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What are the Important Elements of the Startup Ecosystem?

DU Desk — Fri, 23 Apr 2021 09:35:04 +0000

The word ‘startup’ is scarcely used without the word ‘ecosystem’ and there is a reason behind this closely-knit relationship. Startups need an ecosystem to breathe and thrive. Successful startup ecosystems need to have a strong vision and mission to take the company forward. Startups thrive in an environment where they get support from their community. A strong community is what forms a startup ecosystem.

It’s a combination of several internal and external factors that helps create a vibrant startup ecosystem. They are useful not only because they help a startup grow but also because they form hubs of innovation that create opportunities not just for the founders of the startup but also for others benefiting from the product or service.

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It is said that if a country’s startup ecosystem is growing, many talented people would choose to invest in their country rather than look out for better opportunities”.

Impact of Startup Ecosystem on Country’s Economy

Startup ecosystems can also have a long-standing impact on the country’s economy. One of them is obviously job creation. There is no doubt that startups thriving in a successful ecosystem accelerate job creation. This in turn helps contain brain drain.

It is said that if a country’s startup ecosystem is growing, many talented people would choose to invest in their country rather than look out for better opportunities. It can also help retain a highly-skilled workforce within a country.

And lastly, all these factors help improve the economy of the country and do a great service towards the image-building of a particular country. This can also help attract a lot of foreign investment in the long haul.

It would be interesting to understand certain elements that help build this startup ecosystem:

Core Elements of Startup Ecosystem

Entrepreneurs

As the name suggests, there cannot be an entrepreneurial ecosystem without a visionary entrepreneur at the centre of it. Therefore, it is considered as one of the key elements in the understanding of the nuances that build the entire ecosystem. Entrepreneurs not only pump up the ecosystem with their immense contribution to their community but also are people concerned with the growth and prosperity of themselves as well their country. And more the competition, more is their hunger to get to the top.

They inspire others to grow the ecosystem and themselves support those who have already embarked upon their entrepreneurial journeys. An entrepreneur is at the core of it all for the kind of employment opportunities he/she provides, the kind of growth that he/she envisions and the kind of difference he/she aims to make in the lives of their customers.

Mentor

This is one of the most important elements of a startup ecosystem and probably even the most under-rated one. The importance of good mentorship has time and again been acknowledged by some of the most famous entrepreneurs globally. When one is starting out, a helping hand from experienced mentors can make a world of a difference. They help create a realistic outlook towards a tedious startup journey and help new entrepreneurs in shaping up their vision and mission.

Experienced individuals can share important life-changing lessons that also help accelerate the journey of a startup. There is nothing more valuable than an exchange of ideas for young entrepreneurs. This will also lead to fewer mistakes and more nuanced decision making. Mentors are an important element that helps turn an entrepreneurial community into an ecosystem.

Talent

What is a startup without its pool of talent? And talent is something which is not only limited to entrepreneurs running the company and core team involved in the foundation process but also the people who take care of other important things for the company. There is a variety of talent and experience required to run a company. Those people form an important part of the ecosystem. This includes talent on the sales, marketing, design and human resources side. People skilled in industries like these can be a great asset to an organisation, especially when a startup is looking to hire employees that will help it grow and thrive in a competitive ecosystem.

If used well, talent can be one of the most important elements of building a startup ecosystem because at the end of the day, companies are run by people and they make all the difference in how it’s going to perform in the years to come. There’s no doubt in the fact that employees are indispensable for an organisation and more so for startups.

There is a thin line of separation between them being an asset and a liability. Nothing better than having the brightest minds in town working towards a common goal. The key challenge is to find people who can make a difference to your company. It is important for human resources to look out for people who are willing to learn, have an inquisitive nature and are zealous towards working to further a successful startup ecosystem.

Education

If one thinks at a fundamental level, then education and talent are inter-connected. Talent pool and skillset is mostly crafted at educational institutes. Although, that’s gradually changing with the advent of digital in every aspect of life, including education. But traditionally, there were a couple of educational institutes that recruiters would swear by while looking to hire new talent.

