Incubate Fund India Partners with India’s Leading Startup Accelerator Jaarvis

Together they plan to invest and mentor more than 5 tech startups from India this year. Their association will offer better corporate ties and a platform for the potential business to expand abroad, especially with Incubate Fund having a strong base in Japan, Malaysia and South-East Asian countries and Jaarvis being an experienced player in Australia, Singapore and Hong-Kong. Their 60-70% of the share of investments is expected to be in the B2B startups.

The Indian startup ecosystem has been excited about Japan’s leading seed investment firm Incubate Fund entering India as an anchor investor. The early- stage venture capitalist formed the Incubate Fund India and have been operational for the past two months.

After it announced its third fund of worth $91million in January this year, it is at present very close to making a couple of early-stage investments. As it is their first step in India, they found an initiative focused partner in Jaarvis Accelarator to understand the domestic market.

BW Disrupt interacted with the teams to get a perspective of their vision on the new partnership:-

Soumya Gupta spoke to Nao Murakami, General Partner Incubate Fund India & Anil Chhikara, Principal Jaarvis Accelerator

Nao: We are excited about this new venture into India because we have invested in Japan, US and other Asian countries but India is posing as a bigger challenge due to its diversity in culture and competitiveness of the market. Personally, having observed and met more than 200 startup founders in the past 2 months, I can say that the Indian entrepreneurs tend to have a mature business sense than traders back in Japan, even though the Japanese startup ecosystem is older than that of India. We hope work more closely with Jaarvis and pick their next batch of startups before they start their programs this year. Jaarvis Accelerator would provide us insights into the Indian mindset, consumer behavior, business norms and ensure that we are not missing anything in between. They were our first choice as associates as they are pro-actively setting the theme in the Indian startup ecosystem through their programs and hunt for talented startups.

Anil Chhikara: We are glad that we have found a partner with complementing strengths in a major seed investor like Incubate Fund India. Just like our quest of looking at early stage tech startups, even their focus is on engaging with good- quality ideas and committed founding teams. Together we’d be investing about $30,000-50,000 initially in each of the Jaarvis Accelerator Program startup besides helping them get the right mentoring and corporate connects. We are looking at developing a network of strong early stage investors abroad so that the next round of funding is never delayed and Indian startups can build and grow while validating themselves continuously according to international standards. With Incubate Fund covering the entire Asia Pacific market, we are now looking at getting a major seed fund from Europe involved with us to cover the European market access.

Soumya: How Incubate Fund can contribute for Indian ecosystem?

Nao: We can contribute by connecting Indian startups to markets, corporates and our portfolio startups in Japan and other parts of Asia. In addition, we can contribute by providing ‘best practices’ and ‘case studies’ from our portfolio startups. As Incubate family, invested more than 200 startups in Japan and other parts of Asia, so I believe we have a massive database of success patterns and also mistakes which startups tend to take. We can advise startups based on these data and I believe it would add value to Indian startups as well. We, Incubate Fund India, are trying to become a ‘Best Practice Hub in Asia’.

Our interested verticals at this point are B2B Commerce, Fin-Tech, Agri-Tech, IoT, Marketplace, SaaS, E-Commerce Enablers, AI/Machine Learning and so on. We would prefer to invest startups providing products/solutions which solve existing inefficiency dramatically. 

Soumya: Are there any factors present in India that gives it an edge over the other startups abroad?

Anil: I believe India is fast growing as a hub of frugal innovation. It will help the small businesses worldwide with such technologies which might already exist but are only affordable & available to big companies. Indians are making an impact with world class B2B SaaS services and low cost innovation because we have skills to work with very less amount of resources.
Our goal at Jaarvis is also in line with this vision where we plan to become the biggest producer of the hottest Tech-startups in India and Incubate Fund India has joined hands with us at the right time.

Soumya Gupta: What are biggest challenges that you are facing due to different characteristics in the Indian versus Japanese ecosystem?

Nao: Well, there are many. For example, Indian entrepreneurs have to cater to a variety of different social groups domestically. Also, capturing regional market is easy and even if you capture 20% of the market share, you have a very big number to serve. It means that too niche market segments in Japan are sometimes not too niche in India. Such types of things are different from Japan and we need to adjust our view on the market to the local one.

Unlike here in Japan, where there is homogeneity of cultural practices, it’s easier to launch a product that can dominate domestically. However, Indians with the advantage of knowing English like to go global first. They don’t waste time in customizing products for Indians alone, they think globally. This is a good thing. But at the early stages when you are looking for stability, too much weight on expansion ideas can be risky. Also, judging startups at a very early stage means there are not a lot of parameters to judge their capabilities. Hence, we try to look for 120% commitment and a promising co-founding team who have the potential to strive, stay together and build a sustainable business model.

Soumya: How much funding do you plan to raise for startup business after 4-6 months mentoring programs at Jarvis?

Anil: We plan to have $100K-300 invested in each startup after the initial funding and acceleration program completion that will help them with their go-to-market and launch plans. Entrepreneurs should understand that investment is not the real problem, instead the idea that they bring on the table should be brilliant enough that can drive traffic and revenues. Addressing the real problem is a bigger challenge. If people waste time creating business around imagined problems or focus on solving irritants, it will never bring a major break-through in disruption. The whole reason behind us coming together is to observe entrepreneurs from a close range and build business from scratch which can be of use to the corporates worldwide.