In order to support and expand early- and mid-stage start-ups, Google unveiled the first iteration of its nine-week virtual start-up mentorship programme, Google Startup School India, on Wednesday.
The initiative will concentrate on locating start-ups outside of metro areas, in tier 2 and tier 3 cities, and it aims to onboard 10,000 of them in its initial run by December. The program’s primary training topics will encompass selecting the correct product, design, technology, marketing, and business strategy.
In order to build a network of collaborators from the fintech, D2C, B2B, and B2C e-commerce, language, social media & networking, and job search industries, Google has teamed with internal executives, venture capitalists, and industry leaders. Sanjay Gupta, vice president of Google India, Rajan Anandan, managing director of Sequoia India & Southeast Asia, and Manjot Pahwa are a few among them.
Of the 70,000 active start-ups in India, Aditya Swamy, Director of Play Partnerships, noted that over 50% are from non-metros. However, around 90% of these active start-ups are unable to grow and collapse during the first five years of business.
‘The reasons for their failures can be bucketed into four areas. Are they able to attract the right talent, and build core teams that can scale up the idea? The second is: is there a real product-market fit? I could have a great idea but is there large enough user potential for that idea to scale? The third is the ability to raise capital and manage cash burn. The last one is: is there enough regular actionable feedback that can come back to the founding team that enables them to pivot or make the right changes to the business model?’ Swamy said addressing the media.
‘The core of this programme is to think about how we can pass on the experience of Google, of people from the ecosystem, to start-ups to solve problems across these four areas’, he added.
According to Developer Relations Program Manager Lead Karthik Padmanabhan, there is particular potential in the large-scale needs-solving industries like agritech, health tech, and finance. ‘These are very unique problems specific to India, but can be replicated in markets like Africa and other similar geographies’, he said.
This is only one of the several programmes Google has run in India. It introduced a start-up accelerator programme for female founders in June.
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