More often than not talent is sought at a local level using these learning centres. These institutions can have latest technological advancements and can help prepare the talent for the real startup life. Many institutions have entrepreneurship cells and incubation centres that help hone the skills of students wanting to work for a startup in future. This can be instrumental in enhancing the entire ecosystem as students, if honed well, can prove an asset to a startup.

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A positive culture leads to happier employees which in turn results in more productivity and more profits.

Incubators

As mentioned above, incubators and accelerators have a special place reserved in the startup ecosystem especially because they help one start young. It is an important tool that works because it’s a combination of talent, education, entrepreneurship, networking and mentorship. A business incubator or an accelerator effectively brings all these factors together and may be extremely beneficial to run a startup.
Incubators help in providing a centralised program to draw in more talent. It is a great way to concentrate talent under one roof and helps provide the requisite education and mentorship to wannabe-entrepreneurs. It catches them young and it is a great way to help entrepreneurs accelerate growth into the market while making sure they avoid making silly mistakes early into their careers.

Networking events

Networking is considered to be one of the most popular ways to build a startup ecosystem. No wonder there are so many networking events all-round the year focussing on building a stronger ecosystem. It helps in sharing of new ideas which in turn helps make that ecosystem stronger. It helps in getting in touch with like-minded individuals and forming ideas more readily.

Earlier physical locations were an impediment as many people were restricted by location. But COVID-19 has changed the way people look at networking events. Virtual meets, conferences and e-meets are slowly replacing physical events. But their purpose remains the same. It helps provide a common ground for entrepreneurs to meet and greet and take the entire ecosystem forward.

Funding

This is one of the most essential requirements for a startup to sustain itself and many early-stage startups can’t do without it. Local funding is an important component of a thriving startup ecosystem. However, entrepreneurs can also self-fund their businesses. Be it in any way, funding is the fuel that runs a successful startup ecosystem and it is essential that an entrepreneur figures out his/her funding and financing options well before taking the plunge.

Resources and access

Why do some startups succeed and some don’t despite having most elements in place? Many startups lack the knowledge and resources needed to find success. Strong ecosystems are known to allow entrepreneurs to quickly find these knowledge and resources that improve their chances of success by a lot. These resources may include a website, for example, which acts as an online resource where people can go to find a listing of events or what coworking spaces, accelerators and incubators are available in that particular region. This can be a more localised and well-targeted resource to help grow the ecosystem. Young entrepreneurs need to know where that exists and what resources are available to them.

An ecosystem can get much stronger if there’s a listing of the Venture Capitalists and angel investor funds in an area or a directory of local startups for reference. Something like this can quickly help entrepreneurs to find that missing piece of the puzzle. Startup ecosystems can be a great means to “engineer serendipity” between all the other elements. This can help in creating opportunities where intersections between people, ideas, and resources can take place. This can take years to develop but entrepreneurs and other members of the ecosystem can work towards it. Meanwhile, in the short term, there can be a lot of ways one can build resources and access for other entrepreneurs to thrive. For example increasing the number of pitch competitions, conferences, startup meets, online events, etc are some of the places to begin.

Culture

One of the most famous words to be associated with startups is culture. Many people believe that culture is one of the most important things that makes an ecosystem come alive and that is why culture is one of the most important words associated with startups. But what is a startup culture and why is it important? One can define startup culture as the energy of the community working towards turning a startup into a success. And that culture is not built overnight. It takes years to figure it out and a lot of hits and misses to finally understand what a startup stands for.

There’s a culture behind everything that goes behind the scenes in a startup. It is basically the energy and the attitude behind entrepreneurship and it can make or break the deal. Some of the most successful startups in the world credit their success to its culture. It is not only a matter of pride for the proprietor of the company but also its employees. A positive culture leads to happier employees which in turn results in more productivity and more profits. Culture is the bit that is often ignored while one talks about some of the key elements of a startup ecosystem but it is in fact of the most essential ones.

