Antler India Fellowship helps the country's brightest students turn their dorm-room startups into serious companies.
Take your startup to the next level with an equity-free $10,000 grant, one-on-one mentorship by India's best founders and your first institutional capital of $125,000.
We will back 20 student-run startups this year. We encourage you to apply early.
Antler India Fellowship helps India's brightest students build audacious companies of tomorrow. Besides providing the initial grant, we work with you in a highly personalized manner to help with various aspects of company building. This culminates into an opportunity for you to pitch and raise an institutional round with us.
The Fellowship is highly selective with 3 in 1000 students making the cut. On selection, you receive an equity-free grant of $10,000. This will act as your ignition fuel to rapidly refine your MVP or build out your prototype into a product.
Over 3 months, you are paired with a successful founder in your category and receive one-on-one mentorship. This means if you are building in blockchain, you are paired with a successful Web3 founder and so on. This is so that you get pointed takeaways and avoid generic one-size-fits-all advice. Furthermore, one dedicated Antler leader is assigned to take up your questions and help you navigate the initial months. Together, the founder-mentor and Antler leader will act as your personal advisory board that you can tap into. In this phase, you understand the building blocks of a successful startup and build the product with lightning speed. In this phase you will also meet your Antler India Fellows, with whom you will go on a 4-day trek to learn, unlearn and make connections for life.
In 4 to 6 months, you will have the opportunity to pitch to the Investment Committee and raise pre-seed capital of $125,000 for 7% equity.
Upon funding, you will join Antler's portfolio and receive continued support and access to subsequent capital pathways. Antler in India will also host a Demo Day where you will showcase your startup to top investors in the country and raise additional capital. At this stage, Antler will invest another $125,000 into your startup.
Antler is one of the most active early-stage investors with one of the world's largest communities of early-stage founders.
Global portfolio companies
Combined portfolio value
Antler founders
Offices across six continents
As investors, we have looked at over 25,000 startups in the last decade, and funded over 80 companies across various stages, sectors, and geographies. We have seen multiple companies go to IPO, delivered sizeable M&A outcomes, and worked closely with nearly 55 startups in helping them raise further rounds of funding from some of the world’s marquee funds. Here are some companies we have been first believers in:
Arshia Mal
From helping me navigate through the initial legalities of setting up & building a team to extensive guidance while concretising my startup idea to encouraging me to experiment without the fear of failing, there’s nothing that I thought the Antler team could not have helped me out with. Their process has been extremely personalised yet structured - which has worked out very well.
Harsh Savergaonkar
Cricinshots
Antler’s trust in us as two college founders has been a game-changer. The only thing early stage college founders need to build from 0, is some veterans to believe in them and support them, and Antler’s unwavering support and guidance has helped us believe in ourselves and our potential.
Tejas Ravishankar
Dimension
I’m incredibly grateful to have the Antler team’s support with every step in the process - as a first-time founder, Antler’s guidance and encouragement are what every early-stage founder needs! This is what I love doing - building and shipping, and I’m so grateful I have the best possible partners working with me.
Mehul Mohan
codedamn
Antler enabled me to convert a side project into a startup right after my final year in university. Antler empowering student entrepreneurs is exactly what we need to accelerate progress in the world.
Gaurav Panwar
Cattle Guru
I was fortunate to be a part of the first cohort of Antler India fellowship. There was an immense amount of learning and exposure to building a startup from scratch. The program is very well designed for college students who are determined to build their startups. There is no other program in India that can handhold your startup journey from day zero.
An extension of our founders’ teams: we don’t launch and leave. We are here to maximize their success for the entire life cycle of the company. From helping you find your first global customers to hiring a solid founding team and preparing for your next fundraise, our global platform is equipped with resources to leapfrog your startup to the next level.
Our student founders scale faster:
As builders, we have founded companies in E-commerce, Ed-Tech, Mobility, FinTech, and Web3, created products used by millions of people, hired early core teams, and raised capital across different stages.
