Hostelfund.com: Catch Them Young
Rakesh Gupta
Indian Institute of Management, Nagpur, Maharashtra, India
Reema Khurana
Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India
Volume 19: 2024, pp. 00-00; ABSTRACT
HostelFund (HF) was founded by Ankur Jain in December 2019 based out of Gurugram
(Haryana, India). It was set-up to support student start-ups through mentoring and helping them get
funding at an early stage. The venture idea was based Ankur Jain’s personal experience as a student
entrepreneur and the challenges he faced during those days. He therefore refined the idea during his
regular interactions with students who were keen to start their entrepreneurial ventures. However,
the mentoring-heavy model and strict filtering mechanism to shortlist the mentees had led to a low
conversion rate - HF turning mentee startups into incubates - thus putting a question mark on the
financial viability of the venture. HF needed to address the issue at the earliest to make the venture
financially viable for all concerned. Ankur was seriously deliberating whether to continue with the
present approach or to look for alternatives.
Keywords: entrepreneurship, students, mentors, venture capitalists.
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