Entrepreneurial Spark, the world’s largest free business accelerator for early stage and growing ventures, today announces that it is launching a series of Hatcheries in India to support the country’s budding entrepreneurs, in partnership with Viridian.
In its first expansion beyond its native UK, Entrepreneurial Spark, which has been named the most active accelerator in Europe, having accelerated 352 start-ups in 2014*, will open a string of centres across India to support a growing culture of innovation and entrepreneurship and to help young businesses to create thousands of jobs. The Indian accelerator programme is a joint venture with Viridian, and will be known as Entrepreneurial Spark – Powered by Viridian.
The expansion will see Entrepreneurial Spark’s ground-breaking offer of office space and support rolled out to a much larger pool of potential entrepreneurs, and has the capacity to have a huge positive social and economic effect.
Entrepreneurial Spark co-founder and chief executive Jim Duffy said: “We build people who build businesses, and that has a huge positive knock-on effect in terms of innovation, job creation and economic growth.”
“We have chosen India as our first overseas expansion because of the huge potential there for entrepreneurship to make a difference. There is a growing entrepreneurial spirit in India, with a young, large and skilled population making the country uniquely placed to foster new business creation. But this raw material, or potential, is not matched with the means to make it happen. This joint venture does – it presents a clear and documented structure with a track record.”
“The vision is to create India’s most successful accelerator and be the ‘go to’ for entrepreneurs.”
Vijay Raghavan, CEO, Viridian said: “The demographics of our country demand more than a million jobs to be created every month in the next decade. Our country hence needs more new entrepreneurs and start-up businesses. Currently there are large gaps in the support systems for entrepreneurs. While Indian entrepreneurs are second to none in the world, some aspects of entrepreneurship skills also need to be improved if we are to expect a larger share of the global venture capital. The Viridian Group is keen to address these gaps and support in building the entrepreneurship eco system of India. We are hence bringing one of the world’s best accelerator programs to India.”
“We sincerely believe that this tried, tested and highly respected platform can make a significant difference to Indian entrepreneurs. We look forward to working with numerous other organizations and industry seniors in this space to create real value to our entrepreneurs.”
The joint venture will provide a platform for success never seen before, offering critical office space and services; but crucially putting entrepreneurs through a rigorous enablement process working with a dedicated staff. Businesses chosen to join the programme will have six months in the Hatchery stage followed by 18 months of further support, known as the nest.
The initial locations selected are Delhi, Noida (Delhi NCR), GIFT City and Ahmedabad. Hatcheries at Bangalore, Mumbai/Pune and Hyderabad are set to follow. All of the sites have been selected because they are central hubs of economic development, have access to educational institutions and are natural entrepreneurship hubs.
Entrepreneurs will exclusively have access to wider international markets via Verbind’s World Trade Center Association membership, offering entrepreneurs with the hunger to grow access to export markets and the broader international ecosystem.
Entrepreneurial Spark – Powered by Viridian will also seek to drive partnerships and transfers between the India and the UK centers based on markets, ideas and relevance to have healthy engagements across geographies.
Duffy said that, while there is a growing spirit of entrepreneurship in India and considerable capital available from investors, there is currently a gap in the availability of funding and support for small but ambitious young ventures. Entrepreneurial Spark – Powered by Viridian is intended to close this gap by focussing on a high quality of enablement, mentorship and early stage support.
Duffy said: “We intend to break the current paradigm of entrepreneurship acceleration and initiate a revolution in catalysing large scale, high impact entrepreneurship in the country.”
Read more about Jim’s vision for Entrepreneurial Spark in India by clicking here.
For further information on Entrepreneurial Spark Powered by Virdian please visit ESpark-Viridian.org