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Are you an aspiring entrepreneur? Do you have an out of the box idea and you feel this could be huge? Do want to be featured as one of the ‘Top entrepreneurs of India‘? Then, here is your biggest opportunity as Kuberan’s House, a first and one of its kind platform dedicated to the start-up industry; has recently announced the extension of the registration date for one of its biggest entrepreneurship-themed show till 31st January, 2021.

This step was taken to ensure that there is maximum participation across India, especially from Tier 2 and Tier 3 areas. As of now, over 16,000 participants have registered with the maximum entries coming from Delhi-NCR, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat, and Telangana regions. So, if you feel you have an idea that could be a game-changer, then all you need to do is just log onto Kuberan’s House and apply with your idea.

With this show, you have the golden chance to make your start-up dream come true and transform your idea of having your own business into reality. The application process is open to all the ideators, entrepreneurs, aspiring business tycoons, from all the sectors and industries that have innovative business ideas. There are no season winners on the show. In fact every Entrepreneur will be a winner who will get an investment from the best panel of investors and venture capitalists.

The show is segregated into multiple stages. After the first round, the top 500 applicants will be selected and each of them will be awarded the Kuberan’s House fellowship. The second round will have 100 participants that will be selected after another filtering process who will then be part of a Holistic workshop. This workshop will be with the best domain experts from across India. The participants will also receive various perks and value adds for building their start-ups.

Post the workshop and one-on-one mentoring by the KH team, the final 60 startups would be selected to be a part of India’s biggest start-up reality show. A special in-house team of domain experts, business valuators, chartered accountants, etc. has been formed for the screening process. It will be undertaken by the professionals from some of the prestigious institutes across India like IIT Kharagpur E-cell, Bits Pilani Technology Business Incubator, Ent. IISC, TiE Hyderabad, VIT, 100 Open Startups, Rabvik Innovations, Telangana State Innovation Cell, NASSCOM 10,000 Startups just to name a few.

9XV plays an integral role in this stage as it provides training, mentoring, defining and evaluating business model, network support, incubation, and acceleration services. The final 60 startups  will be decided post a thorough screening process which is a three-stage filtering process inclusive of checks of the background, tech specs, financial investment, business model, innovation, and the feasibility of the pitched idea by the participants.

To apply and pitch your idea, please log onto Kuberan’s House website

About Kuberan’s House

Kuberan’s House, a first-of-its-kind platform to source, streamline and showcase innovative start-up ideas from across India will help entrepreneurs especially from tier 2 & tier 3 towns connect to the best investors from across the country, converting most of them into successful business ventures.

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Horses Stable, India’s first-ever business-based show that empowers young entrepreneurs to raise funding for their business associates with a Mumbai-based VC firm ah! Ventures [earlier coverage here]. The show format allows participating entrepreneurs to pitch their business ideas to a panel of renowned investors a.k.a Horses and persuade them to invest in their startups.

Horses Stable aims to be a global funding platform to motivate and give wings to the dreams of ambitious entrepreneurs. To accelerate the vision, Horses Stable has collaborated with ah! Ventures to magnify its capabilities of accommodating participants on a larger scale. The VC firm will help the show unveil unprecedented opportunities with its network of over 62,000 entrepreneurs and 3,000+ global investors.

As a part of the partnership, ah! Ventures will curate the registration process of Horses Stable Season 1 to spread the word and invite enormous participation while welcoming a new set of Investors and Deal Masters. Registrations will be open from September 1st to 25th 2020 on both the portals.

Commenting on the partnership, Prashant Agarwal, Co-Founder – Horses Stable, stated

I believe collaborative culture is a powerful tool to create a competitive edge. The credibility of the new platform is multiplied to manifolds when produced together by two expert and experienced entities. Hopefully, Horses Stable Season 1 powered by ah! Ventures is going to be an example of one such platform.

Amit Kumar, Partner, ah! Ventures added

We are very excited to join hands with HS and believe that the show will provide a big boost to entrepreneurs and add the X-factor to the world’s 3rd largest startup ecosystem. The passion of the HS team fueled by our experience will surely make Season 1 a big hit.

