Startup! Claim Your F.A.M.E. (Funding. Acceleration. Mentoring. Enterprise Connect)

Are you an entrepreneur struggling to accelerate your startup? What are your biggest concerns: finding funding, lack of mentoring or missing enterprise connects? The help is now just a click away. Many big organisations are coming forward to help budding entrepreneurs propel their growth in the Indian market. This, by providing them everything they need: right from angel funding to accelerator and incubator support, mentorship from experts to a piece of the leading minds.

This article would introduce you to organisations who can give wings to your ‘entrepreneurial dreams’.


Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE): If you are looking for a one-stop-shop for funding, mentoring, and enterprise connect, CIIE is it. It was set up by IIM Ahmedabad with support from the Government of India. Since its inception, the group has been successfully fostering entrepreneurship through incubation, ecosystem development and academic initiatives. Its portfolio ventures have an impressive success rate and employ more than 1,000 people. Boasting of less than 5% mortality rate since 2008, the CIIE, along with its investee companies, has raised over Rs 125 crore till date.

Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI): Lucky are those, who can find mentors. But if you are still searching for one, get enrolled with EDI and you stand a sure-shot chance to find world’s best mentors who would guide you on the road to entrepreneurship. The EDI came into being in 1983, when the Industrial Development Bank of India, the apex financial institution, joined hands with Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India (ICICI), Industrial Finance Corporation of India (IFCI), and State Bank of India (SBI) to support the Gujarat Centre for Entrepreneurship (CED). Since then, it has been facilitating emergence of competent first generation entrepreneurs and transition of existing SMEs into growth-oriented enterprises through entrepreneurship education, training, research & institution building. As of March 31, 2014, the group has set up 9,591 micro enterprises, and trained over 17,567 micro entrepreneurs.

Indian Institute of Entrepreneurship (IIE): India has the largest rural population; this explains why IIE was established in the year 1993 by the erstwhile Ministry of Industry, Government of India as an autonomous national institute. With focus on development of micro, small and medium enterprises, it undertakes several initiatives every year to achieve the following key objectives: promote and develop entrepreneurship; conduct research and provide consultancy for entrepreneurship development; provide consultancy and monitoring service to MSMEs/ potential entrepreneurs and enhance employability of participants; promote greater use of information technology in the activities/ functions of the IIE. Join and get trained by the best in the industry.

NASSCOM 10,000 Startups: This is one of the recent and latest startup initiatives by National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), the trade association of Indian Information Technology and Business Process Outsourcing industry, which every enthusiastic entrepreneur should keep a tab on. The NASSCOM 10,000 program is created with the aim to enable thousands of entrepreneurs to start-up and grow their businesses. It has successfully launched three phases as of June 2014. Through this program, NASSCOM would be offering startups a substantial funding amount—ranging from Rs 25 lakh to Rs 2 crore—through leading angel investor networks of the country. The program has so far received 7000 applications, shortlisted 500 and impacted 150. Become a member and who knows, it might give your start-up the wings that it needs to succeed.

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