Indian incubator raises $12.5m for seed fund

Omidyar Network is among the other participants. The program, known as Center for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), is targeting a corpus of $25 million that will be deployed over the next 3-4 years.

CIIE has earmarked $5 million of the funding to date for a series of accelerator programs, focused research, training workshops, and piloting partnerships. The remaining $7.5 million will be invested in seed and pre-Series-A start-ups via the Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund, which is expected to make a final close at $15 million in July.

“Empowering the entire country to participate in the formal economy is an important goal, and entrepreneurship is a powerful tool to achieve this,” Neharika Vohra, chairperson at CIIE Initiatives, said in a statement. “It is heartening to see the support for this initiative from all the partners.”

CIIE claims to have incubated and invested in more than 50 start-ups. This work leverages the IIM Ahmedabad network of mentors, corporates, and development agencies. CIIE also operates a number of co-working spaces, including Ideapad, Working Company, and Regus.

Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) and Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) have received significant funding for incubation programs from the national government since the 1990s. Although IIMs and IITs are recognized as the bedrock of national start-up talent curation, university-linked incubators have had a mixed track record in producing companies that go on to raise later-stage rounds.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Fundraising
• Early-stage
• Technology
• India
• seed
• Venture