OYO, Byju’s backer Lightspeed launches training programme for entrepreneurs

Venture capital firm Lightspeed India Partners, which counts ed-tech unicorn Byju’s and budget hotel chain OYO among its portfolio companies, has launched a training programme called Extreme Entrepreneurs that aims to give startups exposure to global experts.

Lightspeed said in a statement that business leaders such as Microsoft chairman John Thompson; Jon Steinberg, founder and chief executive of media firm Cheddar Inc; OYO founder Ritesh Agarwal; and Dheeraj Pandey, CEO of cloud computing company Nutanix, will share learnings and insights from their entrepreneurial journey as part of the programme.

Anu Hariharan of startup accelerator Y Combinator and Lightspeed’s Jeremy Liew and Ravi Mhatre will also be part of the panel.

Eight startups will be selected to attend the programme and sessions will be held once a week between September and October at Lightspeed’s Bengaluru office. 

The experts will address the participants, who will then have their processes and ideas scrutinised by Lightspeed’s panel.

“Just quality interaction, quality recreation, quality time, with no cash hand-out, no stake taken, no ‘accelerator’ terms,” said Vaibhav Agrawal, partner at Lightspeed India Partners. 

Earlier this month, Lightspeed India Partners raised its second fund of $175 million (Rs 1,200 crore).

The firm has been making local and cross-border investments since 2004. Last year, Lightspeed opened an office in Bengaluru, its second in India after New Delhi.

Home rental startup FastFox was among its recent investments. Before that, it backed Gurgaon-based micro-lending startup RedCarpetTech Pvt. Ltd, leading a $2.5 million round.

It also backs B2B marketplace Udaan, social networking platform ShareChat and food-tech firm FreshMenu.