Applications for the next cohort will open in 2021
The Cohort focuses on the specific areas of Health, Edtech, and Cleantech in the context of a Smart City.
We look at the founding team - their passion, team dynamics, experience; and what will it be like to work with them. We back entrepreneurs who are driven and won't pack up and leave at the first sign of challenge.
We want to understand the rationale behind the idea. Why was this chosen? What problem does it solve and for whom? What makes it unique, viable, and feasible and a winning idea for us to back?
The start-up should have moved beyond the idea stage to execution - preferably with at least a rough prototype or an early proof of concept. Start-ups which are in expansion mode are probably beyond the scope of this cohort.
The Fourth Cohort was inaugurated by Mr.Kunal Kumar, IAS, Joint Secretary & Mission Director (Smart Cities Mission) in the presence of Mr. Rajesh Garodia, Pro Vice Chancellor, Ashoka University. The contact class at Ashoka University focused on understanding the Smart Cities Mission, opportunities available for startup enablement and scaleup, and interaction with ecosystem experts ranging from waste management, sanitation, and governance to name a few.
The second Contact Class focused on the developmental aspects of entrepreneurs, with Cohort members learning about Design Thinking and Value Proposition. It also had sessions on business operation and scaleup aspects including Unit Economics, Financial Modeling, and Pitching and Investment Funding. There were also multiple startup founder interactions to seek lessons from their journey. The Cohort members also had the opportunity to attend the Vibrant Gujarat Startup and Technology Summit.
The pandemic situation did not hinder the third Contact Class to convene through a virtual mode. Special Covid themed sessions were conducted to understand its impact on business and the means to mitigate risk and move ahead. The Cohort startups were connected to potential investors through customized processes.
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose