The Telangana govt has announced a programme to help startups scale up. The Telangana State Innovation Cell (TSIC) along with some leading incubators and enablers in Hyderabad have announced the programme to support over 100 startups scale up.

Rejig.HydStartups is a large-scale mentoring programme for startups to rejig strategy to pivot towards customers and increase revenue post-COVID-19.

As startups have been struggling due to economic slowdown caused by COVID-19, the TSIC along with incubators, like T-Hub, CIE-IIITH, IKP, RICH and TiE, has designed the initiative.

The initiative will support the ecosystem and work with startups. A programme for strategy rejig, followed by pitch preparation for equity funding, debt or corporate market access will be provided, according to a release.

"This collective initiative will help startups in securing funding to tide over the crunch period," said Deepanwita Chattopadhyay, IKP Chairman & CEO.

Startups from various domains will be helped through domain-specific mentoring and market access. The sectors targeted are edtech, fintech, FMCG, manufacturing, farm/food tech, med/life sciences and emerging technologies.

The shortlisted startups will be provided 3 weeks of mentoring to review strategy and refine it to address present business climate and constraints, specifically identify promising domains and target companies, and revise the positioning and pitch.

The programme will culminate in a mega pitch day event, where over 100 screened startups will be pitching for equity funding, collateral-free debt funding, or corporate market access. Leading companies in the targeted domains will be invited to review the startups and consider pilots.

Rejig.HydStartups applications are open up to July 20. The 4-week programme will conclude with demo days to investors and companies in mid-August.