Two days back, I was having this interesting conversation with one of my close friends. It was about the purpose of an incubator for startups. With the entrepreneur zeal increasingly growing in India, the surrounding ecosystem is also getting developed. Many institutions, foundations and trusts etc. are coming forward to set up incubators to provide critical support to the startup companies.
My friend summarized the purpose of the incubator very well: “The incubator should ideally be formed with a purpose to reduce the overall cost of starting/doing business”. Quite insightful! Indeed, in India especially, companies face a lot of problems with regard to strategy, marketing, finance, HR administration, taxes, policies, laws and each one of them has a unique mentoring requirement. Incubators can provide some of the common resources like office space, infrastructure, HR/finance/legal support etc. along with company specific mentoring from industry contacts and investment avenues. All this goes towards reducing the cost of doing business and in a startup context, lessen the cost of failing.