Microsoft Ventures looks to take JumpStart helpline to the next level

Microsoft Ventures looks to building JumpStart as an outbound call engine that could be used by entrepreneurs to generate business leads

Microsoft Ventures India is looking to take its JumpStart start-up helpline to the next level by building it up as an outbound call engine that could be used by entrepreneurs to generate business leads.

As a pilot, Microsoft Ventures will offer startups from its accelerator batches access to the outbound engine, Rajinish Menon, director – startups at Microsoft Ventures India told Business Standard.

“Our plan is to beef Jumpstart up with an outbound calling engine which can be used for lead generation for some of the solutions built by the startups,” Menon said. “We are open to integrating the service with some of the citizenship services offered by governments where JumpStart professionals can answer entrepreneurship questions of the citizens.”

The helpline that was launched in April this year, has seen a lot of traction and has been instrumental in aiding several entrepreneurs who run successful startups today. The JumpStart helpline received around 2,600 calls between April and November this year, mostly from metro cities like Delhi, National Capital Region, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.

The most frequently asked questions by the callers include ‘where to get help on someone who could validate my idea?’ and ‘How to get funded?’.

While the service has been of help to several entrepreneurs, an example where JumpStart successfully helped a startup take shape is Zoojoo.be, which offers an entreprise wellness platform that includes a diet and nutritional tracker.

Avinash Saurabh, founder of Zoojoo.be had been toying with the idea of the startup for several months before he made his first call to JumpStart.

“I am a first time entrepreneur and I didn’t even know how to do things. When I started I did not even know how to form a private limited company and how to go about the legalities,” Saurabh told Business Standard. “Calls to JumpStart helped in a big way. They gave us the right connections. JumpStart has been instrumental for our growth in a lot of ways.”

Zoojoo.be currently has several clients, including Mindtree, where 14,000 employees are using the startup’s platform.

Other clients of the startup include GE, Pantaloons, and National Entrepreneurship Network.

Zoojoo.be closed a seed funding round in May 2015, which saw participation from prominent angel investors like K Srikrishna, executive director of National Entrepreneurship Network, Vikas Choudhury, and Chandrasekaran Mahadevan of Manipal Health Enterprise.

Additionally, JumpStart is among the around 4,500 services being offered on Karnataka government’s mobile governance platform MobileOne, which was launched last week by President Pranab Mukherjee here.

Just days after getting integrated with the MobileOne platform, JumpStart received 120 calls. While several of these calls were “random”, seeking employment or asking questions not relating to startups, several others were relevant.

“I think since this is initial days we will see some unrelated calls till the service settles down,” Menon said.