BENGALURU:
Thirty-three bright young students from India, driven by strong ambitions to become entrepreneurs straight from college campuses, took a step forward towards realising their dream as they were hosted by Facebook at its headquarters in Silicon Valley, the Mecca of startups.
The students, part of Bengaluru-based Startup Village Collective (SV.CO), spent a full day this week at the Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Silicon Valley, showcasing their product prototypes and learning invaluable experiences in setting up a startup.
Christine Chia, APAC Director of Product Partnerships at Facebook, welcomed the students along with Facebook India Developer Ecosytem Head Satyajeet Singh. Ms Chia shared inspiring messages about how young students could build world class products and companies by working hard in colleges.
The students, who have been selected from college campuses across India by SV.CO, the world’s first digital incubator for college students, are learning how to select an idea, build a prototype and launch to early customers.
They also toured the Facebook campus and interacted with other members from the social networking giant’s partnerships team across the world.
Satyajeet Singh and Anand Chandrasekharan, who heads partnerships and strategy for Facebook Messenger, provided feedback for the students who showcased the prototypes they had built over the last six months with SV.CO’s digital learning platform.
Workshops on Design and User Experience research conducted by Ms Raman and Ms EmIlia Kathleen showed students how Facebook develops its products — an expertise that would help them to apply similar techniques for their own startups.
“We are fortunate to have discovered SV.CO. I’m an average student from a college most people in India don’t know about and would have never got this opportunity and exposure to the global startup culture at Facebook in Silicon Valley without SV.CO,” said Kunchum Harsha, a student and founder of Imux.
Sanjay Vijayakumar, Chairman, SV.CO, said the mission at Startup Village Collective is to build a world class learning platform for students. “The partnership with Facebook offers an opportunity to students to have exposure early in their life to a diverse global culture and world class startup ecosystem that leads to building top-flight companies,” he added.
Lakshman Kakkirala, co-Founder of Little Eye Labs, the first Indian startup to be acquired by Facebook, shared his journey with the students who would be spending four more days in Silicon Valley meeting other companies like offices of Google, Intel, Silicon Valley Bank, Freshworks, Zendesk and Bootup Ventures.
The students were sent to Silicon valley under a flagship #StartInCollege programme instituted by SV.CO in partnership with Facebook.
SV.CO’s startup program for first-time founders is supported by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, the US Embassy in India and has multiple state partners giving support to their respective students. Startup industry leaders Paytm and Freshworks are on board as partners providing scholarships and mentoring to students.
SV.CO’s next admission cycle is set to begin in July with a nationwide #StartinCollege campaign Season 2.
