pn GSF Founders Academy

GSF Founders Academy

Applications for the Summer 2024 Cohort are now open!

GSF Founders Academy is a startup program designed for budding founders to validate their business proposition and take their startup to the next level by facilitating access to high quality coaching, seasoned mentors, and peer learning cohorts.

Whether you are an aspiring founder or have already started a company, GSF Founders Academy is a powerful vehicle that will help you develop and explore business ideas in a like-minded environment.

With this program, our mission is to create a supportive community for founders, to provide access to leading tech entrepreneurs and industry professionals, and to help budding founders validate their business.

APPLY NOW FOR GSF Founders Academy S24

About GSF Founders Academy

GSF Founders Academy Summer 2024

Meet our Mentors

  • Rajan Anandan
    Managing Director, Peak XV Partners
  • Rajesh Sawhney
    Founder, GSF Accelerator
  • Vivek Prakash
    Co-Founder, Codingal
  • Alok Goyal
    Partner, Stellaris Venture Partners
  • Shanti Mohan
    Co-founder, Lets Venture
  • Deepak Anchala
    Founder, Slintel
  • Roshan Abbas
    Founder, Kommune India
  • Brij Bhasin General
    Partner, Rebright Partners
  • Roma Priya
    Founder, Burgeon Law
  • Deepak Abbot
    Co-Founder, Indiagold
  • Pratik Poddar
    Partner, Nexus Venture Partners
  • Kumar Rangarajan
    Co-Founder, Slang Labs
  • Devashish Sharma
    Product & Growth Lead, Applyboard
  • Sumit Jain
    CTO, Zalora Group
  • Nasr Khan
    Co-Founder, LaunchPod Labs
  • Khadim Batti
    Co-Founder, Whatfix
  • Amit Singal
    General Partner, Fluid VC
  • Amarjit Batra
    Managing Director, Spotify India
  • Anup Jain
    Ex- Managing Partner, Early Stage VC
  • Chinmaya Saxena
    Venture Partner, BEENEXT
Apply to GSF Founders Academy S24

What We Offer

Actionable business insights: Participants can get business-specific insights from founders in their peer circle and from experts during the mentoring sessions. GSF will facilitate an open forum where you can share tips on how you’ve grown your startup, discuss program curriculum, bounce off new ideas, validate strategies, discuss problems, and get feedback.

Community of founders: Meet other founders who are in similar stages of their startup journeys. As part of a high energy and diverse cohort of other smart founders you can get to learn from each other’s experiences, startup stories, and challenges. You may even find your co-founder(s) during these 3 months.

Networks: Build relationships with potential investors, mentors, customers, and fellow founders. In addition to an investor demo day, we host an alumni demo day where GSF portfolio companies help founders in the academy to think through key pitch elements and provide advice on business plans.

Benefits: Pitch to 500+ investors on Demo Day. Exclusive access to all future GSF events and business credits worth $20K+ from our program partners

  • 200+ Founders participated in the cohort from more than 150 startups.
  • 40+ seasoned mentors (Investors & Founders).
  • In depth sessions by mentors on various sectors.
  • Asia's No.1 Demo Day with 500+ investors.

Workshop Name Speaker
Building an A team and company culture Kumar Rangarajan (Slang Labs)
Storytelling Roshan Abbas (Kommune India)
Fundraising Vivek Prakash (Codingal)
How to Design your Startup for Growth Devashish Sharma (Applyboard)
Hacking Growth in the Early Stages Deepak Abbot (Indiagold)
Achieving Product/Market Fit Pratik Poddar (Nexus Venture Parteners)
Building global B2B startups from India Khadim Batt (Whatfix)
Building a marketplace Amarjit Batra (Spotify India)
Understanding term sheet & SSHAs Roma Priya (Burgeon Law)
Raising the first round of funding Shanti Mohan (Lets Venture)

