In keeping with its abiding interest in promoting entrepreneurship, the firm started the Mytrah Corporate Grants Program. The program aims to support select early stage ventures through a variety of inputs including financial grants, advise from the firm’s leadership, and business related referrals where relevant. The program provides Mytrah an opportunity to stay connected with the startup ecosystem and learn about developments in the fields of emerging technologies, data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning. We believe that these learnings will challenge us to keep abreast of emerging trends in today’s fast-paced business world and may also inform our business decisions.

Mytrah aims to develop the Corporate Grants Program into a robust engagement with the startup community. The firm hopes that its efforts will inspire other corporates to initiate similar engagements with early stage companies. This would allow for a large number of startups to benefit from the inputs of corporate partners and would ultimately lead to the development of a more vibrant startup ecosystem in India.

Under this program, grants have been provided to two firms:

• ‘FTCash’ : is developing technology enabled solutions to facilitate financial inclusion of small and medium enterprises. The firm used the grant proceeds to further develop its technology platform, enhance its operational processes and to pilot a loan program for its merchant clients.
• GrabOnRent Internet Private Limited : is building an online marketplace where various household items (furniture, electronic goods, consumer durable products etc.) can be conveniently rented for the short to medium-term. The firm is using mobile and computing tools to address a problem which is very common in urban India but is currently served in a very limited manner by a fragmented base of service providers.