New Delhi, Mar 3 (KNN) The Startup Board (TSB) is a digital platform for entrepreneurs and has set a target to support about 5000 startups in a year for the next five years by connecting them with mentors and investors seamlessly.

Co-founded in 2017 by Ashish Jain CEO and Dr Usha Jain COO, TSB is described by its founders as a type of LinkedIn for entrepreneurs wherein the platform is linked to entrepreneurial ecosystem.

It believes in digital first and creating tools and templates that can be used inexpensively online by any startup founder.

In order to address locational disadvantages experienced by startup founders in tier 2-3 cities, the digital tools at TSB are available anytime, everywhere, irrespective of the location.

Speaking with KNN India, Ashish Jain Co-Founder & CEO, at TSB said, "We would do two things to grow our presence– one, accelerate the failure or growth of a venture (i.e. fail fast or succeed fast) and secondly, create technology tools and templates for universal usage by founders to get guidance on their venture.

“This second self-assessment will also kick-in investment opportunities for the deserving and capable ventures,” he added.

Jain’s professional background is highly influenced by the entrepreneurial ecosystem and has worked as an entrepreneur for a decade, managed senior positions in MNCs and worked closely with startups across India and Europe.

Explaining about its crowd souring of solutions, he explained that if a founder is looking for an answer to a challenge, post it on TSB and other founders, mentors or investors can provide the solution.

A BizScore is generated which helps ventures to know their strength and weaknesses, that way there is a path to success that founders can sense through periodic assessments, he added.

At TSB, investors can also filter ready starups from others to pick for their investments.

In view of government initiatives, Jain said that the government is rightfully doing few things such as creation of a framework for Identity (Aadhaar), Payments (UPI) and Data protection (DEPA).

The Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN) is being worked upon for participants in the credit ecosystem can seamlessly connect with one another without needing to build bespoke technology.

He opined that government is conscious of red-tapism in the income tax department, non-voting rights shares to keep the control with founders and marketing support challenges for Indian Start-ups to scale outside India and they will soon bring in some interventions. (KNN/KT)