30.July.2021 – Mumbai-based 9Unicorns, announced that it is launching a Venture Capital firm that will be focused on startups initiated by students, which will be known as student capital or university fund. 

In a press statement, the reason behind this initiation is given that, many students in IITs and IIms will be having an option to launch their own startups, in the campus placements that are going to happen soon. 

The working model of the student VC firm is inspired by the California-based Dorm Room, a fund initiated by First round capital, a Venture Capital firm that is specialized in backing up tech startups in the seed rounds. The sector-specific fund intends to provide a fund size ranging from USD 50,000 – USD 75,000 each, every year to 20-odd startups.

Stating about this developing concept in the Indian market, 9Unicorns’s Co-founder and President said – 

“Colleges are the hotbed of innovations. The idea is to sensitise 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. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma further added – “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”.  

On tapping into IIMs and IITs for the funding he said that IITs have the most number of unicorns listed to them in the country and have a huge talent pool. The funds will also go to the second-round institute and colleges in Tier 2 cities. 

“These students now have options on whether to sit for campus placement and drop out and start their ventures.” 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,  he added

Many students come up with some outstanding and exciting proposals but have no idea how they can give a shape to it.  To find out and aid these students, 9Unicorns will be designate “scouts’ ‘ across top 23 institutes and gauge their ideas before giving them the fund amount through cheque. 

Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma is the co-founder of the world’s 7th Largest Incubator and Early Stage Investor, Venture Catalyst, which is also India’s first integrated incubator. His second co-founded company 9Unicorns, is India’s first Accelerator VC. He has been performing as a backer for many startups and making a startup ecosystem since 2000. He has established more than a dozen incubators and accelerators in India since then.

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