Natio Cultus Consultancy Pvt Ltd is holding India Fund Fest in Bengaluru on May 12.

As many as 50 start-ups, funnelled from the short-listed 600 applications, will get an opportunity to pitch before investors at the maiden edition of the festival.

The firm is planning to take the festival to cities like Hyderabad and Lucknow. The second edition will be held in Hyderabad next February.

“There are a lot of distractions in a fund-raising event. Most of the events are studded with speeches and other distractions, diluting the focus of fund-raising,” Nalin Singh, Festival Mentor, told BusinessLine.

The firm has reived 5,000 applications so far. “We are expecting some more in the next few days. We have short-listed about 475 applications so far and we are going to close it by 600 applications. Of this, we will hand pick 50 start-ups for the Bengaluru event,” he said.

He said the start-ups vying for a slot in the festival will have to pay Rs 10,000 to get their ‘fundability’ assessed. “We have developed an algorithm based on 11 criteria. We will give them a report based on the analysis. This will be handy for the investors that will take part in the festival,” he said.

Contrary to the expectations, the firm received majority of the applications from the tier-ii cities. “The top hubs of start-ups such as Mumbai, NOIDA, Bengaluru are not in the top-10 list.