Horses Stable Season 1 will potentially be a common ground for entrepreneurs and investors to connect and work together to expand their business and profitability. Along with generating funding, entrepreneurs will get an enriching experience to meet prominent names of the industry.

Heating the excitement, Horses Stable will be announcing the launch of their pitch season on one of the prominent OTT platforms in India. However, the team is yet to reveal the details, so stay tuned.

About Horses Stable

Horses Stable is a flagship web series of Singapore-India based media house Horses Productions Pvt. Ltd. Based on business-oriented content, the web series offers first of its kind platform to aspiring entrepreneurs and investors to connect and grow together. It is a platform where aspiring entrepreneurs pitch their business model to a panel of investors and persuade them to invest money in their business. The startup aims to help businesses find the ideal investor and open up exciting opportunities for investors too. For more information, please visit Horses Stable.

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Metamorphosis, an ed-tech company has announced the launch of their ambitious project – Metamorphosis School Of Entrepreneurship [MSE] – World’s First Virtual School for Entrepreneurship at middle and high school level. Students from 12+ cities from across the country have enrolled in the first cohort of Metamorphosis School of Entrepreneurship and the platform is planning to empower 1 million students by the end of year 2020.

MSE is a virtual, dynamic, practicalistic school of entrepreneurship with expertly curated content for the 6-12th grade students. It is a two-year long case-study based program and the entire curriculum comprises 3 divisions i.e Meta Core, Meta Electives, and Meta X.

On the launch of the virtual entrepreneurship school, Pavan Allena, Founder & CEO of Metamorphosis Edu said

We have always been dedicated towards our goal of creating a healthy startup ecosystem in the country. MSE is our next big step in the same direction and through the program we are trying to inculcate the nuts & bolts of Entrepreneurship among the middle and high school students.

Youth is the future of any nation and our prime focus at Metamorphosis Edu is to nourish and empower these seedlings so that they grow up into big Entrepreneurial success.

The MSE program takes students on an entrepreneurial journey [from idea generation to new venture creation] by imbibing the 21st century skill sets, idea pitching opportunities, b-plan competitions and many more.

Each and every student works up their way as an entrepreneur under the guidance of 50+ mentors [who are real-time entrepreneurs] and personal proctors. The next cohort of Metamorphosis School of Entrepreneurship will start from October 1, 2020.

Till date, Metamorphosis Edu has empowered 15000+ students across the country. The company is also responsible for 45 success stories of student entrepreneurs who have launched their ventures that have garnered accolades and market traction.

About Metamorphosis Edu

Metamorphosis is the world’s first virtual school that teaches entrepreneurship to high school students.  It strives to make students job creators instead of job seekers. The company was founded in 2017 by Pavan Allena when he felt the need to empower young minds with entrepreneur skills and guide them on a path of leadership and innovation.

The company began with a physical business model which quickly evolved into a mix between a physical and digital model. As a result of using digital technologies, the company has been growing exponentially. Between 2017 till 2019, Metamorphosis grew five-folds. For more information, please visit here.

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Entering its 16th edition, Conquest has successfully become one of India’s leading Startup Accelerator, enabling more than 1000 startups to succeed every year. One ideology that has remained constant throughout the years is to reform every other one in order to provide the most topical and relevant support to the startups in accordance with the ever-changing dynamics of today’s ecosystem.

Assimilating learnings from various revamped models and experiences from the ecosystem, backed by Accel, Conquest 2020 will be divided into 3 phases. It will commence with Multi-city mentoring sessions in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru.

Conquest will further go on to provide the top 15 most exciting startups of India with extremely vigorous 6-week long online mentorship from some of the best entrepreneurs and field experts out there. This will be followed by a 10-day Accelerator Program in Bangalore consisting of investment workshops by firms like Accel Partners and Blume Ventures and networking sessions with successful founders and prominent CEOs from across the country.

All of this culminating with a Grand Event, being attended by all the top pioneers from the ecosystem, giving Conquest’s shortlisted startups a platform to pitch their work in front of them and an array of Investment Firms. All set with this year’s edition, Conquest is on a path to empower founders from across the country.

