Google India to guide 10K startups in tier 2 & 3 cities

Google India on Wednesday announced the launch of Startup School to guide 10,000 startups in tier II & III cities in the country.

Startup School is a series of guided online trainings designed to equip early-stage startup founders with the tools, products, and knowledge that growing companies need.

The curriculum will feature instructional modules on subjects like shaping an effective product strategy, deep dives on product user value, roadmapping and product requirements document development, building apps for next billion users in markets like India, driving user acquisition and many more.

The nine-week programme will also feature fireside chats between Google leaders and trailblazing collaborators from across the startup ecosystem spanning fintech, D2C, B2B and B2C e-commerce, language, social media and networking, and job search.

"There will also be opportunities for founders to gain orthogonal insights from discussions around what makes an effective founder, formalising hiring and more," Karthik Padmanabhan, Developer Relations Program Manager Lead and Aditya Swamy, Director - Play Partnerships, wrote in a blogpost.

With close to 70,000 startups, India is the third largest birthing ground for startups in the world. And as more Indian founders lead their companies successfully to IPOs or unicorn status, it has set off a virtuous cycle wherein their success has ignited aspirations among young Indians across the length and breadth of the country.

Startups are no longer restricted to Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai or Hyderabad. India has multitudes of fast-growing startups headquartered in centres such as Jaipur, Indore, Gorakhpur and more.

But, "these account for nearly 50 per cent of all recognised startups in the country. About 90 per cent of all startups fail within the first five years of their journey -- mostly for the same key reasons -- unmanaged cash burn, flawed demand assessment, ineffective feedback loops or lack of leadership," the blogpost read.

"There is a need for programmes which can organise this knowledge into a structured curriculum and deliver it across a wide footprint. Startup School India -- a Google for Startups initiative is designed to do precisely that as we align our efforts to support this expansion," it added.