Fremont: Seeing the growth in the number of startups, Anupama Arya, Puneet Vatsayan, and PK Gulati have founded a startup incubator, “The Hatch”, which aims to incubate 1000 entrepreneurs over the next five years. Apart from the access to capital, The Hatch would also provide access to mentoring, operational guidance, knowledge and resources, and infrastructural support. The pan-India incubator would have campuses in six cities, apart from offices in the Silicon Valley, Dubai, and Singapore. Initially funded by the Arvat Foundation, set up by Arya and Vatsayan, it would also look at other modes of financing.

The sector-agnostic incubator runs two programmes aimed at the entrepreneurs, ‘Startup Accelarator Program’ and ‘FastTrack5’. While the Startup Accelerator Program is designed to provide the shortlisted startups mentoring, access to capital, visibility on the website, and assistance in accessing customers; the FastTrack5 would provide support to scale-up five startups, including funding, mentoring, introduction to potential customers and showcase at events.

The mentor panel comprises of over 50 entrepreneurs, investors, and senior professionals, consisting of founders or angel investors or mentors to over 500 ventures in India, the United States of America and Europe.

The stake invested in the startups would be shared between the board members or mentors of the startup and Hatch. It would also tie up with universities, other venture capital firms, angel groups, governments, and other incubators. 

India has unmatched entrepreneurial skills and the youth of today are buzzing with innovative ideas; The Hatch is going to be the enabler to their success and provide  an ecosystem for high potential startups with support at every step.