VentureNursery, India's first angel backed accelerator readies for Season 3 of its start up acceleration program

Mumbai:

VentureNursery, India’s first angel-backed startup accelerator has announced Season-3 of its Acceleration program beginning May 16 at Mumbai.

Eight differentiated ideas from passionate start-ups, from Media and Entertainment, Retail, e-Commerce, Consumer Technology, Education and CleanTech, will get an opportunity to be mentored and groomed by the team at VentureNursery.

VentureNursery's Season 1 and 2 of its acceleration boot camps attracted over 300 applicants from 27 cities, including Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Calicut, Kanpur, Lucknow, Nasik and Pune.

The current batch of acceleration program with four ideas -- Interview Master, KLIP, Smart Sample and The Venturator -- is expected to graduate mid April 2013.

One of the portfolio companies at Venture Nursery, Oravel, an online value stays portal, secured the seed round funding from VentureNursery angels in September 2012.

Inviting new applicants, Ravi Kiran, Co-founder, VentureNursery said, “Transforming fledgling ideas into a business opportunity is a wonderful experience.  Active participation and support from VentureNursery’s 50 angels, experts and mentors will help us create many such opportunities in next year.”

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 primarily for bridging their business gap area.”

Entrepreneurs whose start ups ideas have been in the making for 6 to 9 months can apply online ( http://www.venturenursery.com) till April 15, 2013 VentureNursery team will review and shortlist start-ups for personal interaction. VentureNursery shall induct up to eight start ups for the Season 3 to be announced by mid-May 2013.

VentureNursery was 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. They were joined by 10 Individual angel investors and 2 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 up to 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 an elite group of 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.

On need basis, VentureNursery leverages its strong network and introduces startups  to potential co-founders. 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.