Infosys co-founders start new venture to promote start-ups

Infosys' co-founders, S D Shibulal and S Gopalakrishnan, on Tuesday launched Axilor Ventures, a business incubator and platform for supporting innovation and entrepreneurship.

The founding team of Axilor Ventures includes Shibulal and Gopalakrishnan along with Srinath Batni, Prof. Tarun Khanna and Ganapathy Venugopal, the company said in a statement.

For the selected start-ups, the founders will co-invest through their individual funds. The quantum of investment will range from Rs 30 lakh ($50,000) in the accelerator programme to Rs 6 crore ($1 million) for early stage companies, it said.

Ganapathy Venugopal, former head of Strategy & Planning at Infosys, has been appointed as the Chief Executive Officer at Axilor and will spearhead the venture.

While Shibulal and Batni stepped down from Infosys board in July, Gopalakrishnan left as Non-Executive Vice Chairman of the company in October.

Another founding member of the venture, Prof. Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at the Harvard Business School and Director of the South Asia Institute at Harvard University.

Axilor Ventures is a business incubator set up to improve the odds of success of entrepreneurs and early stage companies.

It aims at energising the start-up ecosystem in the country by incubating ventures operating in the e-commerce, healthcare, life-sciences, sustainability and clean technology space, the statement said.

Axilor will focus on scalable, disruptive and technology-led business ideas from budding entrepreneurs and experienced professionals with entrepreneurial aspirations.

In its initial stage, the venture will run three programmes - Accelerator, Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Early Stage Funding.

Besides helping entrepreneurs and early stage companies with funding, it will assist them in other areas critical for success. These include infrastructure, mentorship, market access and talent, it said.

Through its programmes, Axilor aims to build a platform for innovation and entrepreneurship that will benefit entrepreneurs.

While, through its partnerships, it will help entrepreneurs connect with innovation ecosystems outside India.

The infrastructure to house the programmes is coming up in J P Nagar in South Bangalore. The first batch of the accelerator programme is scheduled to commence in the first quarter of 2015, it added.