To facilitate startups in converting their innovative ideas into viable businesses, IIT Mandi Catalyst, the first Technology Business incubator in Himachal Pradesh, conducted 'Startup Exploration Program'. The first phase of the program initiated on 2nd July 2018 with a two-week boot camp included intensive workshops on goal setting and visualization, design thinking, minimum viable business, legal aspects of business and marketing strategy at the co-work space of Catalyst. Participating startups during this three-month program, will get up to 1.5 lakhs in funding, apart from mentoring, networking & training to build a working prototype testing it for market potential.

Agro tech, Ad-tech, Block Chain, Healthcare, Food and Beverage, and online services are some of the sectors to which the six startups belong that were admitted in this program. These startups will undergo two more intensive boot camps in next two months that will have 10-12 sessions. After successful conclusion of the program, startups will be bestowed with a one-year incubation program wherein Catalyst will reward them with up to 15 lakhs to further enhance their product & commercialize. The startups will be funded by HP state government also, with sustenance allowance of 25000 per month & 10 lakhs for marketing & commercialization.

During the two-week boot camp, Vishwanath S, Forge Accelerator hosted a two-day hands-on workshop on Minimum Viable Business, Arvind Lodaya, Lodaya Consulting, conducted a workshop on design thinking, and Saurabh Mittal, Catalyst, conducted a visioning cum goal setting exercise for startups. . Sameer Gupta, an angel investor and Anuj Kapoor, a successful entrepreneur of local origin, also shared insights in their respective specialized areas. Rajeshwar Thakur, HPCED did an orientation session with startups and informed them about support available from the state government & Shantanu, Compliance Support, conducted a session on legal aspects of startups

Commenting on this Two-week boot camp, Dr. Puran Singh, Faculty In-charge of IIT Mandi Catalyst, says, “Most startups are consumed with their product and largely engrossed in the technology behind it. They miss out on a variety of other unobvious but important aspects of building a scalable business. This boot camp is a conditioning exercise for budding entrepreneurs to steer their minds towards all vital factors that are important to their business ideas”.

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