Srijan Capital to incubate start-ups every year

Bangalore-based Srijan Capital, a seed-stage investment and incubation fund, is looking to incubate two to three start-ups along with two to four seed-stage investments every year, said its founder Ravi Trivedi.

“For incubation, we believe it will take between Rs 25 and Rs 50 lakh to find the product market fit for a validated idea. We will have a hands-on co-founder level involvement in every incubated company. This is ideal for single founder entrepreneurs, or entrepreneurs who are missing one functional skill that we could bring to the table,” Trivedi told SMEntrepreneur.

“For seed-stage investment, we are similar to individual investor and put between Rs 2 and Rs 15 lakh. We are active investors and want to actively help the company through our network, operational skills and capital,” Trivedi added.

The fund will help start-ups in its portfolio in varied areas like product and customer development, and hiring.

He has not raised any external funding yet for investing in companies. “Currently, we have not raised any external funds, and I am deploying my personal funds. I do some amount of consulting services for venture funds and mid-size Internet firms based in US to generate some capital,” he said.

The online coupons and discount start-up, CouponRani, is Srijan Capital’s first incubated company, according to Trivedi.

The company started the incubation activities in July 2012.

Trivedi has been associated with an early-stage venture fund, Southeast Interactive Technology Funds, in North Carolina since 2008. He returned back to India in July 2011, and started doing more active angel investing.