The company was founded in 2009 ago by Ram Gollamudi and Prasanna Boni. Gollamudi, an alumnus of IIT Madras, was earlier a venture capitalist with San Diego-based Mission Ventures. Boni, an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad and IIT Madras, earlier co-founded and led operations at Hyderabad-based enterprise software product company YASU Technologies.

Last March, the company launched its flagship product Edutor Advantage E40, a portable device for students from Standard II to X. The company device comes pre-loaded with curriculum-aligned content as well as extra curricular content related to cricket, spoken English and yoga. The touch screen device retails at Rs 5,845 and the content costs Rs 1,635. The company has content partnerships with Manipal K-12 Education, Cambridge University Press and ConedTec.

Hyderabad Angels recently invested in Mumbai-based Green India Building Systems and Services.

Image Courtesy: Edutor Technologies

Both Kiran and Shroff will channel their own entrepreneurial experiences in helping coach startups at the accelerator. Shroff founded and led Mumbai-based multiplex player Fame Cinemas, which was acquired by Inox Leisure in early 2010. Kiran led Starcom MediaVest Group’s South East Asia and South Asia operations as CEO and is a co-founder of Mumbai-based growth advisory firm Friends of Ambition. Both are also active angel investors through Mumbai Angels and Indian Angel Network and have made 18 investments between them.

VentureNursery’s primary objective is to help founders of young, pre-revenue startups to refine their business models and enhance their chances of raising angel and seed funding. Startups who qualify for the bootcamp will have access to infrastructure such as office space, legal experts and accounting experts, branding and design professionals and even travel agents. More importantly, they will be mentored by a group of angel investors and industry experts, who will work with them as advisors-in-residence. Shroff and Kiran will work alongside the startups on a day-to-day basis as angels-in-residence.

The accelerator will also pool successful corporate executives and businessmen and pair them with startup teams as co-founders or in other strategic roles. At the end of the bootcamp, each startup will be given an opportunity to pitch for funding to a group of angel investors, including Shroff and Kiran. While these services will be provided free, VentureNursery will pick up sweat equity in the startups that participate in the bootcamp, said Kiran. Shroff and he are also committed to investing in up to three startups that graduate from the programme.

The 1,200 square feet accelerator will be located in Mumbai’s western suburbs. While startups from across the country are eligible to participate in the bootcamp, non-Mumbai applicants will have to relocate to the city for 13 weeks.

The accelerator intends to be sector agnostic in the long term, but for now will focus on five sectors – media and entertainment, retail, ecommerce, consumer technology, education and cleantech. “We’re also specifically looking for startups that have some kind of social impact orientation,” said Shroff. Apart from the bootcamp startups, the accelerator also plans to accept applications from startups outside the programme. These would typically be companies that have received some funding from friends or family and cannot wait until the next bootcamp commences.

The idea for the accelerator was born out of Shroff’s and Kiran’s experiences as angel investors with organized angel networks. “The mortality rate of startups at the pre-angel stage is very high. As active members of angel networks, we found that entrepreneurs often approach the network in an unprepared state,” said Kiran. India currently has 12 angel funds, seven angel investment networks and 369 active venture capital funds. “The missing link is accelerators and professional incubators,” said Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, who leads the accelerator programme as executive vice president. Until earlier this month, Sharma led the western region investments for Indian Angel Network. Out of 200-odd business plans that Indian Angel Network receives in a month, only 2-3 make it to the term sheet stage, he said.

The climbdown in deal ticket sizes appears to be a reaction to the current frenzy in India around Internet startups, particularly in the ecommerce segment. Valuations have been moving north since last year and venture capitalists are under pressure to find deals earlier on in the game and ensure that entry valuations remain reasonable.

IAN is currently scouting entrepreneurial ventures that require $150,000 to test out their ideas. Entrepreneurs can send their business plans to info (at) indiaangelnetwork (dot) com. Shortlisted applicants will have an opportunity to pitch their plans to IAN members in Delhi next month. Some of the prominent angel investors within the IAN network include Raman Roy, Jerry Rao, Pramod Bhasin and institutions such as Intel, IBM and Sidbi. The network has invested in 25-odd companies so far.

Though it will compete with organized angel investor networks such as Mumbai Angels and Indian Angel Network, HeadStart Ventures’ functioning style will be a cross between an incubator and a venture capital firm. Individuals who want to invest in the fund will be required to make a minimum commitment of Rs 50 lakh. Each individual investor will become a limited partner in the fund. While Rs 25 crore is the target corpus for now, the founders have not set a hard cap yet on the final fund size. It will have an investment committee which will vet and close deals. This will be supported by an operations team which will be involved in activities such as workshops and managing mentors and industry partnerships. Borah and his co-founders will man the operations team and probably also be on the investment committee, though he says, “I think we will end up having a different set of people on the committee.”

The investment strategy is to park anywhere between Rs 20 lakh and Rs 2 crore per startup and for now, the focus will be on communications and technology startups. The fund will remain invested in a startup for 2-4 years. Each startup will have a mentor, who will be embedded in the startup after being identified and matched through an 8-day workshop (which begins in early August). “Apart from having relevant experience, mentors should be in a position to spend an hour per startup per day,” says Borah. This is usually the part that fails in any startup mentoring programme. Borah and his colleagues hope to address that problem by creating an incentive-linked mentoring programme. Each mentor will receive cash or stock or both in the startup that he/she mentors. However, this is not new. Bangalore-based Morpheus Venture Partners, for instance, takes a 7-10 per cent stake per company in lieu of mentoring.  It has also recently raised a seed fund to invest in startups — read a WSJ-Venture Capital Dispatch post here.

The HeadStart Ventures team has several other value-added services planned for startups. However, much of what it outlines as differentiators — results-oriented mentoring, access to markets, etc. — is already out there in various forms. For instance, there are several successful entrepreneurs who already work closely with young entrepreneurs in these areas either on their own or through organized angel investor networks. HeadStart Ventures’ real value proposition lies in being able to consistently raise seed money in the long term and stay true to its intentions. It will be a tough fight, especially in India, but a worthy one.