Startup incubator Venture Catalysts has made the primary close of its accelerator fund 9Unicorns at Rs 100 crore.Modelled at the strains of Silicon Valley’s influential startup accelerator Y Combinator, the fund has a goal corpus of Rs 300 crore.

It plans to spend money on over 100 early-stage startups, with the aim of writing the first external cheque.Venture Catalysts has in the past sponsored startups which includes BharatPe, Beardo, PeeSafe and Fynd.9Unicorns will offer $100,000 for 5-7% equity per startup, along side a focussed three-month mentorship programme.

Shortlisted startups might then be eligible for a follow-on round of $500,000 to $2 million funded through a syndicate of VCats Network and international VC funds.

“We are witnessing a surge in startups who are focused on solving Indian and global problems born out of various parts of India,” Apoorva Sharma, accomplice at 9Unicorns, instructed ET.In a highly competitive early-stage ecosystem, Sharma says the important thing differentiator for the accelerator lies in its sizeable network of over 4,000 buyers, founders and executives spread throughout smaller cities and cities, allowing startups to get early clients and forge distribution partnerships.

“Some investors might open franchises for the startup, a few can offer infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities, a few get involved in financial/insurance product distributions, many become vendors of FMCG products,” stated Sharma.

As the Indian startup ecosystem matures, a brand new set of budget that concentrate on startups at ideation to pre-product stage are cropping up to tap this market. These consist of Better Capital, GrowX Ventures, Whiteboard Capital, 100X and First Cheque.

They generally make investments between $100,000 and $200,000, below early-stage venture capital firms but as the first institutional cheques in early-stage startups.However, this degree of funding has additionally been a concern section for huge VC funds such as Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed India and Accel.