Bengaluru, NFAPost: Asha Jadeja, the influential Silicon Valley-based venture capitalist, is pledging $1M US in seed funding for start-ups in the Indian Institute of Technology Start-ups accelerator program. Previously, Jadeja has invested in over 100 start-ups including high-profile public companies such as Google and PayPal.
Launched in 2018 by Monishi Sanyal, alumni of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, IIT Startups is a unique non-profit accelerator program in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Asha Jadeja, founder of the non-profit Motwani Jadeja Foundation (MJF), is an ongoing sponsor, and has allocated $1M US for direct investment in promising IIT Startups portfolio companies.
The partnership with MJF gives these portfolio companies access to this capital during their fundraising endeavours. As an entrepreneur herself, Asha’s philanthropic work has championed “exponential growth” designed to ignite young entrepreneurs to become disruptive change-makers.
MJF’s Exponential India initiative
MJF Founder Asha Jadeja said this seed fund for IIT Startup Accelerator is part of a larger MJF initiative called Exponential India (EI).
“EI is launching several awareness campaigns within India aimed at supporting economic growth and globalization as well as re-energizing public policy towards foreign investment,” said MJF Founder Asha Jadeja.
IIT Startups provides free mentoring, coaching, and workshops to entrepreneurs to help them scale their companies. All IIT resources are available on the IIT Startups website free of charge. Past IITians have co-founded more than 300 companies like Sun Micro, Google, Juniper Networks, Webex, Cirrus Logic.
Motwani Jadeja Foundation
Asha Jadeja founded the Motwani Jadeja Foundation to develop a network of entrepreneurs in South Asia trained to think and drive exponential change. The foundation supports US – India partnership for disruptive entrepreneurship, gender equality, and inclusive development.
A firm believer in self-sustaining social movements supported by local communities, Asha created and enabled Maker Fest – a grassroots social movement that is now prolific in Africa, India and more recently in Brazil. She created India’s first network of dozens of Fablabs designed to spark just in time manufacturing capabilities in India.
With help from Prof Sugata Mitra, Asha set up India’s first self-supported ‘School in the Cloud’ in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. This has now grown to over 60 locally managed and sustained “schools in the cloud” throughout South Asia. Motwani Jadeja Family Foundation is a 501c3 non-profit Organisation. https://motwanijadejafoundation.com/ Asha is an influential thought leader and speaker at various global events.
