IDG Venture, Unilever and Amazon join hands to fund early stage Tech start-ups

In a bid to reach out to more companies in upcoming months, Tech focussed VC firm IDG Ventures, Unilever Ventures and Amazon Internet Services Pvt. Ltd (AISPL) join hands to invest in early stage start-ups in the field of technology.

The IDG Innovation Programme (IDGIP) will invest in start-ups, who are looking to raise seed/Series A funding rounds in the range of $0.5 Mn to $5 Mn. It will primarily focus on consumer tech, software, health-tech and fintech products space.

The shortlisted companies will also receive technology mentorship from the AISPL team and value-added benefits like Amazon Web Services credits, premium business support, among other things.

According to Sudhir Sethi, Founder Chairman, IDG Ventures India (IDGVI), “After the very successful 2016 Innovation Program, the 2017 edition expects to reach out to over 1,000 companies in the next 2 months and partner with/invest in select start-ups from Fund 3 to grow with IDG Ventures India’s unique growth platform. IDG Ventures will view early-stage Seed and Series A start-ups, who are uniquely disruptive and are innovative leaders in the market, in this Program”.

Unilever Ventures is the venture capital and private equity arm of Unilever, which is also an investor in IDG. Amazon Internet is the Indian affiliate of Amazon Web Services (AWS) , the cloud-computing arm of Seattle based online retail giant Amazon.com

IDGIP 2017 is the second VC programme being run by IDG Venture after first took place last year. The VC firm had collaborated with Bangalore-based startup accelerator Axilor Ventures to fund early-stage tech start-ups particularly, who are not ready for mass-market commercial adoption such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), Blockchain and Bitcoin, artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning.

Founded in 2006 by Sethi, Manik Arora, and TC Meenakshisundaram, IDG Venture holds over 65 companies in its portfolio including some big players like Flipkart, Lenskart, Uniphore and Zivame. Last year it invested across companies such as Little Black Book, Flyrobe, Active.ai, Pipecandy, Hansel.io and Infisecure.