UID evangelists set up business incubator

Three veterans from the technology sector who were previously advisers to Nandan Nilekani's unique identification ( UID) project have established a business incubator firm called Angel Prime in Bangalore to mentor and build startups right from the ideation stage. The three co-founders, Bala Parthasarathy, Shripati Acharya and Sanjay Swamy, between them have years of experience in technology giants like Cisco and HP and in setting up startups. Parthasarathy and Acharya were among the cofounders of Snapfish, the web-based photosharing and photo printing service that was bought by Hewlett-Packard in 2005. Swamy was CEO of mobile payment platform firmmChek between 2006 and 2010. The trio will act as general partners and have raised a fund from 12 individual investors. The investments they make are typically in the sub $1 million range and would be made in 2 to 4 companies at a time. Incubators provide mentorship services, offer real estate and infrastructure as well as industry contacts to the startup. They come in prior to the angel investor or venture capital (VC) investment stage, when the company is a mere business idea. They take stakes in these companies and could exit at a later stage when strategic investors enter. Parthasarathy said that Angel Prime would focus on the domain expertise of the team, which includes mobile payments, e-commerce as well as smart phone and tablet phone applications. He said they understand the common mistakes entrepreneurs make and can help them scale to a stage where they attract institutional funding. Angel Prime is currently incubating a startup in the mobile payments space, an announcement on which is expected within the next month. It will also unveil a company in the e-commerce space in the within 90 days, Parthasarathy said. Sachin Maheshwari, director at growth stage fund Zephyr Peacock, said that in India business incubators have generally been the forte of large government institutions like the IITs and IIMs. Outside of the universities, incubation is a relatively new phenomenon, the most notable being Morpheus and eBhana. Morpheus co-founder Sameer Guglani calls incubation outside of universities as accelerators. He said that universities primarily provide infrastructure and plug and play facilities on a rental basis, while accelerators add greater value through mentorship, contacts, funding etc. Business accelerators are popular in the US. Investments are made in different batches of say six months, after which the role of the accelerator becomes more consultative. Guglani said one major reason why the concept has not caught on in India is that it works on a fee or commission basis. As these funds are typically small in size, the earnings of general partners are not as lucrative as in the case of a VC fund. Morpheus for instance recently raised a new fund of Rs 6 crore. Despite this, more incubators are said to be in the works. Senior professionals from India and those returning from abroad are looking for something more exciting to do with their time. And thanks to the emergence of newer technologies, talented skill base and lower costs, the Indian entrepreneur is generally viewed as promising.