Shravan Shroff & Ravi Kiran launches VentureNursery; An angel-backed start-up accelerator

Located in Mumbai, India's entrepreneurial and business nerve centre, VentureNursery aims at mentoring and accelerating up to a dozen start-ups in the first year. Following a unique Angel-in-Residence model, in addition to providing business and infrastructural support, VentureNursery will offer intensive and immersive mentoring to a batch of entrepreneurs by active angel investors, throughout the acceleration process. Participating companies that graduate successfully will be considered for seed funding by the Angels.

Commented Shravan Shroff, Co-founder, VentureNursery, "Today's start up scenario is different from when I started Fame Cinemas. On one hand, there is an abundance of ideas and passionate people. On the other, the market is rather harsh and passion alone is not enough to build a successful business. An entrepreneur needs the whole ecosystem working like a well-oiled machine for the business to get off the ground. That's why Ravi and I thought of creating VentureNursery ' to give smart idea owners a fighting chance to take off."

Added Ravi Kiran, Co-founder, VentureNursery, "As active members of Mumbai Angels and Indian Angel Network, we often find that entrepreneurs approach the network in an underprepared state. Without the right building blocks, they take too long to raise funds, when they should be using their energy to build the business. That's where VentureNursery comes in."

Modelled around some of world's best known accelerators, VentureNursery will be run by incubator expert Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, who has joined as Executive Vice President. Sharma has got over a decade of experience setting up and running incubators and angel groups and was till recently Head, West India for Indian Angel Network, India's premier angel network.

In elaborating on the working of the accelerator, Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, Executive Vice President, VentureNursery said, "VentureNursery will run on a hybrid model. Its primary method will be through the boot camps it will run twice a year. The founding team of each chosen start-up will be invited to work in our office and will be given working infrastructure and business support services through our partner companies. Over the 13 week program, our Angels-in-Residence and Charter Angels will work closely with the start-ups on their gap areas to ensure that each start-up evolves as a team and the business proposition.

In addition, under our ParallelTrack program, we will accept relevant applications from a few start-ups every year outside the boot camp as well."

In addition to the Angels-in-Residence and Charter Angels, the accelerator will work with a group of Advisors-in-Residence and Executives-in-Residence to complete the support to the start-ups.

It aims to announce the first list of Charter Angels and the Advisors-in-Residence shortly.

The applications for BootCamp #1 will be accepted starting April 1, 2012, through the company's website. Interested start-ups may approach VentureNursery through social platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook and twitter immediately.