appraisals.
“Building a startup is serious work and people are at the centre of everything that startups do. We designed this accelerator to help address a variety of people related challenges that every other startup faces. Over our 20 year journey, we have intentionally built people and culture capacities in our supported startups. We are now opening this to the entire startup ecosystem, hoping to aid startups with tools that can enable them to build bigger and better,” said Supriya Sharma, Partner, CIIE.CO.
IIM Ahmedabad’s CIIE.CO partner with SIDBI to launch pre-seed deep tech accelerator fund
IIM Ahmedabad’s CIIE.CO and SIDBI have partnered to establish a pre-seed fund, especially for deep-tech start-ups. The MoU signed between the two organisations laid the foundation for the fund with a total corpus of ₹40 crore, equally contributed by both SIDBI and CIIE.CO.
Over the past twenty years, CIIE.CO has been an investor in early-stage ventures in India, investing in more than 350 start-ups, accelerating more than 1,500, and mentoring many more. The organisation’s singular focus has been on backing founders who are building disruptive solutions in their early stages. CIIE.CO’s investments are sector-agnostic, with a broad focus on three thematic areas – deep tech, digitisation, and climate tech.
The partnership was formalised during an event at CIIE.CO, located in IIM Ahmedabad’s New Campus. Attendees included Shri S Ramann, CMD of SIDBI, Prof. Chitra Singla, and Prof. Ankur Sinha from IIM Ahmedabad, Shri S P Singh, CGM of SIDBI, and Kunal Upadhyay, co-founder of CIIE.CO, among others.
CIIE.CO has also been recognised as a Center of Excellence by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. As India continues to position itself as a global leader in deep tech innovation, the partnership between IIMA’s CIIE.CO and SIDBI will play a significant role in strengthening the deep-tech entrepreneurial ecosystem in the country, it said.
India will go from a prepaid to a postpaid economy in next 5 years : Nandan Nilekani
The Reserve Bank of India’s Financial Inclusion Index for 2022 shows an improvement to 56.4 from 53.9 in 2021 across indices like access, usage, and equality. Despite the rise, there’s the scope of much more improvement when it comes to extending financial services to the unbanked population across India. It was to make a difference that CIIE.CO set up the Bharat Inclusion Initiative (BII) in 2018 as a full-stack solution to solve the problem of financial exclusion in India.
Its inaugural Bharat Inclusion Summit, organized in Bengaluru on March 3, served as a platform to reflect on the lessons learned and deliberate on the way forward for inclusive fintech in India. The event brought together industry and policy leaders, research foundations, fintech innovators, and investors to network and create opportunities for collaboration.
Creating financial stability in India
Speaking at the summit, Priyanka Chopra, Chief Operating Officer at CIIE.CO, said, “We recognised that the time was ripe for building for Bharat and created the Bharat Inclusion Initiative as a full-stack platform to attract entrepreneurial energy to solve for Bharat.”
She stated that after supporting over 60 entrepreneurs, who are now serving over 38 million customers, the organisation was convinced that “the moment for Bharat has indeed arrived”.
“CIIE.CO is committed to continuing the conversations that have started and leveraging the platform we have built to create many more solutions that truly include Bharat and meet its unique needs.”
The event showcased numerous conversations, including topics such as financial inclusion through embedded finance, gender inclusion in finance, and implications for the ecosystem. Other focus areas included Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and the future of finance in India, providing smallholder farmers access to credit and insurance, and climate finance’s role in building resilience in Bharat.
The lineup of participants was impressive: Nandan Nilekani, Co-Founder and Chairman of Infosys; Ajay Kumar Choudhury, Executive Director, RBI; Suseela Chintala, Chief General Manager, NABARD; Dilip Asbe, CEO, National Payments Corporation of India; Nithin Kamath, Founder, Zerodha; among many others.
The speakers provided thought-provoking insights into holistic financial inclusion and the future of fintech in Bharat.
Dilip Asbe’s fireside chat on ‘Customer Protection: Building a Responsible Digital Payments Ecosystem’ highlighted a necessary trade-off between ease of user flow and customer protection, and the importance of large investments to incentivise mechanisms.
