MUMBAI: Early-stage fund Accel Partners said it has launched a learning platform for new entrepreneurs to expand their fledgling ventures.
The platform, called seed-to-scale, will offer a startup playbook comprising insights, learning programmes, commentary, and networking to entrepreneurs. The platform is available to all entrepreneurs, even those outside Accel’s portfolio.
Over the past 15 years, Accel has specialised in investing in five areas, including consumer, business-to-business, enterprise software, fin tech, and health tech, said Anand Daniel, a partner at Accel.
"We’ve learnt what works and what doesn’t. There are playbooks customised for each of these verticals that we have developed that we share with our portfolio of around 200 companies. We’ve distilled down these learnings and realised that there are a few things that all founders want, and those are the ones we want to package and make it very easy for (all) founders to access. That’s why we’re (launching) seed-to-scale," Daniel said.
The learning platform is not intended to be "a generalised information platform but a hands-on playbook" for entrepreneurs, he said.
Accel is one of the largest and most prolific early-stage funds in India. In December, it had raised $550 million for its sixth India fund.
Like its peers, Accel had put new deals on hold at the start of the pandemic in late March, but it soon resumed investing. Daniel said Accel remains "very bullish" about the next decade.
"Right now, we’re going through a tough time. However, if you look at (how far) we’ve come—VC investments used to be 0.2% of gross domestic product, now it’s 0.45, which is on a par with a country like the US. So it’s a thriving ecosystem," he said.
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