Infuse Ventures sets India’s Most Promising Clean Tech Start-ups on Road to Success

New Delhi: Some of India’s most promising early stage cleantech entrepreneurs were set well on their way to success through “PowerStart”, an intensive bootcamp and accelerator programme launched by Infuse Ventures – an early stage cleantech-focused venture fund hosted at and managed by IIM Ahmedabad’s Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE). 

The PowerStart Bootcamp was held from 10 to 14 November at CIIE’s premises as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, the world’s largest celebration of entrepreneurs, innovators and job creators. The PowerStartprogramme has been designed specifically for both current (recently formed) cleantech start-up teams as well as ‘aspiring entrepreneurs’ (individuals with significant experience in the space exploring a cleantech business idea of their own). PowerStart is actively supported by the Asian Development Bank through their ‘Pilot Asia - Pacific Climate Technology Network and Finance Center’ project.

Over the course of the five-day bootcamp, 30 selected participants – including 12 start-up teams and 6 ‘aspiring entrepreneurs’ – got to meet, network, and learn from over 30 leading industry experts and ‘mentors’ encompassing a wide variety of topics of relevance to early stage cleantech entrepreneurs. 

The bootcamp featured talks and discussion by experts such as V. Subramanian (former Secretary – Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Govt. of India), Aniruddha Patil (Senior Investment Specialist at the Asian Development Bank), Ashish Sethia (Country Manager & Head of Research at Bloomberg New Energy Finance) and Vineeth Vijayaraghavan (Editor of Panchabuta). Since ‘financing’ is a critical issue faced by nearly all cleantech entrepreneurs, the bootcamp had several sessions on various options and methods of raising finance – some of the speakers included Jaisingh Dhumal (Chief Manager of ICICI Bank’s Technology Finance Group) and Ravi Tyagi (General Manager of Small industries Development at the Bank of India). In addition to financing, participants were also introduced to indispensable business skills like financial modeling, legal matters, pitching to investors, design thinking, etc.

The third day of the bootcamp saw the participants attending an 2-hour workshop on the ‘business model canvas’, following which there were over 4 hours of individual ‘one-on-one mentoring’ sessions during which 19 ‘mentors’ sat down with the participants individually, reviewing their business plans, refining their ‘business model canvases’ and helping them prepare ‘booster plans’ – essentially an outline of their targets, milestones and activities for the immediate and short term following the bootcamp. 

Participants presented these ‘booster plans’ on the final day wherein they received additional feedback and comments from the Infuse team and other mentors present. Speaking of the bootcamp, Kunal Upadhyay, CEO – CIIE and Infuse Ventures, said, “It’s amazing to see how the participants have refined their business models or ideas since the first day of the bootcamp – they seemed to have really heeded the advice received from the mentors / speakers and have been keenly incorporating these ideas into their respective business model canvases and booster plans.”

Following the bootcamp, selected start-up teams and aspiring entrepreneurs will be provided with additional mentoring support to create and accelerate their ventures – especially with helping them achieve the targets and milestones that they had put forth in their ‘booster plans’. Accordingly, the Infuse team will be actively engaging with the participants in the coming months, both offline and through in-person interactions with mentors. The objective is to have these teams ‘accelerated’ to a stage where they are ‘ready’ to receive seed funding from Infuse Ventures.