Unique Community of Entrepreneurs: For the Startups, By the Startups

Founded in 2013 by Salma Moosa and Vivek Srinivasan, Startups Club began its journey as a start-up community, primarily focussed on mentoring early-stage start-ups.

In a conversation with SMEStreet, Salma Moosa, Founder & Managing Director at Startups Club Services Pvt. Ltd. emphasized the cutting edge trends in the startup ecosystem and her club’s key offerings.

The club has 20,000+ free members spread across 24 cities, 1000+ paid memberships called the Elite group of Pioneers, consisting of matured start-up founders focused on growth. The Pioneer Memberships are of 4 levels and have well-designed benefits of services that include, Business Mentoring, IT consultation, Secretariat & accounting support among other benefits, enabling the founders to focus purely on the business.

Founder and MD of the group, Salma says, "It is in the early stages, that most start-ups die; due to the lack of focussed, inclusive hand holding for the entrepreneurs. They need industry expertise, technology and business modelling support, and with many of them being first generation entrepreneurs, need a program such as the one Startups Club provides.”

SCIN incubator program:

SCIN is an incubator program that was launched a few months ago by Startups Club to accelerate early-stage start-ups. Learning from its 5 years of existence, Startups Club saw that young entrepreneurs needed funding with strategic mentoring and connections.

Supported by Mr Mahesh Bhalla and Mr Michael Marks, the Investors/board advisors of Startups Club, SCINcurator LLP, the funding arm of Startups Club; brings a well-curated, structured mix of Incubation + Acceleration program, for the first time in the eco-system.

SCIN will invest USD 100,000 and incubate the start-ups for 12 months and provide space for a team of 5 to work from for the duration of the program.

“SCINcurator has a vision of in curating around 10 to 15 start-ups in the year one, and we have already taken in 3 start-ups for this program” adds Salma.

Estonia e-Residency program:

With a view to providing further opportunities to its members, Startups Club has collaborated with the Republic of Estonia for the e-Residency program, to help Indian entrepreneurs establish companies in Estonia and have access to Business opportunities in the European Union. Being the first country to offer e-Residency, Estonia is creating a borderless digital society.

“E-Residency is a transnational digital identity that anyone can apply for to obtain access to a platform built on inclusion, legitimacy, and transparency. E-Residents can establish a company online in one day, and manage it remotely. They can also apply for a business bank account and conduct secure e-banking with unrestricted access to international payment service providers (Paypal, Braintree, etc.). All of this can be done in a cost-efficient and hassle-free way,” Salma highlighted, “The primary reason e-Residents are joining this community is to run a trusted, location-independent EU business with all the tools needed to conduct business globally.”

The primary benefits of e-Residency being:

• Creation of a European company registered in Estonia with its management fully online
• Full access to European business environment, market, and finance
• Access to Estonian e-services, to a community of digitally-empowered global citizens and to all the tools needed for a business to grow

Future Roadmap:

“A reliable, one-stop platform for every entrepreneur, who sets out to begin his or her journey as a start-up. Going ahead, Startups Club intends to reach out to the deepest parts of India, hunting out the most innovative and challenging start-ups addressing the most pressing problems of rural and urban India,” Salma added.

With their Roadshows touching 29 States and 7 Union Territories, this vision is not far away. These Roadshows all head towards their signature annual Demo Day scheduled in October in Bangalore that will host 2000+ entrepreneurs from across the world, the best of speakers, enablers, investors and founders at a 2-day session, where finalists from across the country compete. The prize money of INR 10 Lakhs, is handed over to the winner with no strings attached.  The winner also gets a funding opportunity.