Google launches start-up school, targets 10,000 non-metro entrepreneurs

Google announced the first edition of its nine-week virtual start-up mentoring programme, Google Startup School India, on Wednesday to enable and scale early and mid-stage start-ups.

The programme will focus on finding start-ups beyond the metros, in tier 2 and tier 3 cities, and is targeting to onboard 10,000 of them in the first edition, by December. Key training areas covered in the programme will include finding the right product, design, technology, marketing and business strategy.

Google has partnered with in-house leaders, venture capitalists and industry leaders to build a network for collaborators from across the fintech, D2C, B2B and B2C e-commerce, language, social media & networking, and job search sectors. They include Google India Vice President Sanjay Gupta, Sequoia India & SEA MD Rajan Anandan, and Lightspeed India VP Manjot Pahwa.

Aditya Swamy, Director, Play Partnerships, highlighted that of the 70,000 active start-ups in India, almost 50 percent are from the non-metros. Yet, about 90 percent of these active start-ups are unable to achieve scale and fail in the first five years of operations.

“The reasons for their failures can be bucketed into four areas. Are they able to attract the right talent, and build core teams that can scale up the idea? The second is: is there a real product-market fit? I could have a great idea but is there large enough user potential for that idea to scale? The third is the ability to raise capital and manage cash burn. The last one is: is there enough regular actionable feedback that can come back to the founding team that enables them to pivot or make the right changes to the business model?” Swamy said addressing the media.

“The core of this programme is to think about how we can pass on the experience of Google, of people from the ecosystem, to start-ups to solve problems across these four areas,” he added.

Karthik Padmanabhan, Developer Relations Program Manager Lead, added that there’s especially scope for sectors such as agritech, health tech and fintech, which have needs to be solved on a large scale. “These are very unique problems specific to India, but can be replicated in markets like Africa and other similar geographies,” he said.

This is one of the many programmes Google has been operating in India. In June, it launched a start-up accelerator programme for women founders.