  • GrowAgro owes a great deal of gratitude to the GSF cohort. With their invaluable guidance and mentorship, we successfully raised our pre-seed round and gained invaluable insights into building a strong foundation for our startup. The structured approach and continuous support from GSF has been instrumental in shaping our growth trajectory. We look forward to the exciting journey ahead as we continue to thrive under their mentorship.
    Harish Phalswal Co-Founder, GrowAgro (Funded by GSF)

  • GSF Founders Academy is the best startup ecosystem builder for anyone who is looking to start or grow their startup. The program is timely and covers all aspects of entrepreneurship, from ideation, PMF, building for global customers to fundraising. The mentors are experienced and knowledgeable. I learned a lot from the program. APPEQ.ai was able to close the initial pre-seed round from GSF and the amazing set of investors network. What stands out is that GSF does not ask for equity for the program and yet provides more value in terms of networking events. What makes it even more amazing is the team.
    Manoranjan Ingudam Co-Founder, AppEQ (Funded by GSF)

  • GSF has been a mentor and investor for us. Now we have a good product market fit and good traction. Our product is infrastructure for the emerging MSME sector, providing fintech solutions for them. Each and every step that we took was within a consultation with Rajesh and GSF team, and they have been a mentor and an investor for us. The Demo day was pretty good, we got meeting opportunities from Sequoia Capital, Elevation Capital, Let’s Venture, and O2. GSF introduced us to our 5th investor that is Powerhouse Venture. All of these meetings are going into IC meetings and hopefully, we will sum up. We strongly recommend GSF Founders Academy for your future endeavor.
    Fayyaz Hussain Co-Founder, MoneyyApp


Learn more about GSF Founders Academy Summer 2024 here

GSF Founders Academy FAQs

GSF Founders Academy Summer 2024 will take place from April to June 2024. The duration of the program is 10 weeks.
GSF Founders Academy is a 70-day program for entrepreneurs building from India and South East Asia. We bring together leaders (founders, VCs, and CxOs) from across the startup ecosystem to give sessions on company-building fundamentals, past startup experiences, and sector-specific learnings. Along with this, community learning is an integral part of the Academy where we will facilitate weekly interactions and group activities among peer founders. This is not an accelerator program – there is no equity stake, no terms and conditions.
This is a 10 week program. Every week we will have two mentoring sessions on weekdays and one community engagement ‘Circle 8’ session on Saturdays. Sessions are 1.5 hours long and take place in the evenings between 5-7pm.
Applications are now open. We are carefully reviewing applications from founding teams across India and South East Asia. Startups invited to participate will be announced on a rolling basis.
Please apply here.
India Founders:
INR 20,000 per founder.
INR 15,000 for a woman founder
INR 10,000 for a student founder
INR 30,000 for 2 co-founders.

South East Asia Founders: $250 per founder (discounts available for women, students and 2 co-founders)

All fees are due before the start of the Academy. There is no equity stake and no terms and conditions.
The GSF Founders Academy is open for all, no matter where you are in the entrepreneurship journey. A founder with intriguing startup ideas scribbled on paper is just as much of a fit as a company with early PMF and a handful of paying customers.
- Invite-only masterclasses from leading founders, VCs, and CxOs
- Engagement with a peer community of exceptional founders
- Access to the GSF team for 9 weeks and beyond
Absolutely, community interactions and peer learning are the cornerstone of the Academy. We will have weekly sessions where you will be collaborating with other entrepreneurs on various business-building exercises. These sessions will take place in groups of eight called ‘Circle 8’, and founders will tackle various company specific challenges like GTM, market research, pricing, fundraising, hiring, etc.
We feel amazing founders sometimes don’t have access to equally exceptional talent and mentorship. GSF aims to democratize this and create a more supportive environment that enables others to succeed. The Academy also gives us a chance to work with founders early in their entrepreneurial path and potentially invest in the company later.
No, the GSF Founders Academy is an online program.
Yes, you will get an opportunity to present your startup to GSF. At the end of the program, we hold an online demo day where we have 500+ investors across the board - prominent angels, VCs, and corporates.
APPLY NOW FOR GSF Founders Academy S24
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Program Sponsor
Ecosystem Partners
VC Partners
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Campus Partners