The post What are the Important Elements of the Startup Ecosystem? appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Latest Accelerator Programmes for Beauty, Health and Wellness

Roopali Kotwal — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 02:30:09 +0000

Purpose of the Accelerator programmes

Accelerators and Incubators support early age start-ups by mentorship and seed funding. There are various programmes for mentorship in partnership with start-up India and private accelerators. The Accelerator Programmes push the entrepreneurial spirit of a promising businessperson by mentorship and guidance of experienced leaders.

Latest Accelerator Programmes: Beauty, Health and Wellness

Huddle Accelerator

Huddle based in Delhi NCR has launched an exclusive ‘Acceleration A programme’ that focuses on new age home-grown consumer-focused/D2C start-ups. The programme focuses on personal care and beauty brands offering skincare, haircare and body care products, early-stage ventures offering wellness supplements for prevention, immunity and other common treatable ailments along with consumer-packaged goods etc. Early age start-ups can log in to their website to fill out the details as no entry announcement has been made yet.

Beauty Accelerate Virtual

Beauty Accelerate will host a virtual event from October 19-21, 2021 to connect Brand marketing and Research and Development Innovation. One can pre-register for the event/programme from their home page.

HealthStart Accelerator 2021

India’s first Healthcare Incubator, HealthStart is introducing a four months-long programme to promote and nurture the early-stage healthcare entrepreneurs with access to the global network. The selection process identifies 5 companies for funding and mentorship and 5 additional start-ups only for advisory services. Each selected company gets an investment of around 25 lakhs. The programme’s current delivery model is virtual and entries for 2021 have already been announced. To enroll timely for the next session, you may want to keep a close watch on the website.

Amazon’s Global Selling Propel (AGSP) Accelerator

It is a 6-week programme to identify early age high potential start-ups in the consumer space. AGSP is an initiative by Amazon India in partnership with the Indian government to support Indian brand sellers and start-ups to expand globally across North America, Europe, Japan, UAE, Singapore etc. through Amazon’s international market place. Amazon already has an accelerator programme in place and they recently announced few start-ups like Sirona and Azani Active in the Beauty, Health and Wellness sector as a part of the 2021 programme.

Pulse

India Accelerator (IA) announced Pulse cohort in December 2020 to enable entrepreneurs to nurture and grow 5-7 innovative start-ups in the health-tech space in a 16-week programme. IA aims to provide access to IA’s technological and business infrastructure, mentors, network-building opportunities that concludes into a demo day that shall be attended by corporates, Venture Capitals, Private Equity Partners and external investors.

Flipkart Leap

Flipkart launched its first-ever accelerator programme for start-ups in August 2020 to help new and upcoming start-ups to contribute to India’s growing entrepreneurial ecosystem and boost “Start-up India. Leap focuses on the five different areas that include the Design and Make in India i.e., Consumer and Technology products built for Indian consumers and digitisation of predominantly offline sectors such as Agtech, HealthTech etc. especially in the post-covid world.

The entries were announced in August 2020 to identify B2C and B2B start-ups and support them scale through an intensive 16-week virtual programme. Flipkart has already shortlisted and identified start-up for 2021. However, aspiring start-ups or small business owners can follow their website to take timely action and not to miss any further update on the Flipkart Leap programme.

Max Life Innovation Labs 2.0

Within the seven focus areas, Health and Wellness is one of the largest themes of the programme Max Life has selected the seven areas to post crowdsourcing the use cases within the organisation. Max Life has already selected 4 start-ups to mentor and fund in 2021.

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Accelerators and Incubators support early age start-ups by guidance and funding. They push the entrepreneurial spirit of a promising young aspiring entrepreneurs by mentoring and nurturing them.

What’s in it for me?

Entrepreneurship and successful start-up are more than getting funding. It is about empowering the founders by right mentorship.

India has many incubators and accelerators. As per the Indian Venture Capital Report 2021 (in partnership with Bain & Company, Inc.) report, India has around 450 incubators and accelerators. All the Accelerators and incubators are designed to support early age start-ups to scale by mentoring, funding opportunities, global and local business connections. Enrolling for an accelerator programme is purely an entrepreneur’s choice. However, if one feels the need to expand the product to the global market and require expertise and technological and resource funding, enrolling for one may be a good idea.

