SPJIMR receives Rs 10 Crore commitment from alumnus Sunil Bhatia to fuel innovation and startup initiatives

With a global career that includes senior roles at Accenture and IBM, Bhatia is most recognised for his recent leadership of Silicon Valley-based Infogain, a Global 50 engineering services provider, where he drove a tenfold valuation growth in five years.

Bhatia’s commitment will contribute to the national mission of promoting entrepreneurship through the Sunil Bhatia Start-up Hub located at SPJIMR’s Mumbai campus. The Sunil Bhatia Start-up Hub will fund educational and networking activities that support entrepreneurship at three levels: pre-incubation, incubation, and acceleration.

Pre-Incubation:
The Hub will offer networking opportunities, boot camps, workshops, masterclasses, contests, and micro-grants to first-time entrepreneurs, with the goal of identifying and connecting the most promising startups to the appropriate incubators from the Hub’s network of high-quality incubators across the country. Hub events for entrepreneurs will be conducted in-person in key cities, and also online.

Incubation:

The Hub will act as a quality feeder of early start-ups to India’s incubator network. The Hub will also provide educational programming to start-ups housed in partner incubators, and will help promising start-ups to graduate from the incubator to domain-specific accelerators, such as SPJIMR’s FinNovate Accelerator for FinTech and TechFin.Acceleration:
The Hub will support the start-ups selected into SPJIMR’s FinNovate Accelerator with customised educational programming, and by also funding them alongside the FinNovate Accelerator’s other institutional early-stage investors, on graduation from the Accelerator. FinNovate is SPJIMR’s recently-launched equity-free accelerator for FinTech and TechFin start-ups, with a partner network of prominent companies from the BFSI sector, and a distinguished “C” level mentor network.

Deepak Parekh, Chairman of the Governing Council of SPJIMR said in a statement: “Supporting the startup ecosystem is crucial for fostering innovation and driving economic growth. Sunil Bhatia’s generous commitment to SPJIMR will make a significant difference in creating an enabling environment for budding entrepreneurs.”

“I am truly excited to be part of SPJIMR’s journey in fostering entrepreneurship through the Sunil Bhatia Start-up Hub,” shared Bhatia. “I am confident that the Hub will serve as a catalyst for transformative change, propelling the next generation of disruptors to reach new heights of success. This grant signifies my dedication to creating an ecosystem that empowers aspiring entrepreneurs, fuels innovation, and enables their growth.”