Yes. You read the title right, startup Fellowships are like fitness camps.
Fitness camps do not help you fix everything with respect to your fitness in a single camp. They give you great insights into fitness and help you put together a plan that works and one that matches your unique needs and circumstances. Similarly, Fellowships equip startups with the right insights and new perspectives, access to key resources, mentors and domain experts and steer you towards the right direction but they cannot wave a magic wand to fix everything through a single programme. It is, then, about how startups leverage their learnings at the Fellowship to forge ahead.
India’s One-of-a-Kind Fellowship Enabling the Creation of Extraordinary Impact at Scale
Supply Chain Labs by Lumis Partners is the first-ever acceleration programme in India for startups in the supply chain industry. It is the first-ever Fellowship aimed at fuelling the growth of early-stage startups that have high growth potential.
Supply Chain Labs is an acceleration programme with a vision to solve global problems and create extraordinary value at scale to all stakeholders. This is a one-of-a-kind programme in India that is providing the chosen cohort of startups with access to the best in class resources and Lumis Partners’ global networks, a knowledge-building opportunity at MIT Zaragoza in Spain and tailored mentoring and handholding support to sharpen their solutions/ products, develop strategic edges and realize their full potential. The interventions for each startup in the cohort are defined based on deep-dive reviews into each of the startups.
What makes Supply Chain Labs a Unique Fellowship?
Excellent Mentor Connect
Taking the fitness analogy further, mentors are much like fitness coaches – they can guide startups, provide tips and tailored handholding support, hold the mirror to their business, ask the tough questions and push the startup to realize their full potential or get them to take a step back to get their foundation right. It is the responsibility of the startup to put in the effort and work with discipline and diligence to unlock their full potential and accelerate their growth process.
Supply Chain Labs has been providing startups with impactful and tailored mentoring and handholding support to help them change things around. Each startup is provided with access to excellent mentors – CXOs as anchor mentors and a wider network of subject matter experts. The mentors have helped them strengthen the basics of business, focus/ refocus and fine-tune, introspect on the business models or the product itself, shift their approach to a product-focused one, gearing up for the next phase of growth, etc.
“In our experience thus far, we see that quality consistency is one of the key expectations of fruits and vegetables supply chain, which is non-existent in the Mandi system that exists today. Our discussion with our mentor, Mr. Girish Shivani from Yournest, strengthened our belief and validated this with other supply chains as well. Moving to a product-focused approach for select produce that solves for consistency is the approach we’re moving forward with.” – Crofarm
“The one thing that has truly changed is that we have taken out time to introspect on our business based on the sessions from experienced entrepreneurs, domain experts and mentors. This augurs extremely well for us as it allows us to prepare better for our next phase of growth.” – Xpedize
“Being part of the SCL Programme has changed a few things for us but the one most impactful change has been getting our business model refined. Thanks to the amazing mentors that Lumis has connected us with.” – Smartstorey
Learning and knowledge-building
Startups have been provided with ample and highly curated opportunities for learning and knowledge building. Through the academic programme at MIT Zaragoza s, the startups have been exposed to new perspectives and approaches in the supply chain space and an understanding product use cases outside India. Through the carefully curated workshops, sessions, etc. by domain experts, industry leaders and mentors, the startups have been exposed to perspectives from the field and insights on what’s happening in the world.
“One major change happening to us is that we have started learning more about our product use cases outside India and started formulating a go to market strategy for expanding outside the country. With the visit to ZLC and interaction with the professors there, we have been able to understand what are the challenges in SC functions globally, what are the emerging technologies to solve these challenges on a global scale and how we can enhance our product scope to include the same.” – Quifers
“One major change happening to us is that we have started focusing on our solution with a product-driven approach, more than a service-oriented one. Already taken measures and we are on it.
More importantly, academics helped us to understand two things:
a. How SC functions globally
b. How vast is SC as compared to what we are doing” – Elixia
Improved visibility for their solutions/ products in the market
SCL has enabled the cohort of early-stage startups to gain greater visibility in the market. Their products/ solutions have started to gain greater attention and traction.
“I’d say it’s visibility and quality networking. Before SCL, we were focused on getting our product-market fit in place. We never really looked at marketing. But now with SCL, our visibility has improved. We have people reaching out to us on LinkedIn to understand what we do.” – Rezofin
Quality networking
Startups have been provided access to the best-in-class resources in the startup ecosystem and Lumis’ global networks which have been immensely beneficial to them.
“The network has been the biggest change for us. Our plans to go global has come a step closer to reality after meeting the mentors and stakeholders in SCL.” – FreightBro
“It has been quite an experience so far, interacting with folks who are trying to solve similar problems. The mentor sessions were great and the journey to ZLC has given us time to reflect upon what’s happening around the globe in the field of Supply Chain Management. Time to implement and scale!” – Superprocure
Meaningful Corporate and Investor Connects
Wide gaps and inefficiencies exist in the supply chain industry in India. The main reason for this being the lack of awareness among corporates about next-gen, grassroots innovations happening in the supply chain startups in the length and breadth of the country. To effectively bridge these gaps, raise awareness about these innovative solutions among corporate houses and potential in India, Supply Chain Labs organized curated Corporate and Investor Connects.
“Things have changed for us since SCL. And the most important being the visibility that we are getting now! We have had the privilege of showcasing our solutions to corporate leaders and potential investors.” – Odwen
Peer Learning
Contrary to the popular belief that startups are constantly competing with each other and that early-stage startups do not have much to share, we have observed at the Supply Chain Labs that there is a great deal of peer learning happening between our startups. This is mainly because they are all early-stage startups operating in the same domain. It further helps that they all generating revenues with a number of paying clients.
“Plus, through SCL and the various sessions that SCL organizes, we have had the opportunity to network with some of the brightest minds in the startup ecosystem. It’s great when you get personal feedback from people who have been in the same journey as you and have come out on the other side stronger and wiser. We are stoked to see how things proceed from here.” – Rezofin
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