Keep a close watch on the scheduled date, track the website for the programme as the entries are called for, usually 6 months in advance and you must not miss out on any opportunity. If you are a Beauty, Health and Wellness start-up or planning to be a part of one, you would want to think about the incubator and accelerator programmes. The best suggestion would be to prepare and start today for any upcoming programmes.

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Automation: Accelerate Your Startup With Office Automation

Shalmoli Sarkar — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 08:11:16 +0000

The Need of Automation For Running A Business

When it comes to interior decorations and corporate gifting, big corporates and five- star luxury hotels only consider Devisha’s gifting and decoration store. Right from beautifully carved handmade stone sculptures of Lord Buddha to murals of African tribal, her stores have a plethora of corporate gifting options.

Her business flourished within a span of six months. But everything went in despair, with the Covid-19 pandemic. To minimize the spread, the corporates started deferring their annual functions, as that meant no demand for corporate gifts, which speaks of losses and less income. One day, a look at the accounts book surprised her when she found a large amount under receivables from the past orders. Devisha contacted the accounts department of the corporate companies, to which they said that they need to confirm first before releasing the payment. The everyday follow up for receivables exhausted her. She also needed to focus on alternate ways to get orders for business that required adequate time. She decides to automate several redundant business functions like follow-ups for receivables and posting regularly on social media.

The challenges that Devisha faces in business, is the story of nearly every small and medium business owner in the country.

Implementation of automation in business functions to the small and medium-sized is laden with several prejudices such as-it is suitable for big MNC’s or a piece of coding knowledge is needed. Automating routine processes will free up redundant activities and streamline workflows. Many small businesses get entangled in the complex processes of filing taxes, contacting suppliers for inventory, managing account receivable, and payables, payroll, hiring that consume a significant amount of time that tends to impede business growth. . It allows better collaboration with employees, minimizes human errors, provides job satisfaction to employees that will motivate them to focus on strategizing.

How Automation Creates Value for Small Businesses

Saves time and cost-effective

Small businesses, in the beginning, do not have enough financial strength to hire people for every function. Automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks allows businesses to hire fewer employees. Companies can now allot more time to its employees for brainstorming, strategising, and new product development. Tasks like invoicing, purchase orders, managing payables and receivables and payroll calculation consume a lot of time and human intervention can make errors as well.

Let us say for instance we are automating the payables. The businesses have several bills that they need to pay regularly. Automation can fasten up the payments by setting up the process of the recurring payment of a bill. We need to specify the payee, the amount, and the frequency of transactions and link a bank account from where we are going to transfer the funds, thus avoiding late payment and adding speed.

Increased accuracy

Tasks like manual data entry or maintaining a datasheet using manual entry of suppliers, employees, or customer information is a painful task. No matter how diligent employees are, they do get tired and possibly make errors. Automating jobs that include entering large volumes of data will bring accuracy to the company’s processes. For example, an automated data entry process can be in the form of an eCommerce order management process. When a customer places an order within an online store, order and customer details need to be fed into the business software. Imagine this to be a manual process, where a time-starved employee manually feeds this information into an ERP system, there stands a high chance of errors. With automation, the order details get automatically updated into the system.

Work-life balance

Angela Ahrendts, Vice President, Apple had said that “Everyone talks about building a relationship with your customer. I think you build one with your employees first.” Repetitive tasks get tedious and offer little or no job satisfaction to the employees. It gives them a sudden feeling that they can do much better than these menial tasks as it tends to exhaust their minds. Automation here can take over the redundant tasks that will free up the employees to devote more to productive activities such as strategizing, planning the execution of a business plan, thinking of an innovative approach to a business problem. Satisfaction in the job drives employees to strive for excellence hence adding value to the company growth and career. Automation in work processes boosts the morale for the employees, thus keeping them happy in the workplace.

