New Delhi: Strengthening its commitment to accelerate the growth of small and medium businesses (SMBs) and entrepreneurship in the country, Facebook has announced the next edition of the VC Brand Incubator Initiative with Surge, Sequoia Capital India’s rapid scale up program. The VC Brand Incubator Initiative was launched in 2019 as an industry-first initiative by Facebook in a bid to accelerate the growth of early-stage SMBs in India by collaborating with Venture Capital funds.
The VC Brand Incubator Initiative is part of Facebook’s vision to build a more conducive environment for SMB growth in the country. Working with venture capital funds is an integral part of this vision as it allows Facebook to scale and support SMBs at an early-stage itself, fast-tracking their growth.
Surge aims to supercharge the early-stage journey for startups, by enabling disproportionate access to capital, talent, network, and decades of company-building knowledge. Surge combines $1 million to $2 million of seed capital with company-building workshops, global immersion trips, and support from a community of exceptional founders
“Surge is building a platform to unlock best-in-class learning for founders across sectors, countries and domains, enabling them to make the right design choices in the early-stages of company-building. With the VC Brand Incubator our aim is to help our brands gain more insights into leveraging the Facebook family of apps for growth”, said Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India LLP
This will be the first edition of the VC Brand Incubator Initiative in 2020, the previous three having been with Sauce.VC, Fireside Ventures, and SAIF Partners. As part of this initiative Facebook has already skilled, trained, and mentored more than 70 brands at various stages of their growth journey across multiple industries.
Commenting on this edition of VC Brand Incubator Initiative with Sequoia Capital, Archana Vohra, Director, Small and Medium Businesses at Facebook India, said, “We know from our experience with 140 million small businesses across the globe that timely skilling and mentorship are critical for young brands to succeed. The knowledge sessions with Surge give us the unique opportunity to work with early-stage SMBs and entrepreneurs to unlock their true potential on digital while also enabling them to drive growth by being conscious of their business RoI.”
Since the inception of the VC Brand Incubator Initiative in June 2019, brands from distinct industries have participated in it. Many of these brands have seen considerable and measurable growth in brand awareness, sales, and profits as a result of the Initiative.
Said Mohit Sadaani, Co-Founder, The Moms Co., which sells toxin-free products for babies, “Facebook and Instagram have been critical to us, enabling us to talk to Moms across India directly, and getting to know their needs better. With Facebook’s support, we have been able to 2x our RoI with our recent Science of Motherhood brand campaign. This has been on the back of recommended best practices for brand and e-commerce advertising. With 0.5 million members in The Moms Co. family, we are just getting started.”
“Facebook family of apps are critical for a D2C brand like mCaffeine. Right from building brand awareness to engagement, we have used Facebook apps to scale mCaffeine. The VC Brand Incubator Initiative helped us incorporate best practices around everything from creatives to funnel optimization. Our scale grew by 200% and RoAS decreased by 40% with the help of the initiative,” added Tarun Sharma, Co-founder, mCaffeine, India’s first Caffeinated Personal Care Brand.
Both The Moms Co and mCaffeine were a part of the last VC Brand Incubator Initiative with SAIF Partners.
SMBs are the backbone of India’s economy. For India to reach its goal of becoming a $5 trillion economy by 2025, small businesses and entrepreneurs need opportunities to grow. There are two ways in which Facebook enables small businesses and entrepreneurs in India. The wide range of Ad solutions that it has makes Facebook the preferred destination for businesses of all sizes to reach their consumer. It also runs a host of programs to build the ecosystem for entrepreneurship, leading to creation of economic opportunities. Facebook is committed to enabling the growth of SMBs and startups in the country, and through initiatives such as the VC Brand Incubator it will continue to contribute to the social and economic good of India.
