Got an idea for a startup? This Hyderabad-based firm will help you convert it into a prototype

After graduating from a Tier-I college, Nikhil Polineni (27), realised that there are several students with entrepreneurial spirit who want to experiment and explore their ideas and turn them into a workable model, known as a pilot or a prototype. Blame it on the accessibility of business acumenship or managerial knowledge in engineering colleges, engineers didn’t look like potential entrepreneurs back in 2014.

To streamline this and bring in more visibility and access of business edge among students with great potential ideas, Nikhil Polineni (an industrial engineer with FCA, U.S.A) along with his friend Abhishek Boyanapalli (an industrial engineer with GM, U.S.A), established WTG with a singular mission of accelerating growth for innovative startups.

WTG provides the needed ecosystem with access to seed funds, technology resources, GTM (go-to-market) and financial plan to convert ideas into a prototype or a pilot. In short, WTG positions itself as a fund-as-a-service (FaaS) solution.

While most investors would pitch in at the early-growth stage after looking at the scalability of the plan, WTG would partner with startups at the ideation stage itself, as moulding an idea at the beginning stage would be much better and it can be feasible to build a proper, scalable model.

The evaluation process for an idea starts with assessing the business plan, as most startup ideas lag in documenting a proper plan in place. It helps us analyse the problem statement with solution, market size, target capture with milestones, competitors or alternates and substitutes, tiers of noncustomers, marketing strategy etc. These help us devise a pragmatic approach upwards.

WTG not only defines milestones of startups, but also pitches the scalable plan along with pilot results for next level funding on behalf of the founders or along with the founders. The pool of investors onboarded with WTG will then have the access to these pilot results and would then participate in the next round of funding.

WTG is onboarding brilliant ideas and early stage startups by partnering with most of the incubators, accelerators, co-working spaces in Hyderabad and ideation labs in various Tier-1 & Tier-2 colleges. WTG’s extensive consulting will nurture the business through all stages of critical growth-drawing from expertise and the operational excellence of industry-leading companies.

The primary sectors of Interests are mental health, edu-tech & edu-gaming, digital healthcare, insure-tech, AI-powered marketing technology and other disruptive startup ideas, which serve the current new normal.

WTG also launched a ‘Pitch. Me’ contest, announcing a cash prize and other tangible & intangible perks in early-June that gathered a lot of interest on social media. It has received 12 pitches in just seven days, re- assuring the WTG team about the volumes of people looking for an opportunity to convert their idea to reality. Three startups from the mental health, edu-gaming & in digital health-tech space are currently shortlisted from the contest. All it takes for the founders is to have a big picture of their idea and get onboarded with WTG to kickstart the journey for converting their pilot to a sensible and scalable business.