Ideas matter. Especially the ones outside the classroom.
The Antler India Fellowship gives no-strings-attached $20,000 to college students chasing ideas and side hustles so that they can tinker, fail, learn and build the startup of their dreams. Take the road less travelled. Applications for the first cohort are now closed.
India’s coolest platform for the next generation of student founders
$20,000 x 16 weeks x 10 of India’s brightest = 🌋🤯 💯
🚀 A platform for your entrepreneurial dreams
It’s never too early to start a company and as an ecosystem, we are yet to unlock the massive potential of students.
Antler India Fellowship is designed as a space for students to experiment, fail and learn as they turn their ideas into a business. We do that through a hands-on program to understand the nuances of building a startup, facilitated by some of India’s top domain experts and mentors.
We supplement this with a $20,000 grant (without taking any equity) so that students can focus on building instead of worrying about salary or placements. In short, there has never been a better time to be a student entrepreneur and we want to propel these ideas to fruition.
The best ideas are born out of heaps of experiments and here’s your chance to build the next big thing - while in college.
The What
🔍 We are looking for India's brightest students who want to build audacious companies of tomorrow.
$20,000
To explore, experiment, fail, build and make your entrepreneurial dreams a reality. What’s the catch, you ask? Well, there’s none.
Use the grant to
☑️ Pay yourself a handsome salary
☑️ Hire an all-star team
☑️ Scale your company
☑️ Use it at your discretion. No questions asked.
Are you building for the metaverse?
or Disrupting the mental wellness space?
or Unlocking human potential in a radical way?
We’re interested in all these and more.
$20,000 grant, no-strings-attached
Capital should be the least of your worries. Pay yourself a handsome salary or hire an all-star team, we won’t get in the way. This grant is given equity-free. Post-program, you will have the opportunity to raise pre-seed funding from Antler India.
Program with world-class mentors
Understand the building blocks of a successful startup and get your idea validated by mentors from all parts of the ecosystem. Get 1:1 mentorship from leaders in the industry you are building in.
Community & Peer-Network
We believe that our global network is yours and want to open up access to the best kind of peers, mentors and investors in the future. You can turn to your fellow AIF entrepreneurs and make them your solid sounding board.
🔍 Who are we looking for?
👩💻 Builders who yearn to build the companies of future
🧩 Doers who show a strong bias for action
🔨 Non-Conformists who want to smash the status-quo
🎯 Believers who acknowledge the power of technology to change the world
💫 Dreamers who can think big / have a big-picture vision
Doesn't sound like you? We particularly love people who can't be put under a label. Sounds like you? Either way, send us your ideas!
📈 How does this work?
1. You apply here.
2. We review your application and identify the most promising applicants to speak with.
3. For every founder or a team that gets into the Antler Fellowship Program, you receive a $20,000 grant to help you build without any distress or distractions.
4. You join us for an asynchronous 16 weeks program starting January 2022. The program will span across idea validation, user research, product, engineering, and marketing to help you build as you experience the program. We will also ensure we cover the fundamentals and the boring bits of business - legal, accounting, and incorporation-related aspects, so you have time to work on your idea.
What happens after?
At the end of the program, you present to the Investment Committee in May-June 2022.
Should we decide to invest in you, you will receive funding in the range of $175k to $250k at 10% equity and will join a growing global portfolio of companies and founder-peers.
You will gain access to our global platform to scale your company internationally.
We can provide you with follow-on capital as your startup grows and scales.
Portfolio support and all perks (worth $1M+) available to our portfolio companies will be available for you to use during the program. We’ll help you take your startup to the next level.
Head to the FAQ section to know more about the application process and program. If you’d like to apply directly for a pre-seed investment, you can apply here.
About Antler India
Launched in 2020, Antler India is on the path of deploying $100M in India in the next 3 years, backing the country’s most exceptional founders. We are a startup’s first institutional backers. We currently do pre-seed investments in the range of $200k for earliest stage founders, even at a concept or idea stage. Moreover, we are a rare global institutional fund dedicated to this stage in India, and we can support founders through multiple stages in the first 4-5 years of the journey with significant reserve capital for future rounds.