The 2021 Scale-Ups Accelerator is an opportunity for early-stage women entrepreneurs to make their start-ups investment-ready. A collaboration between Upaya Social Ventures and MIT D-Lab, the program has been designed with technical training, one-on-one mentorship, and weekly group learning labs to enable women entrepreneurs to comprehensively tackle the investment ecosystem. 

Read on to find out if you and your business qualify for a chance to be a part of this program—which includes the opportunity to receive funding of USD 50,000 from Upaya and participate in MIT D-Lab’s Co-Design Sprint. 

The Accelerator has selection criteria for both the entrepreneur and the organization. We are looking for a female founder or co-founder running a for-profit business in India with a long-term vision of growth in both scale and social impact. We are preferably looking for companies with a founding team made up of all women. The program is intended to build the capacity of full-time women entrepreneurs who are in top decision-making roles and are driving key business functions. If you think you have the drive and are relentless in the face of challenges that are a part of the start-up environment, this program is for you!

The program, which will run over the course of six months, is built in part by its cohort—which is why we are looking for ambitious, collaborative, and creative entrepreneurs who will add to the conversation. This also means that you need to be able to make a time commitment to engage with the program intensely for two-three hours every week. 

The enterprise has to be early-stage, less than five years old, with a validated business model. This means that you should be able to clearly identify your target market, are generating revenue, and show traction in sales (current and potential). While the program is sector agnostic, we hope that the enterprise is unique in the solution or the approach to the solution—be it innovation in the business model, target segments or the product/service itself. 

The focus of the program is investment-readiness training, and, therefore, the business model must show some validation of working on the ground. The business should have ideally raised less than USD 75,000 of institutional funding. This program is a great fit if you are looking to raise funds in the next eight to 12 months. 

Crucially, the business must have a significant focus on livelihood generation for those in extreme poverty. Upaya and MIT D-Lab understand extreme poverty as having an income of less than $1.90 a day. The entrepreneur must be committed to creating dignified jobs with reliable, consistent incomes; the enterprise must project scalability, with the potential to generate 1,000 jobs in seven years. Read more about what we mean by dignified jobs in this blog post.

The 2021 Scale-Ups Accelerator is a unique opportunity for a small cohort of entrepreneurs to come together to share experiences, and in turn, take back a wealth of new insights on how to tackle the investment ecosystem. 

And if you’re still in doubt, Apply! And let our evaluation teams make the call. If you’re really unsure, please write to us at cohort@upayasv.org.

The Round 1 application form is intentionally short because we are cognizant of the value of your time. If you think you qualify for this program, submit your application by November 6.