Rocket Fuel for Emerging Market Entrepreneurs.
Collaborizm is an online tech incubator and collaboration community for highly skilled millennials. Most of our early adopters are software and hardware engineers-makers from India who are aspiring entrepreneurs. The platform allows them to quickly launch their innovative project ideas and to find like-minded teammates to work with them to advance their ideas. It also allows them to display their skills, earn online credentials and share knowledge; our most elite talent are eligible to do freelance jobs for our customers who are mostly Western-based (developed markets).
We achieved a major milestone this past week when we entered a pilot engagement with Startup India Hub (“The Hub”), which is affiliated with Startup India, the government of India’s initiative to promote entrepreneurship in India. We have already started selecting Top Projects led by Indian makers for The Hub to support, and they are already providing detailed mentorship around angel funding, manufacturing aid, and legal help to the Project team members. This is invaluable to our community; The Hub’s mentorship is public and should help all of our users. We also view The Hub’s support as an implicit endorsement of the potential Collaborizm has to advance the entrepreneurial ideas of our extremely talented, millennial user base.
How the Relationship Works
Collaborizm selects 1–2 promising Indian-led Collaborizm commercial ventures each week and provides The Hub with a detailed description of these projects, why we believe they have great potential and the kind of assistance they need, e.g.:
- Manufacturing & Prototyping help
- Mentorship, including advice regarding how to write a Business Plan
- Legal and Accounting services
- Access to Angel funding
What We’re Looking For:
Projects showing clear step-by-step roadmaps.
Projects actively working with the community on specific tasks.
Projects actively showing healthy team-work and task delegation.
Projects that display competitive differentiation in the market.
Projects that have developed detailed business plans and pitch decks.
The Program is Revolutionary
This is revolutionary because it enables Startup India Hub to directly engage and support aspiring Indian entrepreneurs in a scaleable, virtual environment. Our young users are honored and excited to receive encouragement and tutelage from an organization that is part of Prime Minister’s Modi’s initiative to promote entrepreneurship in India. The Hub gets to directly see the positive impact they are having on the aspiring entrepreneurs they are mentoring, and they will also learn first-hand what these talented, motivated young people need to succeed with their ventures. We believe Collaborizm can provide the first scalable solution towards mentoring and spotting the most promising early stage startup teams in India.
Sciencotonic Case Study
The first startup we selected for The Hub was Sciencotonic, which is a project to teach robotics online using Augmented Reality technology. The Hub jumped right in and immediately asked the Project Leader, Narendran Ashok, an engineer-maker from Chennai, India, to lay out his business outline via a series of direct questions. The entire Collaborizm community can watch The Hub’s mentorship in action, which inspires those users who may have not have the confidence to aggressively pursue their entrepreneurial ideas.
The founder of Sciencotonic, Narendran Ashok, is now being actively paired with a mentor from the Startup India Hub network.
“The Collaborizm-Startup India Hub partnership has been a radical game changer for my venture. It’s provided me with the guidance to get over some major obstacles, not mention an incredible positive energy boost to continue forward with my venture.” — Narendran A. Founder of Sciencotonic.
We are very grateful to the Hub’s agreement to engage with us, and expect its involvement to help many promising projects achieve commercial success; it should also entice more of our users to aggressively pursue their entrepreneurial ideas. Just the rocket fuel they need!
Next week’s startup pick will be announced this Tuesday, June 13th, 2017!
Sincerely,
Steven Reubenstone
Founder & CEO