Last year, Venture Catalyst had pledged 20 Crore for every startup that registered for Conquest, which met their criteria of investment. With investors like Dev Khare from Lightspeed, Shanti Mohan from LetsVenture, Sanjay Nath from Blume and Barath Shankar from Accel, coupled with mentors like Suvonil Chatterjee from Ola Cabs, Abhishek Nayak from Accel and Anuj Rathi from Swiggy, Conquest serves as a networking paradise for every startup out there.

In the past, Conquest has had success stories like SocialCops, which is acclaimed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and has been recognized as the Most Impactful Startup of 2017 by YourStory. One of our recent finalists, Trell, raised $4 million and is now valued at $19 million. XWards, another finalist, has received Rs. 8 crores of funding recently. Do check our coverage of Conquest 2019.

Mayank Singh, CEO Conquest, co-Leading it with Kartikeya Gupta, says

While building Conquest, we wanted to give anyone with the passion to create solutions and build big businesses a platform to grow. In 16 years since its inception, we have come very close to holding all the cards which propel them to the top, and every year is a step forward to realizing that vision. At Conquest, we believe in nurturing the startup ecosystem with the best of knowledge and resources to steer their journey to the top.

Overview of Conquest 2020

Conquest strives to build a platform aimed to bring together all stakeholders from the ecosystem and create an impact with its utmost capacity.

The following are the various initiatives to help founders succeed in their quest.

  • Online Mentorship Program – Conquest connects the Top 10 Startups with industry stalwarts from all over the country, enabling them to grow remotely while they continue to learn and work.
  • Accelerator Program – With a goal to help the best founders build great businesses, Conquest provides a 10-day long accelerator program in Bangalore. Fueled by the belief that multiple founders tackling similar problems in close proximity would lead to efficient solutions, Conquest provides all its startups with Co-Working and Co-Living Facilities. Every day is a huge leap forward for the founders with investment workshops, fundraising pitches, networking with successful founders and much more.
  • Grand Finale – The Grand Finale serves as the perfect platform for the Top 10 startups to pitch before Top Investors and Media houses for a prize money of INR 5 Lakhs.
  • Conquest Academy – A one-stop-shop of localized content for Indian startups. Whether you need help in acquiring your first 100 customers or in designing the perfect UI for your app, Conquest Academy ensures that you don’t have to go through tons of foreign resources.

Conquest has opened registrations, embark on your journey at www.conquest.org.in. To know more about Conquest, check out their blog Conquest 2020: Make Ideas Happen

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Microsoft’s M12, Mayfield and Pivotal Ventures announced the second global Female Founders Competition to accelerate funding for women entrepreneurs developing B2B, SAAS, and deeptech solutions. Eligible women-led startups developing enterprise tech solutions in the United States, Europe, Israel and India are encouraged to submit applications beginning Oct. 17, 2019.

Four winning companies will receive a total of $6 million in venture funding, along with access to technology, resources, mentoring and other benefits.

Peggy Johnson, Executive Vice-President, Business Development, Microsoft Corp, said

Last year’s competition helped highlight that there are innovative female entrepreneurs developing enterprise tech solutions, and they just aren’t getting equal access to capital. The tech industry can’t afford to keep leaving women’s good ideas on the table.

We need to level the playing field for female entrepreneurs, and together with Mayfield and Pivotal Ventures, we aim to do just that with our second Female Founders Competition.

Venture capital funding, particularly for seed-stage companies, is critical to power ideas from incubation to go-to-market. Venture funding for female-founded companies continues to be nominal in comparison with dollars invested in male-only-led teams. Last year, companies founded solely by women garnered 2.3% of the total capital invested in venture-backed startups, according to PitchBook [Source].

Regardless of this disadvantage, female founders continue to deliver outsized returns. In a study conducted by MassChallenge and Boston Consulting Group (BCG), women-founded businesses delivered more than two times as much revenue per dollar invested than their male counterparts. If women entrepreneurs received funding on par with their male colleagues, BCG estimates the global economy could experience up to a $5 trillion boost.

According to Gartner

The enterprise software market will experience the strongest growth in 2019, reaching $457 billion, up 9% from $419 billion in 2018. Investing in women-led enterprise companies is essential to economic growth and to closing the gender funding gap.

