A single website which answers all your questions on starting a business, traverses the labyrinth of government websites on your behalf to cull out relevant information, shares relevant news, and even connects you to incubators, mentors or investors is what the Virtual Startup Hub aspires to be.

Soon to be launched by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotions (DIPP), the Virtual Startup Hub is an upgrade of the government’s Startup Hub launched in early 2016 as part of the Startup India Action Plan and promises to bring the entire startup ecosystem together.

“We decided to create a virtual hub which will be a one-stop shop for everybody with an idea. Nothing like this exists today. Almost 50,000 global mentors who are part of TiE, incubators, and mentors will be on the platform. Information on startup policies of states, incentives, and benefits offered by central and state governments will be made available. Those who come only with an idea will be guided to suitable mentors and incubators. Nothing like this exists today,” said DIPP, Secretary, Ramesh Abhishek.

Built by Invest India, the Hub is expected to be launched by the first week of April in the form of a website and a mobile app and incorporates insights culled out from interacting with nearly 80,000 startups in the last one year. Invest India is the official investment promotion and facilitation agency of the Government of India and serves as the first point of reference for potential investors.

“The basic idea was to create a marketplace for startups. Currently, several activities are fragmented all over the 50-odd angel platforms. If someone submits an idea, it may be rejected based on the subjectivity of the board. With the Virtual Startup Hub, the government wants to build the necessary infrastructure for startups to be successful,” explains Invest India, Assistant Vice President, Karan Anand.

Collaborate, innovate and create

The Invest India team reveals that the platform provides a LinkedIn-Coursera-Google News-kind of a model to startups and the other stakeholders.

“We studied global startup programs like Boston Startup Connect, Nasscom 10,000 Startups, Startup Canada and even spoke to the World Bank. The idea was to provide everything under the sun at one place. Therefore, we have aggregated the best of everything. Whatever stage you are at, you will have different pages available to you,” said Anand.

The platform offers many services to startups depending on the stage the startups stand. The users can sign up from their social networking profiles or create a new profile on the page and start interacting with the ecosystem. A user will be able to check the innovativeness of the idea, get help in filing patents, get support to scale her business, information on eligible schemes and funds for the industry and state one operates in and a chance to connect with investors active in that industry.

“Since even basic infrastructure like incubation is not available everywhere, we have designed tools and templates to support early stage startups. Apart from that, there are 180-odd government schemes which are available through central and state governments. The portal is intelligent enough to tell you which schemes apply to your startup,” explains Anand.

Prominent features of Virtual Startup Hub:

a) Connect with incubators, mentors and investors directly: The hub provides a LinkedIn like option to connect directly with startup enablers.

b) Free Legal Consultation: DIPP has tied up with several legal startups which will offer free legal consultation to startups.

c) Knowledge Bank: DIPP has tied up with Upgrad which provides several programs of use to startups.

d) Help with patent filing: Innovative startups can get help in filing patents directly from the Hub.

e) Open API: State governments or startup networks can use the website’s API to build their own segments on the Hub.

f) Eligible government schemes: Information on eligible funds and schemes based on the industry and state are provided to startups.

Enabling the enablers

The Virtual Startup Hub will not only connect startups to investors, mentors and incubators, but also aims to provide a single big platform to anyone who wishes to offer his or her expertise to help startups.

“A lot of people are eager to work with the startup community, but they need a conduit to channel their support and we are hoping that the Virtual Startup Hub becomes that,” says Anand.

The team has already joined hands with a number of angel networks in the country and consequently, all the investors and mentors associated with these networks are now available to any startup that needs help.

There are checks and balances in place to prevent the investors/mentors from receiving an overwhelming number of interests. A startup is reviewed on a gamification model depending on the stages it has completed before it is permitted to contact investors directly. Also, a startup will only be able to see and connect with investors who are active in those industries.

“There is a bar on the right side of the profile which shows the level of the startup from beginner to intermediate to more a more advance stage. If it is someone with only a half-baked idea, the system is intelligent enough to only make public resources available to them. The points increase when one attends related events, undertakes programs from the learning modules, which in turn allows you greater access to the system. It is only after reaching a certain level that a startup will be able to connect with the likes of a Sequoia directly,” explains Anand.

Incubators and mentors can be approached at any stage and are also tagged according to their location to provide the startups with easy access. Going forward, the team also plans to track the responsiveness of enablers by sending prompts to startups.

Open invitation to all

Following the spirit of building an ecosystem, the DIPP has made sure to keep the application program interface (API) open for anyone to build on the Hub. This has been done in order to get as many stakeholders involved with the platform and increase its reach to everyone in the country. The government is specifically hoping to encourage state governments to build their own presence on the platform.

“An open API allows anyone to partner with us. Angel networks in Mumbai, Hyderabad have already agreed to be a part of it. All these networks will not need to build a separate website and will be able to tap the community from the platform directly,” says Anand,

The team is also building a chatbot to help answer queries on the platform. This, Anand says, will be the first chatbot by the Government of India and will initially handle queries in Hindi and English.

Source: The Economic Times