Background/The Need:
With over 50,000 government-recognized start-ups (and counting), the Indian start-up ecosystem has been on an unprecedented growth trajectory. Availability of capital, and thus Venture Capital (VC) firms, are an integral part of this success story. However, the role of a VC is not merely to provide capital. Visionary VC firms also provide a much-needed ingredient to start-ups and founders – Expertise. It is made available to founders throughout their journey in a variety of areas and in the form of professional networks, connections and/or dedicated mentors.

We, at IvyCap, have a unique and structured mentor model that provides execution, scale-up, and exit support to our founders. Our mentor pool has a blend of corporate executives and successful entrepreneurs who have traveled the entrepreneurship path before. Each Portfolio company gets access to mentors who provide dynamic tutoring for execution, scale-up and for helping with Strategy, Coaching, Capacity Building, Domain Expertise, Recruitment and Go-To-Market. Our mentors

Mentor Selection and Assignment Framework:
In our experience, when it comes to on-boarding and then recommending and assigning mentors to start-ups, the following elements come to the fore for VCs to consider. These elements need periodic monitoring to ensure their effectiveness at different stages of the start-up journey.

• Relevance:
  To begin with, it is critical for VCs to evaluate where their portfolio companies and founders need support as business and as individuals respectively. This is usually a consultative approach where VCs work in tandem with founders to finalize the areas where a mentor can add value. Through this approach, VCs also help founders distinguish between short-term business requirements (i.e., consulting) and larger needs (i.e., mentoring) that can propel their start-up to the next phase of growth.

  The next step in the process is for VCs to identify a mentor who fits the bill – from the available mentor pool or from a larger professional network. For IvyCap, besides the existing mentor pool, the Fund has over5,000 IIT and IIM alumni globally to tap into for support.

• Interest:
  This parameter is for a mentor who needs to be onboarded afresh. The VC needs to consult with the potential mentor to understand his/her interest and motivation in being a mentor. For example, the mentors in our mentor pool have a genuine interest in supporting start-ups and their founders as a way to “give back” either to the larger community/vibrant eco-system of entrepreneurs and/or to their alma maters.
• Time:
  Having a relevant mentor who is interested in supporting start-ups is a good beginning. However, in order to be effective, s/he should also be able to devote appropriate time to the start-up/founder s/he is associated with. In our experience, it works well to set the expectations (i.e., time commitment) between mentors and founders at the beginning of the journey.
• Chemistry:
  One of the critical success factors is the chemistry between a mentor and start-up/founder/mentee. The start-up journey can be quite arduous and lonely for founders. Many a time, founders are looking for a sounding board and confidant to hear them out, besides guidance on solving specific business problems. It is important for mentors to be empathetic to collaborate as a team with founders.

Path Forward:
Given the pace of innovation and disruption in the start-up ecosystem, the role of mentors will only grow in the times to come. IvyCap already has quite a few examples of mentor-mentee success stories such as Purplle, Clovia, eShakti, and Lexir to name a few. However, this is just the beginning and we at IvyCap have a lot to look forward to in our quest to take our mentor model to a still higher orbit.