Navin Chaddha, MD, Mayfield, said

As a firm with a 50-year history of people-first investing, we are always looking for new ways to discover bold entrepreneurs. We are thrilled to partner with M12 and Pivotal Ventures on this innovative Female Founders Competition, through which we will find and invest in women creating built-to-last enterprise companies.

In addition to providing funding, we plan to share our playbook with competition winners on how to accelerate their journey from idea to iconic company.

Melinda Gates, Philanthropist and Founder of Pivotal Ventures, said

I am delighted to partner with M12 and Mayfield on this important competition. Enterprise technology is shaping our world in countless ways, but it will never reach its full potential unless women and their ideas are equally represented within the field.

Submissions will be accepted from Oct. 17, 2019, to Dec. 15, 2019, and are open across Europe, India, Israel, Canada [excluding Quebec] and the United States. Companies will be eligible to apply if they have at least one female founder, have raised no more than $5 million in combined equity funding and/or debt loans upon date of application, and offer or intend to release a product, service or platform addressing a critical business problem for a global market.

A live finals pitch competition will take place March 18-19, 2020, with the announcement of winners to follow shortly thereafter. Two enterprise software startups will earn investment awards of $2 million each, and two deeptech startups innovating through substantial scientific and research advances will earn investment awards of $1 million each.

Full guidelines and contest information can be found at www.FemaleFoundersComp.com

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Reinforcing its commitment to foster the Indian startup ecosystem, Microsoft for Startups announced the launch of Highway to a Hundred Unicorns. As part of this initiative, Microsoft will engage with innovators and entrepreneurs through a series of outreach programs across Tier 2 cities. Microsoft will work closely with state governments to strengthen the startup ecosystems in each state. Organized in collaboration with the Industries Commissionerate and iNDEXTb, Government of Gujarat, more than 250 startups attended the first event at Gandhinagar.

The impetus on innovation and entrepreneurship in India is helping startups to stem from not just metropolitan hubs like Delhi, Mumbai or Bangalore, but also other Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. However, some of the key challenges in scaling their businesses include lack of cutting-edge technology support and dearth of mentorship from ecosystem players. In a bid to address these challenges, Microsoft for Startups has launched Highway to a Hundred Unicorns, a series of events dedicated to enabling startups across Tier 2 cities.

Lathika Pai, Country Head, Microsoft for Startups – MENA and SAARC, said

There is a strong pool of ideas and talent beyond the well-known startup hubs of India. Through Highway to a Hundred Unicorns, we will reach out to startups in Tier 2 cities and support them to achieve scale at their place of origin. Our tech expertise and experience of engaging with some of the most successful Indian startups will help innovators across the breadth of the country become enterprise ready and scale their operations in India and globally.

Startups attending the events will receive guidance and mentorship through technology workshops on subjects like Azure, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. Identified top startups in the Emerge 10-Gujarat will receive Azure credits and select startups will also be invited to pitch for access to the Microsoft ScaleUp program.

The Microsoft ScaleUp program supports Seed or Series A funded B2B and select B2C tech-enabled startups to co-sell with Microsoft sales teams, get access to top tech VCs globally and receive mentorship from the startup ecosystem. Gaining access to large enterprises to co-create solutions or integrate product offerings and designing robust go-to-market strategies for their industry or customer segments are critical in the startup growth journey.

Microsoft for Startups enables startups to reach customers across the globe by leveraging the cloud marketplace, enterprise sales team and partner ecosystem. With its strong focus on Microsoft for Startups, an advanced technology platform, a rapidly growing partner ecosystem, and the venture fund M12, Microsoft is uniquely positioned to help startups embrace the next phase of growth and evolve from being market ready to enterprise ready.

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9th August marks a special day in the co-working industry worldwide. Christened International Coworking Day it was an occasion to celebrate co-working, collaboration, creativity and community.  On this special occasion,  91springboard celebrated the essence of co-working through a unique campaign titled Happy Birthday Co-working. As a part of the celebrations, people were invited to experience the marvels of a community driven co-working space at 91springboard hubs across Gurgaon.

Anand Vemuri, CEO, 91springboard said

It is certainly exciting to see the growth and evolution of co-working in India. Although International Co-working Day has been celebrated across the world for the last 13 years, the celebrations by 91springboard, Gurugram brought the attention back to the birth of co-working and gave people an understanding of how and why it works. Our ‘Happy Birthday Co-working’ campaign was a creative expression that gave attendees an actual experience of co-working in all its glory.

