Mission: To empower and support early stage inventive startups by providing catalytic financing that helps these startups cross-over critical stages of their company’s advancement, meet important milestones and prepare for an angel investment/venture capital/ institutional investment/ strategic investment round.

Venture Center is a non-profit technology business incubator hosted by CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory in Pune. As part of its larger mission of nucleating and nurturing knowledge-based/ science-led enterprises, Venture Center facilitates and makes available different types of financial support to early stage startups in its network.  This includes fellowship, grants and seed investments.

The seed investment activity at Venture Center is led by a team of investment managers and supported by a technical team. The team has considerable track record investing in early stage science-led startups, experience in advising startups on fundraising, investment readiness and investor relations, and continuous engagement with angel and venture capital investors. The team takes pride in being professional, knowledgeable, helpful, efficient and genuinely supportive of startup founders.

The following is the profile of the seed funding activity at Venture Center:

• Preferred category of startups: Science and technology-led deeptech startups; Inventive enterprises
• Preferred industry or market sectors: None
• Preferred stage:  None
• Ticket size: Roughly Rs 20 -100 lakhs
• Preferred instrument: Equity
• Partners: DST-NSTEDB (GoI), BIRAC (GoI), DPIIT/Startup India Seed Fund (GoI), TDB (GoI)
• Investment philosophy: Create more resources for early stage science-led startups; Patient investors but realize that exits help direct funds to more  startups; Co-investment by other investors is encouraged; Venture Center support should help the startup hit some key milestones.
• Other benefits: Be part of the Venture Center community, branding and peer-to-peer network; Access to Venture Center’s innovation ecosystem (including mentors, programs, services, resources, networks etc); Advise and inputs for board level decisions; Hand-holding for future investment rounds.