Green House Ventures Accelerator partners with Japanese VC fund World Innovation Lab (Economic Times)

Delhi-based Green House Ventures (GHV) Accelerator, which launched operations earlier this month, has inked a partnership with (WiL), a Japan-based venture capital fund that invests in disruptive startups with global appeal. WiL helps startups bridge the gap between their home markets and US markets and this partnership marks its entry into the Indian startup ecosystem.

WiL is founded by serial technology and internet entrepreneur Gen Isayama and ex-chief incubation officer of Yahoo, Masataka Matsumoto, who will both come on board as mentors to startups housed at GHV, committing five days a month of their time together. "India today looks like what China was 10 years back and growth here will be much stronger in the next few years. We would like to fund a couple of companies from GHV if there is a strong connection to Silicon Valley or Japan. If we see benefits of cross-border mentorship and regular dialogue, the next step will be to set up a fund or facility which we can jointly run to continue our relationship," said Isayama, co-founder and CEO, WiL.

Additionally, through this partnership, WiL will be supporting growth and expansion of GHV startups in global markets, targeting Japan and the US, to help them increasing client reach, visibility and building a strong product. Post-acceleration, WiL will look closely at GHV startups to fund them as Series A investors. WiL typically invests $5-30 million in early as well as growth-stage technology and internet startups through multiple rounds of investments and will follow the same investment thesis for GHV startups.

It, however, doesn't have a pre-defined corpus set aside for GHV startups nor will it take a stake or a board seat in any startup during the programme at this point. Also, WiL will bring in their network of companies in the US and Japan to help these companies expand globally.

Alongside, it will work as on-the-ground partners with GHV for demo day, when startups pitch to investors, which will be held in Japan and Singapore. "The partnership brings an entire ecosystem in place, mentoring support, global expertise and a Series A funding opportunity for our startups. I see these three things as strong value of the partnership," said Vikram Upadhyaya, chief mentor at GHV.

"Our partnership is strategic in nature and vision is to develop a long-term engagement. If successful, we would like to take it global," said Anurag Kapoor, executive director and co-founder, GHV.

For More Details - http://www.ghvaccelerator.com/

Source : Economic Times. 

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Angel Investor Vikram Upadhyaya Launches Green House Ventures (GHV) Accelerator (Economic Times)

Entrepreneur and angel investor Vikram Upadhyaya has launched Green House Ventures Accelerator (GHV), which will fund and mentor startups between the incubation and venture capital stages.

"GHV will house startups at pre-venture capital stage but post incubation," said Upadhyaya, chief mentor at GHV who has invested in companies like Druva, Stayzilla, Merinews, IndiaCollegesearch. "They should have gone through an incubator or passed the criteria of an incubation stage, proof of concept, paying customers, revenues, team in place, and validation of the business model." Unlike others in India, GHV does not work on a batch system. Instead, the sector agnostic accelerator will house 10 startups at a time through a yearlong programme. Each startup will get seed funding up to $ 100,000 in exchange for equity up to 20 per cent.

According to Upadhyaya, the accelerator has received interest from 350 startups, of which 10 will be short-listed over the next 10 months. Entrepreneurs are required to be resident at GHV once a month for a week to get mentored. "We took a flexible approach because these companies already have teams in existing locations. Moving them may be difficult," Upadhyaya said. Alongside, startups will work in a controlledenvironment where specific functions like human resource (HR), finance, market research will be provided by a set of predefined vendors identified by GHV.

"Instead of spending time on all this, umbrella services provided will act as a de-facto department for these companies and is optional to startups," Upadhyaya said. Anurag Kapoor, executive director and co-founder of GHV, will head this side of operations. The intention is to help companies ramp up growth, focus on scale, shorten time to get VC funded, and attract higher valuation. So far, GHV has a commitment from four small and midsized domain experts to act as vendors in the space of market research, finance, HR, and public relations. "This program is going to prepare startups to close Series A in 12 months. Some VCs, which are also mentors at GHV, have shown interest to co-invest with funds in Japan," he said. 

For More Details - http://www.ghvaccelerator.com/

Source : Economic Times. 

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