Antler India has launched the Antler India Fellowship, a 16-week programme providing a grant of $20,000 – estimated equal to Rs 15 lakhs – to enable college students to turn their startup ideas into a business. The fellowship aims to fuel the growing entrepreneurial talent by providing a platform for experimentation, building, and scaling with the support of equity-free capital, mentors, and a peer network, says Antler India. The grant will be equity-free.
Fellows can use the grant to scale their startup idea or pay off their student loans should they choose to pursue entrepreneurship full-time. They can also gain access to a hands-on programme by domain experts and founders, spanning idea validation, user research, product, engineering, and marketing, says the organisation.
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Nandini Vishwanath, Programme Director, Antler India says that the organisation spoke with hundreds of college students in the past year and realised the immense potential of student entrepreneurs that is yet to be unlocked. “Indian students want to start up but end up not pursuing their ideas because of the lack of guidance and mentorship,” says Vishwanath.
Students “often require more 1-1 personalized guidance that video courses or classroom learning fail to provide. Moreover, capital constraints and peer and parental pressure to pursue the more stable route of placements and jobs withhold students from pursuing their entrepreneurial interests. We also realised that the accessibility is limited for students from atypical founder backgrounds such as liberal arts or commerce. Our programme is designed to solve all these barriers and facilitate a platform for students to build on their idea and convert it into a startup,” adds Vishwanath.
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Post the fellowship programme, fellows will be provided an opportunity to raise pre-seed funding from Antler India and will receive support in raising subsequent funding rounds thereafter.
The fellowship is not limited only to student founders who have working prototypes of their idea or a product with traction. It is open to students from any university. Besides, students who have deferred placements to actively work on a startup idea are encouraged to apply.
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