Early stage venture capital firm Antler’s India unit has launched a cohort based program, ‘Antler India Residency’, for upcoming Entrepreneurs.

It will bring together about 60-70 individuals from business and engineering backgrounds to participate in an eight-week-long program. During the residency, Antler India would enable participants to meet their future cofounders.

The fund’s partner, Rajiv Srivatsa, says that the inability to meet one's cofounder is one of the main reasons why startups don’t launch.

“Antler expects Antler expects 8-10 companies to be born out of each cohort, which will have the chance to receive $270,000 for a nine percent stake. The funds will help new startups make at least five-six iterations of an early product-market fit,” says Srivatsa.

“Smart founders want at least a $3 million valuation and that's very clear data that's emerging. The valuation bracket for pre-seed and seed rounds has moved by around 2.5-5 times over the last two years,” adds Srivatsa.

According to reports, Antler India plans to run four such cohorts through calendar year 2023 and has allocated about $15 million for it. The sector-agnostic program will bring together individuals from business and engineering backgrounds.

In 2021, during the launch antler India announced its plans to deploy $100-$150 million in over 100 Indian startups over the next three years.

Nandini Vishwanath, program director, Antler India says, “Phase 1 of the Residency will focus on helping foster connections and create situations and challenges to aid the process. In this phase, founders will also spend time validating and developing their ideas. Phase 2 will see the successfully formed teams build out their idea, where we back them through coaching and access to resources.”

According to Srivatsa the cohort will likely have 70 percent first-time founders and the rest looking for a co-founder to launch their ideas.

“Last year, you had people just wanting to jump and become a founder. I don't think anyone saw the extent of the scale of things because of the number of unicorns and everything,” adds Srivatsa.