Bhavna is an entrepreneur who attracts great talent and has experience building margin-focused, scale-up businesses for Asia-Pacific. She enjoys being in a room with people who are smarter than her and is learning to listen more deeply. She is the Founder and CEO of 10club - A venture incorporated in 2021 that focuses on building challenger brands for the home and kitchen ecosystem that aims to service 100M+ Indians. Prior to this she successfully exited a multi-million-dollar PropTech venture called Lamudi, one of the largest players across South East Asia.
Nishchay is a techie turned entrepreneur who spent the first decade of his career in software consultancy roles at MNCs like Honeywell Aerospace, NTT Data Americas and Infosys. Soon after, he came back to India to work at Accenture and later at the world’s fastest-growing mobility start-up Bounce, heading engineering, supply, and later monetization. Nishchay co-founded Jar with Misbah Ashraf as his next step, with a simple vision: savings for Middle India.
Rajiv is a Partner in the Antler Bangalore office. He co-founded Urban Ladder (UL), India's top omni-channel furniture brand. Over ~8 years, UL raised over $100Mn in venture capital from top Indian VCs and changed the way Indians shop for furniture online. Prior to Urban Ladder, he served as a Senior Product Manager with Yahoo. He has been featured on GQ Influential Young Indians and repeatedly on the Fortune 40 Under 40 India list. Rajiv loves working with early-stage entrepreneurs on product, culture and brand to build scalable companies.
Nitin brings 12+ years of experience in global venture capital, having invested in 100+ tech startups across stages, from being the first believer all the way to pre-IPO. Nitin learnt the ropes of the VC business in the US at NEA (one of the world’s largest funds) and was also an early executive at EverFi (acq. by Blackbaud for $750M). Nitin was part of the founding team at Lightbox Ventures, one of India’s leading funds (now $400M AUM). He then created his own micro-VC (FirstPrinciples) as a thesis-driven, early believer in 40+ startups, and was the first VC in India to focus on Web3. A Wharton graduate, Nitin has served on advisory boards/groups for the USC Viterbi School, NITI Aayog, AngelList India and TheBetterIndia.
Lakshmikant is the Head of Finance & Legal at Antler India. Lakshmikant has more than 19 years of experience in PE & VC Fund Management, NBFC Operations, and Banking Operations. Prior to joining Antler, Lakshmikant was a Consultant to T-Hub, a Startup accelerator based in Hyderabad, and helped their startups raise capital from Angels and VC investors. Prior to his role as a Consultant, he was the Finance Controller at SRI Capital, a US-based tech VC Fund where he set up their India operations and represented the fund on the board of portfolio companies. Before that, Lakshmikant spent 10 years at Caspian Impact Investments where he was the Chief Financial Officer. Prior to Caspian, Lakshmikant worked with Cognizant Technology Solutions and Citigroup. Lakshmikant holds an MBA from Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai.
Susmit Patodia is the Capital Director at Antler India. Susmit started his career with Accenture Management Consulting.
After which he spent the last decade with Motilal Oswal, one of India's premier financial services company. He has held various leadership positions in Motilal from heading institutional equities sales business to portfolio management at the Asset Management Company.
He is a strong believer in India’s meteoric growth over the next decade and his focus is on “Antifragile investing in India”, “Don’t bet against India” and “Return to not normal but better”. Susmit is an alumnus of IIM Bangalore and Madras University.
Gowri Shankar leads the portfolio function at Antler. Prior to Antler, Gowri has a decade of deep experience in building and scaling internet businesses in India. He co-founded AllChemist (one of India’s first e-Pharmacy players), RoofandFloor (end-to-end real estate commerce platform) and STEP (English language testing platform) from scratch. He was part of the executive leadership team that scaled InMobi (largest independent Mobile advertising platform) and Medlife/Pharmeasy (e-Health market leader). He also transformed Cleartax’s (India’s largest SaaS platform) Enterprise/ B2B Business and set it up for scale.
Gowri received an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Bengaluru where he was awarded the Chairman’s Gold Medal.
Nandini is the Program Director at Antler India. She was previously the founder of GIGI Benefits (YC’20). Prior to her founder stint, she architected and led customer experience for Urban Ladder, India’s leading Furniture e-commerce startup. She holds a Masters Degree in Linguistics from English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India and New Media Management from Syracuse University, NY.
