Infosys co-founder Shibulal floats offline education focused incubator EduMentum

Infosys co-founder SD Shibulal, who led early-stage venture fund Axilor Ventures has set up another incubator EduMentum. Focused on education, the incubator supports organisations and startups working in offline space.

The incubator is being launched in association with Shibulal's Advaith Foundation and Mantra4Change, a Bengaluru-based NGO. The Advaith Foundation was set up by Kumari Shibulal and SD Shibulal to promote philanthropic ventures in the field of education and research. Advaith also runs an education leadership platform ShikshaLokam to support education.

"EduMentum is designed to promote social entrepreneurs who are working to transform the education ecosystem. EduMentum will encourage development and use of indigenous body of knowledge in the area of school education through ShikshaLokam," said Shibulal, reports ET.

The proposed incubator will offer funding of Rs 7.5 lakh per annum to each selected organisation along with a series of workshops for the incubatees. Besides, It would provide a network to the startups who incubate under EduMentum.

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EduMentum has already launched its first cohort of the programme in September last year. The startup selected for the batch include Loop Education Foundation, Vidhya Vidhai, Samarthya, Sanjhi Sikhiya and i-Saksham.

The programme aims to incubate 50 organisations across different parts of the country by 2022. The next batch will start in June.

Earlier, former Infosys veterans Shibulal and Gopalakrishnan, Srinath Batni, Professor Tarun Khanna and Venugopal have founded Axilor Ventures, a business incubator and platform for supporting innovation and entrepreneurship in late 2014.

Also Read: Axilor Ventures finalises 6th accelerator batch, selects 20 startups from 5 sectors

Through its accelerator and seed fund programs, Axilo Ventures helps early-stage startups improve their odds of success. In the last two years, it has supported more than 80 startups, made 25 investments and has an active Alumni network of 150+ founders. Axilor invests across the following sectors -Consumer Internet, Enterprise SaaS, Healthcare Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Fintech and Industrial IoT.

The accelerator programme runs twice a year, in March and September. Gopalakrishnan is also an advisor to technology venture capital fund IDG Ventures India and has made co-investments with the VC firm in a number of startups.