Boutique consultancy firm DCF Ventures is in various stages of discussions with three State governments – Assam, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh — to help them build an entrepreneurial ecosystem and strengthen the start-up landscape.
DCF Ventures, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Germany-headquartered A P Globale, is already running a two nation hackathon - India and Israel – for Andhra Pradesh government. The firm advises corporates and governments in formulating plans, understanding the landscape and execution of the strategies.
“We have a whole set of offerings…. In the exploratory phase, we recommend hackathons, challenges and running pitch fests among others. We do this at a domestic level, we do this at a global level,” Lakshmi Potluri, Chief Executive Officer of DCF Ventures, said.
Finding the best of technologies, helping companies innovate, running design workshops and helping companies set up in-house incubation programmes are among other services DCF Ventures offer.
In Maharashtra, the company has got approvals from Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipality and signed a couple of innovation deals with Thane Municipality. These are separate from the discussions now happening with Maharashtra government.
Jointly with its Isareli partner SOSA, DCF Ventures is also in talks with Maharashtra State Innovation Society to train the latter’s team in India and help them identify good start-ups.
Deal with Assam
The deal with Assam would be worth about a couple of million dollars and with Maharashtra is expected to be about $1 million, while that with Pimpiri-Chinwad Municipality will a half-a-million dollar ($0.5 million).
“Most governments are not so much in the exploratory stage. They are all doing things across the spectrum, and they are all having incubators, they are all having accelerators. They are doing some of these hackathons and challenges to nurture the ecosystem,” Potluri, who was also a co-founder of Jabong, said.
Mumbai-based DCF Ventures has also created a landing pad programme. This programme will enable start-ups to be based in other countries such as Israel, Germany, Hong Kong and Korea to be discovered by multinational companies.
“When you look at a country like Israel, it’s building products for the global markets from day one. So that’s one of the biggest takeaways that the Indian start-ups should learn,” Potluri added.
The Andhra Pradesh government had recently concluded its ‘$1 million Challenge’, which was organised in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Paris, London, Tel Aviv and Hong Kong, to bring together a new generation of innovation partners, incubators and corporations from around the world.