Amrita Technology Business Incubator, one of the top-5 most prolific incubators for startups in the country and the Indian Angel Network, India’s first and Asia’s largest network of angel investors signed an MOU on September 11 to promote entrepreneurship in India.
IAN President Padmaja Ruparel and Vice president Digvijay Singh travelled into Amrita TBI head office in Kollam to meet with the startups and sign the MOU. Several startups of Amrita TBI had the wonderful opportunity to interact with Padmaja Ruparel one on one. She also delivered a session to Amrita University students titled ‘Idea to Investment’ that explained the process of taking an idea from the drawing board to a product and investment.
Amrita TBI is a non-profit incubator supported by Govt. of India and Amrita University with incubation centres in Kollam, Bangalore and Coimbatore. Amrita TBI has incubated 25 startups, mentored 105 startup ideas, filed 4 patents and received more than 600 startup applications for its incubation program. Amrita TBI has also been actively promoting students and mentoring them to think out of the box. One student group has started a company and received Rs. 100K in investment with an acceleration program in Silicon Valley. Another student has built India's first mobile app for farmers that connects 3500 talukas across India, is available in 6 languages and can work through both SMS and internet.
This partnership will give way to a vibrant ecosystem to foster technology entrepreneurship development in India. IAN and Amrita TBI will work jointly to promote entrepreneurship and startups in the country. Amrita TBI's startups will have an opportunity to pitch before IAN's angel/VC network for funding.
Addressing the students and startups, Padmaja said “I want to congratulate Amrita TBI, you have 25 investee companies and have no losses, we haven't seen this elsewhere and I think that’s great. It is nice to see that you have taken the virtual incubator scheme to the next level and have expanded on it.“
''Through this partnership Amrita TBI startups have a quick and easy way to get capital at the early stage to kick the enterprise to the next level besides getting invaluable mentorship" said Vice-President, Amrita TBI, Mr. Snehal Shetty.