The campaign began with an interesting event titled “Founders’ Catch Up” where founders & entrepreneurs of startups from across sectors came together for a curated networking session.  With around 30 co-founders attending the event, the focus was on moderated discussions where learnings were shared and attempted to provide effective solutions for common problems. Prominent moderators included Sambhav Mehrotra, Founder of Startup Movers, who solved for compliance issues for startups, Puneet Sharma, Founder of Krenovate Solutions, who focused on digital marketing as an effective tool, and Saumya Sharma, Founder, The Butterfly Effect, who talked about coping with the emotional pressures of being a Founder.

The second day began with yet another innovative event titled, ‘Life’s a pitch’ where 11 startups from various stages and across categories presented their idea in a three minute elevator pitch  to 15 investors. The startups that presented their pitches include Invacia Labs Private Limited – A Fintech blockchain startup, Aker Foods Agrotech Pvt. Ltd – a supply chain startup for hospitality brands, GoAyu – a legal tech brand, Perfume booth – an e-commerce platform for perfumes, Agrotech – a blockchain operator, Revolt – a service provided for EVs [charging, emergency assistance], Refer Hire, a peer to peer social hiring network, Zoo Fresh Food – an e-commerce platform for meats, Womaniya – website dedicated to women and Rhymly – a content and entertainment platform. More than 100 entrepreneurs attended this event

Speaking about the event, Anurag Kapoor, Investor, Greenhouse Ventures  said

Life’s a pitch is a great platform for startups as well as investors.  It reflects upon the fact that investing is not all about deal sourcing but it is also about understanding the technological revolutions happening at the ground level, the evolution of the startup ecosystem, scope of potential collaborations and much more.

Sanchita Bamnote, Investment team, Blume Ventures added

Life’s a pitch was a great event. I was excited to see startups presenting a three minute elevator pitch that was amazingly crunched, concise and to the point. Another thing that I was happy to see was the curation of startups  that ranged from Agritech, EV, future of work and not all of them were at the same stage. It was a great mix of seed, series A & B.

The last day saw the Big Birthday Bash roll out an experiential flea market with a great mix of freelancers, SMEs and Startups coming together to not only celebrate International co-working day but also do some serious networking.

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Furthering its commitment towards building a digitally inclusive society, Microsoft announced a partnership with the Government of Telangana’s Women Entrepreneurs Hub [WE Hub] aimed at empowering women entrepreneurs and technologists in the region. This partnership will focus on designing and execution of learning activities and tools that will enable women to innovate and encourage girls to pursue a career in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math [STEM].

Together, they will also provide a platform for deeper and better networking opportunities for women in various technology fields. The partnership will provide the WE Hub communities access to the state-of-the-art facilities and infrastructure at Microsoft Garage.

Underrepresentation of women in STEM fields has been an ongoing challenge in India. However, careers in science and technology are critical employment avenues today and, in the future, for driving innovation and social wellbeing. This initiative will help bridge that gap, as it will give women the opportunity to network and innovate alongside other women in STEM fields including transformational technologies like cloud and AI, empowering them to become an active part of the technology ecosystem in India.

Commenting on the partnership Deepthi Ravula, CEO WE Hubsaid

Digital technology is changing the lives of Indians across every section of society. Working with global technology leaders such as Microsoft has enabled us to bring a platform meant for growth to the doorstep of women in Telangana.

Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary to IT E & C Department said

This initiative will encourage women to actively engage in science and technology and contribute to the field not just with the state but also the nation.

Reena Dayal Yadav, Director Garage India, Microsoft, said

As our engagement with technology increases, we will require more talent with advanced skillsets that are very different from what exist now. Empowering women to actively be part of this transformation is integral to the skilling revolution taking root in India.

With the right technology infrastructure, institutional support, exposure and training, we can help them shape and build the India of tomorrow.

Microsoft is committed to empower youth in India by helping build skills, providing access to technology, and giving them tools to support their learning. This collaboration is an extension of that effort, where both organisations will leverage each other’s strengths and assist women access more opportunities both as jobseekers and entrepreneurs.