Increased compliance

Compliance is non-negotiable. Businesses irrespective of size or revenue must ensure that they abide by the compliance that adheres to laws, policies, and regulations to maintain data integrity and security and fair market competition. Automation can help track and monitor compliance with all legal requirements and contractual obligations, document relevant procedures and promote internal reporting of wrongdoing, bring efficiency, reduce time, and enhance investigative processes.

For example: When VAT (Value added Tax) was introduced in Landmark Group- a multinational conglomerate from Dubai, it needed to process 47,000 records to ensure that the company met strict compliance standards. Its team spent ten days of manual scanning of records where automating the process took a total of 60 minutes and represented a 98.75 per cent reduction in time. Thus, implementing automation in compliance has saved Landmark hours of work.

Continuous workflow and improvement

Imagine a company driving a project where it needs its employees to update a sheet about their daily completed tasks to give the manager an idea of how the project is progressing. Without automation, the employees need to accurately put information, complete tasks, and then remember to alert other workers to move the project or complete the essential tasks from their part. This creates a bottleneck. If any employee fails or forgets to update the work done from his side, then the project will move in a haphazard way resulting in delays. Once we automate such critical tasks, one employee doesn’t need to prompt others to update. Automation will never forget to move a project along where one can keep track of both progress and changes. Real-time alerts will allow you to have an overall view of the process progression so you can allocate more or fewer resources as needed. You can instantly access a project or file and know it has everything it needs where all data about the task till date is correct. Your team can proceed with confidence, knowing that they are working with the latest and most accurate information about the project.

Before You Purchase

Before we decide to purchase an automation tool for business, there are several things to keep in mind :

Better if cloud

To save expenses on office rent many businesses today are working with a remote workforce. If your start-up or company operates with a remote workforce, then you should consider purchasing automation tools that are offered via the cloud. Cloud computing gives employees access to critical data from mobile devices, tablets, laptops irrespective of location and time. Using cloud automation tools, you can store all your vital data in one secure location.

User friendly

User-friendliness of the automation tool should be the priority. Everybody, in the organization, might not be tech-savvy hence, we must ensure that the automation tool that we purchase is user-friendly. Employees right from senior executives to entry-level admin should be able to use the tool independently right from the start. We should look for an automation tool that is easy to navigate and can be taught easily to a new employee about its use. Also, before buying, ask the sales representatives of the automation tool company to hold a minimum of one demo session with the employees to know it’s working.

Offers reporting capabilities

Any automation tool that we decide to invest in should have a central dashboard that gives an overview of workflows and business processes in real-time with information about KPI (Key Performance Indicators). Also, performance statistics for each task running in a process should be available to you to ensure that business objectives are met. It often becomes necessary for managers to present reports such as -sales reports and profit reports, etc. to seniors or broad members to keep them informed about the company happenings. Thus, consider buying an automation tool that allows printable or downloadable reports that are easy to make and share.

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By automating workflows, we can focus more on core business areas like planning, brainstorming and strategizing.

Less time to implement

Before buying, ask the automation tool vendors about the time it will take to sign the contract for availing the services to seeing the automation platform in action. The quicker the roll out the cheaper the implementation of the tool and sooner we can see an ROI. Choose automation tools of low code meaning software programmes that require little or no coding knowledge as it becomes easy and quick to set up.

Cybersecurity a Must

Choose a solution with all possible security measures applied to repel a potential cyberattack. Since the business automation tools have access to the company’s internal data. In such a case if the tool doesn’t have the feature to stop a cyberattack then it will not take much time for the cybercriminal to siphon off data such as payment details, customer information, bank credentials, etc. from the company. This data holds a high value in the black market as this data can be used to create fake profiles of individuals who under your business name or a customer can apply for loans or claim insurance in banks. This erodes the trust of customers and maligns the reputation of the company.

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User-friendliness of the automation tool should be the priority

After-sales service

Business owners should ensure while they buy a full package product, customer services should be included in the package.

Be it a small or mid-sized business, every company’s goal is to simplify workflows and increase efficiency. To learn more about which business functions can be simplified, check out our article on ‘How to Automate Business Processes’.

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