IDG Ventures India launches 2017 Innovation Program, in collaboration with Unilever Ventures and Amazon India

Leading tech-focused venture capital firm IDG Ventures India (IDGVI) has launched the 2017 Innovation Program (#IDGIP2017) to reach out to emerging disruptive startups across its core sectors of consumer tech, software, health-tech and fintech products space. This program shall be applicable to startups looking to raise Seed or Series A rounds between $0.5M to $5.0M.

For the program, IDGVI will be collaborating with Unilever Ventures and Amazon Internet Services Private Limited (AISPL), the Indian affiliate of Seattle-headquartered Amazon Web Services, Inc. Unilever Ventures (UV) is the Venture Capital and Private Equity Arm of Unilever, which offers start-ups and later-stage companies the opportunity to receive equity investment and operational support from Unilever. UV has a strategic relationship with IDGVI as an investor and will evaluate companies as part of this program for potential co-investments. Also, the shortlisted companies will receive technology mentorship from the AISPL team and value-added benefits like AWS credits, premium business support and GTM connects.

As the most active tech-focused VC, IDGVI has run successful sector programs in 2016 that focused on consumer-tech and software. The 2016 program saw close to 1,000 applications from startups and via this program, IDGVI invested in six companies – Little Black Book, Flyrobe, Active.ai, Pipecandy, Hansel.io and Infisecure.  Investment size varied from $0.5M to $3.0M depending on the stage of each of the selected companies.

According to Sudhir Sethi, Founder Chairman, IDG Ventures India, “After the very successful 2016 Innovation Program, the 2017 edition expects to reach out to over 1,000 companies in the next 2 months and partner with/invest in select start-ups from Fund 3 to grow with IDG Ventures India’s unique growth platform. IDG Ventures will view early-stage Seed and Series A startups in this Program who are uniquely disruptive and are innovative leaders in the market”

Application Details

Startups (preferably less than three years old) looking to raise Seed or Series A rounds between $0.5M to $5.0M of funding are encouraged to apply. Applications for the IDGVI Innovators Program are open from June 8^th and close on June 26^th. The shortlisted startups will meet the IDGVI team in Bengaluru on 6^th and 7^th of July, where they will present to senior team members of IDG Ventures India and Unilever Ventures. Selected startups will then progress to the funding track while all the shortlisted companies can participate in mentoring sessions by AISPL and Unilever Ventures’ team on all aspects related to starting up.