Incubation Trends Needed For Startup India

7,200 startups in India as part of a report by Nasscom, stats from Startup India showcase 8,625 startups recognized by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion. The numbers vary but reinstate India being the third biggest startup hub. In order to grow as a strong startup nation, a stronger ecosystem needs to be created to create front runners. 

Do not focus on the number of failed startups, simply because this is a known phenomenon, and common across the world, the other mutual factor to create successful startups is providing contextual support. Despite there being over 140 incubators, we aren’t seeing a larger number of success stories. 

As an incubator we constantly innovate, and here are key tools for all of us to utilize to support our entrepreneurs. Call them trends to incubation, or methods to create a stable path for startups, incubation is the first step for ventures, which is why we need to stay ahead of the game, and here are six key tools. 

• Fail fast, succeed fast

When multinationals like Glaxo Smith Kline can have internal incubators, propelling growth and encouraging mistakes, with the aim of not missing out on good ideas, then early stage startups while they have a lot to lose through failure, are better of failing faster than later. 

Failure at some level is inevitable to be faced by any startup, and it is important for incubators to encourage a fail fast model. At our incubator we work on ‘call to action’ points at least bi-monthly with our ventures that are growing just so we work quick and assess results to see what works and what doesn’t. Tracking data of your performance is key and through short spurts, we can fail fast and move on till we hit the right chord.  

• Focus on the soft skills 

Entrepreneurs mostly are focused on their product and service and come with great ideas and failure rate occurs due to their lack of adopting softer and more essential skills which are needed in the long run. 

These include how to deal with people, building a team, making your first sale (and repeated sales), and dealing with customers. Providing assistance early on enables the startup to become more organized and in return become an organsiation. 

Build the entrepreneur and his venture will grow alongside. 

• Mentorship 

Don’t tell them what to do but ask the right questions. A mantra we follow as an incubator that firmly follows a one mentor, one mentee partnership towards growth. Simply to provide stability in the venture, so while the founder focusses on the now, the mentor can support them in development for each step ahead.  

We don’t believe in batches or cohorts (more on this below) but created the discipline of creating a strong mentor pool that comes in at the right time. 

This happens at our backend, as while we work with our startups we realise the support they will need and therefore, a secondary mentor is allocated to support them at the right time. This strategy provides them contextual propelling. 

Incubators should work with teams with mindset of a founder, but not as the founder, which is why startups should not look for incubators to get operationally involved.

• Partner up

Startups don’t have resources and that’s what you need to give them. Funding isn’t a resource, it’s merely a vehicle. Work with other incubators, they aren’t competition to one another.  For us, partnerships like those with fellow startup enablers like HealthStart, enable us all to leverage a larger ecosystem. Further, we encourage partnership with universities as they provide ventures additional resources. 

Partnership platforms like Global Accelerator Network allow enablers to come together. At Huddle, we look to work with corporates, coworking spaces like our partnership with the likes of The Mosaic in Mumbai, educational institutions alike to leverage all our strengths, because by the end of it, the reason we all begin is to support the incubatees, so why not do it together!

• Don’t over commit

Startups look at incubators as the answer, and this could happen at any time to the best of entrepreneurs, so don’t over commit or guarantee. 

Just like you can’t get guaranteed results from them, set your expectations right from what you can provide them. 

• Set a timeline not a timer 

This difference between the terms above, is the mindset. We don’t onboard companies in batches because not all startups grow at the same rate. Timelines are good at times but never when you’re supposed to take time to create. 

We therefore onboard companies as we assess them week on week. The thesis for onboarding needs to follow each of the five key methods above before bringing a team as part of our Huddle. This approach is what enables us to onboard whom we would see as the winner if we ran a batch for a specific sector or solution. The strength in our portfolio companies and their growth, reinstates the value of our innovative means on how we incubate. 

It’s on us as incubators to constantly evolve and get involved. No startup is the same, and neither should be the way we incubate.