Via Kallol Borah: HeadStart Ventures (http://www.headstartventures.in http://www.headstartventures.in) is yet another small beginning towards creating an organ

Via Kallol Borah: HeadStart Ventures (http://www.headstartventures.in http://www.headstartventures.in) is yet another small beginning towards creating an organisation to support entrepreneurs and innovators in India. HeadStart Ventures is set up as a limited liability partnership (LLP) firm with the objective of mentoring and seed funding startups in India. We are supported by large technology companies and the first one I wish to announce is Intuit, with whom we are launching an online brainstorming and collaboration platform (available to use at http://ideas.intuit.com http://ideas.intuit.com). I have been involved in two successful community initiatives as co-founder of the HeadStart Foundation which is a not for profit community platform that has grown from 15 people in 2007 to over 15000 people now and the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Bangalore which is a professional association for computer science researchers and practicians which has grown to over 5000 people taking part in activities. What I have seen as 'gaps' in the startup and innovation ecosystem is what HeadStart Ventures has been set up for. These are - 1) angel investments : starting up and innovation is stifled in India due to lack of seed stage funding available today. Not that India lacks high net worth individuals, this is more due to lack of an effective organisation to manage angel money. HeadStart Ventures is setting up an 'angel fund' where we are involved in getting interested, experienced and able individuals to come together and manage seed stage investments. As an entrepreneur myself, I feel that going to angel networks that have slow decision making processes, too many people to talk to and a risk taking aversion similar to VCs in India is frustrating and the HeadStart Ventures fund will address this. 2) effective mentoring : mentoring startups in India is mostly done pro bono and the results are not too encouraging barring a few exceptions. Again, as an entrepreneur, I do not want 'help' from a mentor, I would much rather have a mentor who sets some milestones for us to achieve together and works on them. HeadStart Ventures is going to announce an incentive based mentoring initiative very soon and we are starting with workshops in July to start identifying startups to work with. 3) market access : one of the main reasons Indian startups reportedly do not display much innovation is because of the lack of knowledge about markets. 'Problem spaces' need to be defined and worked upon in collaboration with industry early adopters. HeadStart Ventures is therefore working on partnerships with large industry organisations to help accelerate time and relevance to market of Indian startups