Delhi | 20th May 2020: The entire world is facing one of the greatest crises ever in the history of humankind – the COVID-19 pandemic. It did not take this virus much time to crash the global economy and bring it to its worst. In our country alone, the total confirmed cases have crossed the 70,000 mark and the pandemic seems to be riding a scary exponential curve.
Risers Accelerator is actively working on the idea of nurturing and funding those startups that have emerged during this time of crisis as a solution to the direct and indirect issues that have been caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. They have announced to provide a funding of up to Rs 2 crores to such innovative startups. They are also conducting digital meetings to hear the pitches and decide on the companies for funding. Few such companies that have really stood out include Mylocal99, AskExperts and LaunchMyDrug among others.
Risers Accelerator has opened its doors to all those organizations that are working towards reducing the suffering of the people. It is welcoming startups that are supporting the healthcare fraternity with their innovative ideas; companies that are helping the MSMEs and other small businesses on in managing income shortages when the whole economy has been brought to a halt; and companies that are supporting jobless people to manage with fund shortages.
For instance, video conferencing apps have really emerged as a saviour for many businesses and institutions, as they are able to conduct webinars, online classes and remote meetings to keep things going. According to a report by App Annie, the video conferencing apps were downloaded 62 million times between March 14 and March 21 – in just one week! There are many such examples where startups have came up with these kinds of novel solutions.
“We are hoping to attract and help as many people as we can through these start-ups that have emerged during this crucial time to help others. These are very difficult times that we are facing and the people who have stepped forward to help others should not be alone in this. Currently, we are hearing in a lot of innovative ideas and pitches and we’re engaged in selecting the most promising ones for funding and mentoring,” said Mr. Pravin Khandelwal, Partner, Risers Accelerator.
The need of the hour is to create an infrastructure that can help us ward-off the negative impact of COVID-19 on our economy and help people survive. Empowering innovative startups wouldn’t just help solve problems that people are facing, but it would also give a boost to the economic engine as well – not to mention the thousands of job opportunities that would be generated as a by-product.
According to a survey, the Indian startup landscape lost 50% of its funding by the month of March, as the investors have became stingy and wary regarding investing money in the startups. In the light of this data, the initiative by Risers Accelerator to empower startups becomes even more important, because our economy needs some sort of stimulus and the people need solutions to their problems. The scientists, engineers and doctors are collaborating worldwide to come up with a vaccine, but even if we go by the most generous estimates, it would still take 6 to 12 months to develop a viable cure. Given the scenario, the country cannot afford to sit and wait – there is an urgent need to come up with solutions that might help us manoeuvre around the problem and restart our economy somehow. Empowering innovative startups seems to be a positive step in that direction. After thorough research and discussion last month, Risers Accelerator has come up with this initiative, and they will soon be announcing the names of all the companies that they are going to be funding.
