9Unicorns launches a student fund, to invest upto $75k per startup By Elets News Network - 30 July 2021

9Unicorns

9Unicorns, India’s first accelerator VC firm, is launching a student-focused VC fund known as campus fund, university fund, or student capital.

This gives students at premier institutes such as IITs and IIMs would a second option to launch their startup in the coming campus placement season even before passing out of the college.

9Unicorns’ student fund aims to nurture the entrepreneurial dreams of many bright and talented students right on the college campus itself. While many students come up with exciting ideas and concepts while studying, they are clueless about giving shape to those ideas.

Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Co-founder, and President at 9Unicorns, said, “Colleges are the hotbed of innovations. The idea is to sensitize the students about the startup ecosystem and enable them to be a part of it right from the beginning. Besides, several institutes these days have started entrepreneurship-focused courses, proving that India is fast emerging as the land of startups. We are targeting concept-stage startups, which we will mentor and nurture further.”

Dr. Sharma further added that taping institutes such as IITs and IIMs come solely because IITs have created the maximum number of Unicorns in the country and have a ready talent pool. However, we will move to second-rung institutes and those in the Tier 2 cities.

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“These students now have options to whether to sit for campus placement and dropout and start their ventures,” Dr. Sharma said, adding that this idea emerged from his personal experience of writing the first cheque to Ritesh Agarwal, Founder of Oyo, who was a college dropout then.

“For us, it could be two strokes of luck as we get closer to concept stage startups and be able to invest in the future Unicorns,” Dr. Sharma stated.

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