The startup ecosystem is fast expanding in India and is nurtured dynamically by venture capital funds, angel investors, among others. Disruptive innovation in several sectors by startups is backed by venture capital funds vigorously, thus boosting the ever-growing innovation hub. Standing out amongst them all is PESU Venture Labs (PVL), a unique fund that operates in the pre-prototype or pre-ideation phase, focusing on industry professionals, student entrepreneurs, and academicians.
PVL is an initiative in partnership between PES University and CoCreate Ventures. It aims to reimagine venture creation while being founder-friendly and flexible. Speaking about the initiative, Prof Jawahar Doreswamy, Pro-Chancellor, PESU, said, “This unique initiative, will help our students have an early exposure to the entrepreneurial ecosystem we have created at PESU. This is a beginning to amazing things that await students at PESU Venture Labs.”
Speaking about the fund, Suresh Narasimha, a serial entrepreneur, founder of CoCreate Ventures and the brain behind PVL, said "PVL was set up with the objective of making the brightest of our students and entrepreneurs, leveraging entrepreneurship to fund researchers and students, and creating a funnel of fundable, deep-tech companies for VC ecosystem from the campus."
Apart from funding, PVL also offers resources to startups to turbo-start their idea. PVL provides entrepreneurs with in-house talent in design, marketing and product management. To mentor, PVL brings some of the best experts from the industry to ensure the products meet global standards. Apart from inviting ideas from potential Entrepreneurs, PVL also incubates companies based on the deep research by researchers.
PVL supports startups that are category creators, use deep-tech innovation as a differentiator, SAAS compliant apart from having a great Entrepreneur and large market size. PVL has so far incubated over ten companies in the deep tech space, which are present in the final stages of their product launch. 4 of the companies are expected to hit the market by July. This unique fund provides up to USD 150,000 in funding and other services to help companies build out products and test out unit economics.