Priya Padmanabhan

BANGALORE: Thanks to an initiative of the industry body, The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), four Bangalore-based start-up companies have received angel funding and support in terms of incubation space, legal help for processing patents and manpower search.

The companies which received angel funding are: RedBus, an online ticketing firm, PicSquare, a photosharing portal,  Salesguru, a corporate training portal and Experience Commerce, an e-commerce portal. Each of them will be getting a seed funding of $25,000 (Rs.10 lakh) from angel investors who include, Kumar Malvalli, KB Chandrasekhar, Ashok Narasimhan and Sridhar Mitta.

Besides investment, TiE is also helping these companies find space at incubators such as NS Raghavan Center for Entrepreneural Learning, IISc and STPI. Companies can also avail support from a law firm that would help in processing patents and also an executive search firm. A few TiE members would also serve as mentors for the start-ups.

Around a hundred people had applied for the Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (EAP) program in February and a panel of TiE charter members selected these four promising start-ups.

The stumbling block for many entrepreneurs in India is the lack of access to early stage/angel funding. For Venture capitalists, it is a risky proposition to commit millions of dollars in a start-up that is yet to prove its mettle.

To solve this issue for both the parties, industry body The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), has rolled out an initiative called the Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program or EAP. In this unique model, TiE becomes the match-maker between the investors and the start-ups.

“In India, we have no angel investors. Usually it takes a good team, business plan and proof of concept to get funding. The investors take care of the chosen companies for around nine to twelve months until they receive Series A funding,” said Dr Sridhar Mitta, former president of TiE Bangalore chapter.

Mitta hopes to make this initiative a continuous one and wishes to rope in at least one woman-led start-up into this program. “The investors appreciate this program since it allows them to keep track of the entrepreneur’s progress.”

While this program is now limited to TiE Bangalore, plans are afoot to roll this out globally. Nishant Malhotra, who looks after the TiE-EAP program said that the industry body is open to more entrepreneurs.

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