One startup helping other startups is a welcome step. Nestaway, the home rental network startup, has announced an incubation programme of its own called Nestaway Startup Lab in Bengaluru. The objective of this lab is to help consumer startups build their new ventures using the database of customers that Nestaway has collected.
Nestaway has roped in Excubator, already having a name for being a startup accelerator. Registrations for Nestaway Startup Lab is open to all the entrepreneurs on Nestaway’s website until 1st March 2019. It is open to all entrepreneurs. Selected ones will be announced in March and the 6-month programme will take place in Bengaluru.
Nestaway said in a statement that having faced the challenges of the starting up first-hand, Nestaway founders are committed to assisting budding entrepreneurs by offering what matters the most, free of cost - early customers.
“In our experience, one of the largest determinants of startup success is early access to willing customers to test, fail & learn what works. Unfortunately, today customers are behind walled gardens & getting access to them to even learn is expensive, and thereby elite. Given the cost involved in starting up, it is available to very few who could afford to or who could garner seed investments. Therefore, we wanted to allow startups to use our customer base to get access to customers without any fee or expectation. While the investment market funds with money (which anyway is used for customer acquisition), with Nestaway Startup Lab, we wanted to fund with our customer base,” Amarendra Sahu, CEO and Co-Founder, Nestaway Technologies, said.
There may be only 3 or 4 startups chosen from those who register on the site. As mentioned, the duration of the programme is 6 months. There will be opportunities for mentoring the entrepreneurs of the selected startups.
Excubator CEO Guhesh Ramanathan commented on their partnership with Nestaway, “We believe that startups have the power to change the world. However, today starting up has been synonymous with raising money. This incubation is about broad-basing starting-up so that more and more people can think of it as real customer-acquisition, and not fundraise, as the precursor to starting up. It is heartening to see successful startups taking up their roles in society to make more people start-up. We are super excited to be part of this journey.