If you find yourself in our offices where the latest Residency is in progress, you will notice that you are surrounded by some of the best minds in the tech and startup ecosystem in the country. Individuals who have built successful companies, scaled some of the most beloved brands, and are all now on the path to building large companies. The energy is infectious and ambition knows no bounds.
At Antler, we help the world’s premier talent build great technology companies at scale from the earliest stage, enabling them to go from 0 to 1 and setting them on a path to building billion-dollar startups. Antler's global community has grown larger, stronger, and more impactful – now including over 1000 portfolio companies, 8,000 founders, 800 advisors with 27 offices worldwide.
Helping over 300 individuals launch companies in India, we have backed startups such as Sangti, Guardians and Covrzy through the Residency. For this cohort, including solo founders and early teams, 9200 founders applied with over 7700 applications. With a high selectivity of 1.4%, over 110 founders joined the Residency to build and launch their companies. Here is a peek into what this cohort looks like. Towards the end of this blog, you will also find the details of all the founders that make this mammoth of a cohort.
Diverse Origins, Unified Objective: Founders from all across the country
At a global level, we firmly believe that exceptional founders can come from anywhere, with any background. Gone are the days when a pedigreed resume was considered necessary and sufficient to build iconic companies. Aside from the usual startup hubs of Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai and the upcoming hubs of Hyderabad, Pune, and Chennai, founders from this cohort of the Residency are also from Kochi, Varanasi, Indore, Jaipur, Rohtak, and Surat to name a few.
Some more stats about this exceptional group of people:
⚡ 11 years of average work experience
🎯 61% have worked in senior roles at a Unicorn or a Fortune500 company
🚀 50% have founded a company before. Globally, founders find the Antler Residency the best place to launch a startup (Read how Neha Juneja, a second-time entrepreneur, launched IndiaP2P), even if you are a repeat entrepreneur.
With the Residency, the aim is to create a truly diverse environment, one that is conducive to deep collaboration and high-intensity company building. The founders from the cohort are not just stellar operators and domain experts but also have varied backgrounds.
Some highlights of their diverse backgrounds:
- A seasoned paragliding pilot who has flown across the lengths of the Himalayas with a recorded flight time of about 500 hours in the past 3 years
- The winner of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Water Award in 2023
- A trained racing driver who raced till Formula 4 in India
- The winner of the World’s biggest education hackathon
- An emergency medicine physician during the COVID pandemic who saved countless lives
- Founders who built the biggest digital revolution in the cattle industry, with over 10 million users
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Building the ideas of the future
The Residency is one of the most talent-dense environments in the country, with each of the founders thinking of big, bold ideas for the future.
Some exciting themes the founders are working on:
- Hard ‘Bharat’ problem statements: From solving for mobility in the country to lending for farmers and supply chain financing for SMBs.
- AI-native startups: AI agents for industry and function-specific use cases and AI infrastructure - for evaluation, deployment, and observability.
- ONDC and reimaging e-commerce: Building the rails (cataloging and retention solutions; reputation mechanisms and financial services on ONDC) for the next era of e-commerce growth.
- Future of healthcare: Assisted living and AI companions for seniors to cancer diagnostics, pharmaceuticals, and sexual health for overlooked demographics.
- New-age consumer companies: From innovation in travel, proptech, and consumer compliance to new avenues of monetization for creators.
Here are all the solo founders who are a part of this Residency:
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The clarity and candidness with which the Antler team shares details makes the experience worthwhile. It is hard to get feedback about building a venture backed business, especially at a stage when the founders don't have co-founders yet. Though the onus of building a startup lies with the founder, an extra helping hand definitely goes a long way in understanding/solving the initial teething issues - Nirnay Bhaskar, Residency Founder.
We believe the Residency is the best platform to launch your business, whether it is validating an idea faster, or completing your founding team. Beyond the structured Residency approach, we strive to be your best Day Zero investor via significant post-investment support towards PMF, generous perks ($1.5M in potential value), and a vast global network.
We are looking for solo founders and early teams committed to building game-changing venture scalable startups. Join Antler to validate your idea, build your team, and access capital to launch and scale your company.
Applications for the cohort starting in June 2024 are now open. Apply here.
