Facebook to collaborate with VC funds to support SMBs in India

Facebook India has announced an initiative under which it will collaborate with venture capital funds to help fuel accelerate the growth of small and medium businesses they invest in.

As a part of this programme, Facebook will work with venture capital funds with the aim of skilling and mentoring the brands by sharing insights proven solutions, playbooks, among other key learnings.

For the first edition, Facebook is working with Sauce.vc, a Mumbai-based early-stage venture capital fund that has partnered with startups in the food and beverages, personal care, apparel, and the lifestyle space.

"With the VC Brand Incubator program we hope to unlock the potential of SMBs in India, enabling them to enhance their and the country's socio-economic growth. SMBs are the backbone of our economy and Facebook is the default destination for them to thrive and grow. Several SMBs are actively working towards creating a larger social change, and many are empowering women entrepreneurs and generating impact in tier-2 and tier-3 towns. Their seamless growth can lead to consistent job creation, adding to the GDP growth. Working with VC funds is crucial as it allows us to scale and support SMBs at an early-stage itself, fast-tracking their growth," said Archana Vohra, director, small and medium businesses at Facebook India.

India is home to one of the largest startup ecosystems in the world, and venture capital funds are an integral part of this network. The number of small venture capital funds with active investments has been rising steadily in recent years.

However, a robust skilling and support infrastructure to ensure the swift scale-up of SMBs is still lacking in the country.

The VC Brand Incubator programme aims to solve for this gap by supporting the VC funds and the brands they are invested in to facilitate their growth and remove roadblocks.

"The VC Brand Incubator program provides a much needed understanding of Facebook, its family of apps, and the digital landscape. As a consumer focused investor, we look for social marketing expertise in teams that we back as it is a huge driver of success for small startups that have to optimize every rupee spent," said Manu Chandra, founder, Sauce.vc.

The VC Brand Incubator programme is a series of events that will be held across Mumbai, Bangalore and other key cities, where SMBs will be provided with skilling and training sessions by Facebook experts on a range of themes and topics that will help them build their brands on the digital medium more effectively.

The first VC Brand Incubator programme was held last month in collaboration with Sauce.vc and saw participation from 25 brands of which five were women-led businesses.