He was followed by Ajay Kumar Choudhury, who, in his fireside chat on ‘CBDC and the Future of Finance in India’, described CBDC as a currency and not any other payment system. “CBDC is going to remove all redundancies, and in the long run is also looking at offline and cross-border transactions. Thus, [we] will seek the support of tech innovators,” he said.
In his chat on ‘Next Frontiers of Financial Inclusion’, Nandan Nilekani said credit was the heartbeat of the economy, adding that taking a loan in India will be as easy as making payments in the next three or four years. “India will go from a prepaid to a postpaid economy in the next five years,” he said.
Speaking about ‘Scaling Zerodha: Lessons on Building for Bharat’, Nithin said they became successful with Zerodha as they were trying to establish the company on an already established platform, and just when digitisation had swept in.
Apart from the fireside chats, the summit also featured several panels exploring the role of enablers in scaling inclusive fintechs and that of climate finance in building resiliency for Bharat.
Workshops on ‘Building Digital Pathways for Inclusive Fintech products’ to discuss how the user experience should be designed when building interfaces for the lower-income segments, and ‘How shall fintechs design products that are intuitive for women customer segments?’ were also part of the programme.
The summit concluded with a networking evening and collaborations with industry stalwarts.
Sanjay Jain, Partner, Bharat Innovation Fund, and Chief Innovation Officer, CIIE.CO, said: “Over the years, BII has worked with 60+ entrepreneurs and backed many different stages. This journey has been insightful; with this initiative, we have explored ideas that have enriched the local ecosystem. Today, the platform we have provided to these young entrepreneurs has grown into a significant movement, and we’re really glad to be a part of it!”
5 incubation centres to give your startup a kickstart
The concept of startup incubators might not be new, but the newfound interest in these centres continues to grow. Just like parents help a child learn how to walk, startup incubation centres enable a startup to nurture its idea and make it into a reality.
There are a few centres in India that really brings out the best of creativity from future entrepreneurs. If you yearn to be an entrepreneur, do have a look at five of the best incubation centres that can give your startup the kickstart it needs.
1. Centre for Innovation Incubation And Entrepreneurship at IIM, Ahmedabad
CIIE Regional Innovation Foundation (CRIF) supports Innovative and Impactful startups in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities of India.
CRIF was set up by the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship CIIE.CO at IIM Ahmedabad, India’s leading incubation and entrepreneurship centre.
CRIF is also a Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India supported Technology Business Incubator.
2. Indian Angel Network
IAN is an equity-based business incubator centre that gives priority to ventures in the areas of healthcare, gaming and animation cloud computing, retail, mobile VAS, media and entertainment, alternative energy, education and clean technology.
It has been established with the support of the National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board and the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India.
In addition to the regular functions of a business incubator, the IAN incubator helps startups to get seed funding and pre angel funding through its tie-up with Small Industries Development Bank of India.
3. JECRC Incubation Centre (JIC)
JECRC Incubation Centre is promoting student-driven innovation and start-ups to strengthen the innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem.
JIC envisions fostering an entrepreneur-friendly culture around academics and research by mentoring the incubated startups and evaluating them from time to time.
JECRC Incubation Centre is the first centre in Rajasthan with a well-defined startup policy for students.
4. CEI IIMC
Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CEI) is one of the centres of excellence established by the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta.
It aims to accomplish a more prominent understanding of an effective mechanism for the promotion of professional management practices in Indian organizations, as well as to stimulate the development of these startups in India for societal benefit.
5. Technopark TBI
Technopark Technology Business Incubator (T-TBI), is India’s first Non-Academic Business Incubator, hosted and housed inside the Asia Largest IT Park Technopark.
Technopark Technology Business Incubator (T-TBI), a joint association of Technopark, Trivandrum and the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, to help the technology business start-ups.
TBI provides startups with fully furnished office spaces, mentoring support in developing business and technology plans, networking of business resources, seed capital assistance, marketing assistance, professional assistance, conference facilities and video conference facilities.