Google Launches Startup School India initiative across small cities
On July 6, 2022, Google unveiled Startup School India, an effort that intends to organise gathered knowledge into a systematic curriculum to help entrepreneurs in small cities overcome numerous problems.
Google expects the initiative to assist 10,000 entrepreneurs in tier 2 and tier 3 locations (smaller cities).
The nine-week virtual programme will feature fireside discussions with Google leaders and partners from throughout the startup ecosystem, including fintech, business-to-business and business-to-consumer e-commerce, language, social media and networking, job search and others.
The curriculum will include instructional modules on topics such as developing an effective product strategy, delving into product user value, developing apps for the next billion users in places such as India, and driving user acquisition, among others.
With approximately 70,000 firms, India is the world’s third-largest startup base. As more Indian founders successfully take their firms to IPOs or unicorn status, it has triggered a virtuous cycle in which their success stories have spurred ambitions among young Indians throughout the country.
Promising companies are no longer limited to big cities such as Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, or Hyderabad, but are now sprouting in Jaipur, Indore, Gorakhpur, and other locales.
In fact, these constitute roughly half of all recognised startups in India at the moment.
However, according to Google, 90 per cent of all businesses fail within the first five years, primarily due to the same fundamental reasons– uncontrolled financial burn, faulty demand estimation, inadequate feedback loops, or a lack of leadership.
This deficit is recognised in the current effort, which recognises the need for programmes to organise acquired knowledge into a structured curriculum and offer it across a broad footprint.
“Startup School India – a Google for Startups programme aims to do just that as we coordinate our efforts to help this expansion,” the company noted.
According to Google, Indian entrepreneurs have amassed a lot of institutional knowledge, with information sharing serving as a defining characteristic of the community, allowing others to learn quicker, avoid recognised mistakes, and adopt helpful growth tricks.
“Aimed at early-stage creators with a minimal viable product,” the weblog wrote, “the programme gives the flexibility of a virtual curriculum and allows attendees to pick and choose the sessions they’d want to tune in for.”
There will also be opportunities for founders to acquire insights from talks about what makes a good founder, how to formalise recruiting, and other important topics.