Rahul is the Scouting Director at Antler India. At Antler, he leads the process of identifying the most driven founders looking to build iconic companies. He has been an early stage operator, founder and angel investor in the Indian startup ecosystem, and has backed the founders of Pixxel, FamPay and Homingos. Rahul is an alumnus of BITS Pilani & The Indian Military Academy.
Ishavasyam Dash is the Marketing Director at Antler India. Previously, Isha was a part of the leadership team at Unacademy, where she helped launch and grow a new skill-based course platform. She also led brand marketing for Urban Ladder, helping it become one of India's most loved brands. Prior, she was at Dulux (AkzoNobel), where she launched the specialist paints category in India. Isha holds a Master's Degree in Marketing from NMIMS, Mumbai.
Vineet Agarwal is an Investment Manager at Antler India. He executes investments at Antler India and helps raise capital for Antler India Fund. In his last stint, he was a core member of the Strategy division at Ola and was involved in multiple fundraises ($500m+) and M&A activity across Ola Group. Previously, he was at Goldman Sachs (Investment Banking) where he worked on deals worth $40bn+. Vineet is a 2x founder, and founded Motorhood (a vehicle maintenance startup) & BluGanesha Airwaves (a proximity marketing venture). He holds an MBA from NMIMS Mumbai and a Bachelors in Commerce from St. Xavier's College, Kolkata.
We are thrilled to back 16-year-old Tejas Ravishankar as he builds a robust productivity and experience platform for open-source developers.
We are thrilled to back 21-year-old award-winning game developers and designers, Harsh Savergaonkar and Aditya Kasibhatla, who, with Cricinshots aim to redefine gaming experiences for the next generation of gamers and cricket fans in India and beyond.
A team from the Antler India Fellowship cohort, Cattle Guru is building a one-stop shop for Bharat farmers.
Join us for this exclusive AMA with founder-turned-investor, Rajiv Srivatsa (Partner, Antler India and Co-founder, Urban Ladder) who takes the stage to discuss his no-nonsense and actionable guide for students wanting to build a venture-backable business. He will dive into the steps you should (and shouldn’t) take on your path to entrepreneurship.
Launched in 2020, Antler in India is on the path of deploying $100M in the country 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 $500K 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.
To learn more about Antler in India, visit antler.co/india.
We provide the $10,000 grant without taking any ownership. This is to offer you a safe space to experiment without worrying about finding a job to earn, and to help you build out your MVP or product. Antler reserves the right to invest in your startup once you are ready to pitch.
Not at all! For this Fellowship, you can apply from anywhere and build from anywhere in the world as long as you are an Indian citizen/tax resident of India. However, there will be a week when all Fellows are required to come down to Bangalore for an event. We’ll keep you posted.
While students are not required to drop out of college to be eligible for the initial grant, we do expect them to drop out at the point when we make the investment of USD 125K. However, we do make exceptions in cases where the students are a few months away from graduating.
Very cool! Please apply at www.antler.co/india using the ‘pre-seed’ application form.
We are sector agnostic and welcome a wide range of technology companies across Web3, AR/VR, Climate, SaaS, Fintech, Gaming, AI, Marketplaces and more.
Once you have applied, select founders will move to the interview stage. You will have 2-3 rounds of interviews designed to know more about you as a founder, your product and your vision for your startup. This entire process typically takes 2-4 weeks, post which we will communicate our decision to you. The applications are open throughout the year and you are free to apply again to Antler even if you don’t make it initially.
If you are a tax resident of India or an Indian resident willing to drop out in case of an investment from us, please do apply.
It’s great if you have a product, but it’s not a necessary criteria.However, you do need to have a validated idea or a prototype/ demo/ MVP to be considered for the Fellowship.
Not at all. Until you receive funding from us, you need not worry about your company registration. If you already have a registered company, nothing better than that! We appreciate your courage in taking these early steps.
No. The Fellowship is only for students still in college or would have been in college had they not dropped out. If you are not a student and want to raise capital for your startup, please do apply at www.antler.co/india through our ‘pre-seed’ application form and we’d be happy to take a look.
Get in touch with our team!
