VC fund Antler opens India residency for entrepreneurs

Mumbai: Early-stage venture capital firm Antler’s India unit has launched a cohort-based programme - Antler India Residency - for aspiring entrepreneurs.

It will bring together about 60-70 individuals from business and engineering backgrounds to participate in an 8-week-long programme. During the residency, Antler India would enable participants to meet their future cofounders.

The fund’s partner, Rajiv Srivatsa, told ET that inability to meet one's cofounder is one of the main reasons why startups don’t launch.


Antler expects 8-10 companies to be born out of each cohort, which will have the chance to receive $270,000 for a 9% stake. The funds will help new startups make at least five-six iterations of an early product-market fit, he said.

“Smart founders want at least a $3 million valuation and that's very clear data that's emerging,” said Srivatsa. The valuation bracket for pre-seed and seed rounds has moved by around 2.5-5 times over the last two years, he added.

Antler India plans to run four such cohorts through calendar year 2023 and has allocated about $15 million for it. The sector-agnostic programme will bring together individuals from business and engineering backgrounds.

In 2021, when Antler India launched, it announced plans to deploy $100-$150 million in over 100 Indian startups over the next three years.

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The applications to join the programme will go live on Monday and it will begin in June. The participants will be paid Rs 100,000 per month as stipend. The programme is split into two phases.

“Phase 1 of the Residency will focus on helping foster connections and create situations and challenges to aid the process. In this phase, founders will also spend time validating and developing their ideas. Phase 2 will see the successfully formed teams build out their idea, where we back them through coaching and access to resources,” said Nandini Vishwanath, program director, Antler India in a statement.

Srivatsa said the cohort will likely have 70% first-time founders and the rest looking for a cofounder to launch their ideas.

“Last year, you had people just wanting to jump and become a founder. I don't think anyone saw the extent of the scale of things because of the number of unicorns and everything,” Srivatsa said. “This year, I feel that sentiment reversal has already started and while it always has a cascading effect time from late stage to early stage, it has already started hitting the number of people who want to make that first step as reducing that risk quotient has certainly reduced,” he said.