IDG Ventures with Unilever Ventures, Amazon launches Innovation Program

Leading tech-focused venture capital firm IDG Ventures India (IDGVI) has launched its 2017 Innovation Program (#IDGIP2017) to reach out to emerging disruptive startups across its core sectors of consumer tech, software, health-tech and fintech products space.

Applicable at startups for raising of Seed or Series A rounds between USD 0.5M to USD 5.0M, the Innovation Program has collaborated with Unilever Ventures and Amazon Internet Services Private Limited (AISPL), the Indian affiliate of Seattle-headquartered Amazon Web Services, Inc. Unilever Ventures (UV) is the Venture Capital and Private Equity Arm of Unilever.

It will offer start-ups and later-stage companies the opportunity to receive equity investment and operational support from Unilever. UV has a strategic relationship with IDGVI as an investor and will evaluate companies as part of this program for potential co-investments.

Also, the shortlisted companies will receive technology mentorship from the AISPL team and value-added benefits like AWS credits, premium business support and GTM connects.

As the most active tech-focused VC, IDGVI has run successful sector programs in 2016 that focused on consumer-tech and software. The 2016 program saw close to 1,000 applications from startups and via this program, IDGVI invested in six companies - Little Black Book, Flyrobe, Active.ai, Pipecandy, Hansel.io and Infisecure. Investment size varied from USD 0.5M to USD 3.0M depending on the stage of each of the selected companies.

"After the very successful 2016 Innovation Program, the 2017 edition expects to reach out to over 1,000 companies in the next two months and partner with/invest in select start-ups from Fund three to grow with IDG Ventures India's unique growth platform. IDG Ventures will view early-stage Seed and Series A startups in this Program who are uniquely disruptive and are innovative leaders in the market," said founder chairman IDG Ventures India, Sudhir Sethi.