Yuvam seeks to boost teenage entrepreneurship

YUVAM, a fund for teenage entrepreneurs, started by a Chennai student himself last year, has managed to raise $1,00,000, or Rs 75 lakh, till date, to boost entrepreneurship in the 1319 age group.

It has already evaluated and identified five viable projects by teenagers, two each in the US and India and one in Indonesia out of the top 50 projects shortlisted for their business viability. Yuvam had received over 100 projects for entrepreneurship from teenagers.

"We have already raised $1,00,000 in the first round from angel investors from India and Singapore and plan to raise it to $5,00,000, or Rs 3.50 crore, by September 2020,” Hiteshwar Kochhar, Chief Collaborator at Yuvam and an MBA from ISBHyderabad told Financial Chronicle.

Yuvam’s focus is to bring about change and help build a better world for our collective future, he said.

Kochhar said the investment size in these entrepreneurship projects will range from $10,000-$30,000, or Rs 7 lakh-Rs 21 lakh, for seed stage equity investments and $5,000-$10,000, or Rs 3.50 lakh- Rs 7 lakh, for one-time grants.

“The corpus fund look at investing in will ideas across India, US and Indonesia and the first cohort will include at least one beneficiary from each country,” he pointed out.

According to Kochhar Yuvam aims to be a catalyst in building a movement by investing in the mission to support teenage social entrepreneurs across the globe.

“We are doing this through an impact investment fund exclusively for teenage social entrepreneurs,” he said.

He said Yuvam is hoping to get eminent industrialists Ratan Tata and Anand Mahindtra, investors in start-ups to boost teenage

Pranav Unni entrepreneurs in innovative journey.

Yuvam has partnered with organisations such as Ashoka, a Washingtonbased international organization promoting social entrepreneurship and Three Dot Dash, a New York-based global social entrepreneur incubator and accelerator. Both are engaged in global networking to identify and support teenage changemakers and entrepreneurs to make an extraordinary impact.

Pranav Unni, a 12 grade student from Chennai, founded Yuvam after successfully publishing a paper on how to stop spread of water-borne diseases in the neighborhood, using technology and mathematical model. their