If you’re a startup, I guess you won’t mind getting noticed and coached by tech giant Google (to put it mildly). Mumbai-based home services start-up TaskBob got through recently, along with 5 others from across the country including Programming Hub, RedCarpet, MagicPin, ShareChat and PlaySimpleGames.
These six start-ups will join 18 new companies from Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico at Google’s Headquarters for a two-week all-expenses paid boot camp starting June 13, 2016. Each will we allotted mentors, and will try and find solutions to their unique problems. The six-month-long mentorship programme will also include a fat cheque of $50,000 in funding.
Business Insider sat down with Aseem Khare, the CEO of
How did the idea come about?
Usually we don’t participate in competitions, but this was Google. We invested our time in this because we really wanted to learn from the experience.
What was the questionnaire like?
It was a pretty long. There were questions around what problem we’re solving, how big it is, whether we’re tech-driven or not, what our strengths and weaknesses are and past and possible future challenges.
They (Google execs) evaluated our answers, and we made it. There were no face-to-face interviews.
What are you looking to get out of these 2 weeks?
We want to know how great tech companies are built and how they think. We also want to learn how to make world-class products, and develop a company culture that ensures innovation happens even at scale. These are core to creating a successful business.
Do you see any future consolation in India’s services space?
A lot of consolation will happen in India over the next 2-3 years. However, companies that are create a superior experience for customers and offer a quality value proposition for service providers will survive.
Your plans to differentiate against segment-leader UrbanClap.
Customers want a uniform experience at scale. That’s only possible if you’re solving a big problem and have a really strong tech backing that’ll allow you to scale easily.
Over 80% of our customers are repeat users, and over 95% customers give us over 4 stars. We believe that’s a strong differentiator.
What are your plans for the $50,000 you’ll get?
There are no special plans. We’ll invest that in the regular scheme of things - spending on suppliers and marketing.
Your advice to young startups
There are multiple factors on which startups get selected to Google’s program. Firstly, you must solve a big and real problem. Secondly, you need to be able to solve the problem at scale via technology. The third is your team. You need a strong team to address these issues. What, how and who’s solving the problem matters.