RIL's JioGenNext has incubated and aided 170 startups, raised funds over Rs 2,600 crore: Annual Report

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Reliance Industries Limited’s (RIL) startup incubator programme JioGenNext has supported 170 startups that collectively raised over Rs 2,600 crore in early-stage venture capital since 2014.

“The programme has received 12,153 applications from startups and aspiring entrepreneurs…the startup alumni has raised over Rs 2,600 crore in early-stage venture capital,” said Reliance in its integrated annual report for the financial year 2021-22 on Monday.

JioGenNext was founded by Reliance chairman Mukesh D Ambani to nurture startups early on. The programme has RIL’s top management members as its mentors like B. Srinivasan, president & chief of staff,  Rohit Bansal, group head of communications and Shailesh Kumar, chief data Scientist at Jio.

Other mentors include startup founders of RIL-backed startups such as Aakrit Vaish of Haptik, Arvind Pani of Reverie, Harsh Shah of Fynd) and Jasminder Singh Gulati of NowFloats.

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“Since its inception JioGenNext has been instrumental in catalysing the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem and has assisted numerous startups to achieve scale by launching them in the Reliance ecosystem,” the report said.

In FY 2021-22, JioGenNext launched its Market Access Program (MAP 2021) with 11 high potential startups, Aarca Research, Bigthinx, Atom, Farm, Navana, Janitri, IBoson Innovations, Farmonaut, niroggyan, Vidcare and Wakaw.

MAP currently operates on an annual cohort model, with entrepreneurs being accepted on a rolling basis throughout the year. The programme has so far conducted over 16 cohorts with around 90 mentors and 30 corporate partners.

“With MAP, JioGenNext aims to further strengthen its value-add to startups and build win-win partnerships in the startup ecosystem,” the annual report said.

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MAP focuses on connecting founders in the Reliance /Jio ecosystem and assists businesses on product innovation, go-to-market strategy, recruiting, marketing, funding, and product-market fit, all of which are related to a startup's overall business success.

Last year, RIL also partnered in an Israel Innovation Authority (IIA) sponsored incubator jointly with OurCrowd, Yissum, an Hebrew University and Ben-Gurion University to  enable deeper exposure and faster access to global innovation.