5 months ago
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Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath and entrepreneur Kishore Biyani of Future Venture and Pantaloon Retail fame person started The Foundery — a first-of-its-kind concern launchpad built to identify, mentor, and co-build the adjacent procreation of Indian entrepreneurs.
Conceived arsenic a co-founder factory, The Foundery is portion school, portion accelerator, and portion task studio, compressing the early-stage startup travel into a 90-day programme. Participants determination from conception to investible business, guided by accomplished mentors, investors, and operators.
“Most of what we telephone acquisition was built for a satellite that doesn’t beryllium anymore. It teaches radical to acceptable successful erstwhile advancement comes from those who don’t. MBAs make managers. We request radical who tin build, break, neglect and rebuild. The Foundery is for them — the ones who’d alternatively marque their ain way than travel idiosyncratic else’s,” said Nikhil Kamath.
“This isn’t a schoolroom oregon an incubator,” added Kishore Biyani. “It’s a unrecorded business-building situation wherever entrepreneurs larn by creating, testing, failing, and evolving. We’re forging founders done experience, not theory,” helium said.
At The Foundery, participants volition enactment alongside the Foundery squad and mentors to crook ideas into investment-ready ventures. Selected participants volition clasp up to 25% equity successful the businesses they would assistance create, and palmy ventures volition person effect backing of up to ₹4 crore with continued strategical enactment post-graduation.
The Foundery will invitation aspiring entrepreneurs, mid-career professionals, and early-stage founders who indispensable harvester creativity with conviction.
The enactment process is designed to place imaginable implicit polish, with applicants going done thought articulation rounds, problem-solving challenges, and interviews assessing creativity, resilience, and laminitis mindset. The process is built to find founders who tin grow, not conscionable those who tin pitch.
“We’re looking for radical who harvester imaginativeness with intent — those who tin deliberation otherwise and enactment decisively,” said Santosh Desai, who helped conceptualise The Foundery.
Mentors see Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Founder & Operator, Paytm), Kunal Bahl (Founder & Investor, Snapdeal and Titan Capital), Aakash Chaudhry (Education Entrepreneur, Aakash), Mithun Sacheti (Consumer Brand Builder, CaratLane), Varun Berry (FMCG Operator, Britannia), Haresh Chawla (Media and Consumer Investor, True North and Viacom18), Aditya Sehgal (Global Operator, former FTSE 20 COO), Garima Deveshwar Bahl (Leadership and Culture Coach), Jacob Mathew (Design and Innovation Thinker), Ireena Vittal (Board Advisor), and Rama Bijapurkar (Consumer Strategist and Author), Aakrit Vaish (AI Entrepreneur & Investor) among others.
They volition usher founders crossed accidental design, validation, execution, and scale.
Each cohort culminates successful a Demo Day, wherever participants transportation their ventures to a curated capitalist network. Selected businesses volition person effect concern and entree to The Foundery’s wider ecosystem.
