New Delhi & Bengaluru May 16, 2016: Leading tech-focused venture capital firm IDG Ventures India has launched a Digital Consumer Innovators Program to provide assistance to startups across consumer technology and digital media space, including Digital Content / Video / Entertainment, Vernacular / Local languages, content-led commerce models, enabling platforms for consumer tech and consumer mobile applications. Mukesh Bansal (Founder and ex-CEO of Myntra) will be part of the Advisory Panel for the program and will be joined by other industry stalwarts.

IDGVI has been a prolific early-stage investor in India in the technology market. According to research by YourStory, IDGVI was the top backer of early-stage companies, making 23 investments that fell in the seed, pre-Series A and Series A categories. IDGVI has invested in an overall portfolio of 55 companies including Flipkart, FirstCry, Lenskart, Newgen, Yatra, NestAway, Perfint, Vserv and Manthan. The typical investments range from $500,000 to $10 million in sectors like consumer technology & digital media, software, healthtech and fintech. Tata Sons’ Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata joined as Senior Advisor last year, while co-founder of Infosys, Kris Gopalakrishnan is an Advisor at IDGVI.

Sudhir Sethi, Founder and Chairman of IDG Ventures India said, “The Digital Consumer Innovators Program 2016 is a unique initiative to provide a platform to young emerging winners over the year with IDGVI supporting in funding, scale, talent acquisition, strategy and market leadership. IDG Ventures has backed winners consistently in the Digital Consumer space since 2007 including Flipkart, Myntra, FirstCry, Lenskart, Yatra, Zivame and NestAway. In this sector alone, the fund has invested in close to 30 companies and deployed over INR 1,000 crores.

Startups in consumer technology and digital media looking to raise Seed or Series A rounds of funding can apply to this program. Once companies are shortlisted, the IDGVI team will individually meet them in Delhi on May 25th and in Bengaluru on June 1st. Applications were opened on May 13th and will close on May 19th for the Delhi batch and May 26th for the Bangalore batch. On each of these days, we will have two tracks of meeting companies based on Seed ($1 million or less) and Series A ($1 million and more).

“The consumer technology and digital media industry is a fast emerging and very exciting sector for IDGVI. The fund has invested in market leaders including POPxo, HealthifyMe, Rentomojo, Zimmber and Tripoto,“ according to Karan Mohla, Executive Director and Head of Consumer Technology & Digital Media at IDG Ventures India Advisors. “Several entrepreneurs in this sector are creating disruptive products and using technology to innovate business models. As an active investor in this emerging space, IDG Ventures wants to give them a platform via the Digital Consumer Innovators Program to raise funds and scale. The launch program in Delhi and Bangalore will give an impetus to this effort and we will roll it further in the coming future.”

IDGVI plans to shortlist 15-20 companies each for the Bengaluru and Delhi meetings. This program is open to startups from Tier-II and III cities as well. The shortlisted companies will be invited to IDGVI’s Bengaluru office on the week of June 6th and the startups will get an opportunity to present to the full IDG investment team. The chosen companies will move forward to the funding track.

Companies interested in being a part of this program should send their presentations to digitalconsumer@idgvcindia.com and can provide further details at http://bit.ly/1Tec0Jm

About IDG Ventures India
IDG Ventures India is a leading technology venture capital fund in India. The fund is part of IDG Ventures, a global network of technology venture funds with over $6 billion under management with over 220 investee companies and 10 offices across Asia and North America. In India, IDG Ventures has invested in leading digital consumer companies such as Myntra, Brainbees (FirstCry.com), Yatra.com, Lenskart.com, Vserv Digital, NestAway, Actoserba (Zivame.com) etc.