Facebook ties up with VC fund Stellaris Venture to scale young businesses

Strengthening its commitment to accelerate the growth of small and medium businesses in the country, Facebook has announced its tie-up with the VC fund Stellaris Venture Partners to scale young businesses by providing them with timely digital skilling support. 

The partnership is a part of Facebook’s VC Brand Incubator Program, which is an industry-first initiative for building the ecosystem for SMB growth in the country, along with leading venture capital funds, and providing young businesses with timely business skilling and customised training to improve key profitability levers such as new customer acquisition, reach, and brand engagement. 

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The partnership with Stellaris Venture Partners marks the completion of a two-year milestone of the VC Brand Incubator Program. In just a span of 24 months since its inception, Facebook has tied up with nine VC funds and has successfully skilled, trained, and mentored more than 200 small businesses at various stages of their growth journey. Prior to the partnership with Stellaris Venture Partners, Facebook has partnered with Sauce.vc, Fireside Ventures, Elevation Capital [SAIF Partners], Surge [Sequoia], DSG Consumer Partners, Matrix Partners, Anthill Ventures, and Kae Capital for the program.

Talking about the VC Brand Incubator Program, and the latest partnership with Stellaris Venture Partners, Archana Vohra, Director, Small and Medium Businesses at Facebook India, said, “We know that timely skilling can unlock multiple growth opportunities for small businesses that are the backbone of India’s economy. As business after business moves online in current times, the need for timely digital up-skilling becomes even more urgent to drive their recovery and growth. Facebook is committed to the economic recovery of India, and as we mark the two years’ milestone for the program, we are delighted to partner with Stellaris Venture Partners to help early stage SMBs to unleash their true potential to grow and scale their business.” 

Stellaris Venture Partners is an early stage, technology-focused venture capital firm working with SMBs such as Boldcare, Beepkart, CredFlow, Propelld, Whatfix and many more. Their investment focus areas include global software companies with an India advantage, as well as tech businesses solving India-specific problems.

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Rahul Chowdari, Partner/ Co-Founder, Stellaris Venture Partners, commented, “Stellaris is committed to providing platforms to founders that help them build world-class companies and our partnership with Facebook is another step in that direction. Start-ups and small businesses are going to be the key drivers of growth and employment in the future and programs like the VC Brand Incubator will go a long way to boost the start-ups and small businesses ecosystem in the country. The VC Brand Incubator helps entrepreneurs to understand the Facebook ecosystem better and avoid common mistakes.”

The latest edition of the VC brand Incubator program is focussed on health & wellness, e-Commerce and CPG, closely followed by a mix of fintech, education and transport businesses. 

Arpit Mehta, Founder, AllRound Club, said, “Facebook and Instagram are critical platforms for AllRound. With the brand incubator sessions with Facebook experts, we hope to learn the recommended best practices and increase our ROI and scale faster.”

Karishma Bhalla, Founder, Foodstrong, added here, “Facebook’s family of apps gives us direct access to customers. We use Facebook and Instagram to understand customer needs and engage with them directly. We hope to interact with Facebook leaders and understand the nuances of winning with the help of these new-age mediums. This will help us to be more efficient and scale faster to achieve our business objectives.”

A key trend observed is how businesses such as VOGO, BeepKart, Ayu Health, MFine, Credflow, Reevoy, SwifLearn and many more (over 50% of the cohort) are using Whatsapp for their business conversations. The economic disruption as a result of COVID-19 has been very rampant on small businesses and WhatsApp can play a big role in helping these small businesses connect and engage with their customers.

Facebook has many industry-leading digital resources and tools for advertisers, and in light of the ongoing pandemic, the company has further strengthened its digital skilling agenda to support SMBs. During the pandemic, the VC Brand Incubator program has evolved into a two-day virtual event from a one day physical workshop.