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Mentors and Angels

Startup

Enable the Startup Founder to begin the journey and put together the beginnings of the company.

Scale

Leverage the existing ecosystem to scale the startup

Mentor

Mentor Students and Entrepreneurs to get their ideas focussed and pitch ready for early stage investments.

Advice

Advice the Startup founder on their daily operations and product rollout. Build the Key ingredients to grow.

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💡 Become a Mentor or Angel at IIC

We’re building a trusted network of Mentors and Angel Investors who are passionate about guiding the next generation of innovators.

Whether you’re a seasoned founder, operator, or early-stage investor, your experience can help shape tomorrow’s startups. At IIC, mentorship is more than advice – it’s about building relationships, creating impact, and fueling meaningful innovation.

🔍 Our Vetting Process

  • Application & Profile Review: We look for a minimum of 5 years in tech startups and recent, hands-on experience.
  • Motivation & Alignment: Through your responses, we assess your intent, expertise, and approach to mentorship or investment.
  • Personal Conversation: If selected, we’ll invite you for a quick call to explore mutual fit and answer your questions.

✅ What We Look For

  • Genuine desire to help and give back 
  • Deep expertise in areas relevant to our startups 
  • Active engagement, curiosity, and a collaborative spirit

Note: We prioritize full-time startup operators and founders. Acceptance is selective – around 5–10% – to ensure a high-quality, committed community.

🚀 Ready to Make an Impact?Apply now to become part of a purpose-driven network where your insights, experience, and mentorship truly matter.

Or have questions? Reach out to us at [[email protected]] – we’d love to hear from you.

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Guidelines for Mentors and Trainers

Expectations for Mentors

Dear Mentors,

Thank you for joining Spark Lab as a mentor. Your experience, insights, and encouragement can make all the difference in shaping these early-stage ideas into purposeful ventures. To ensure a smooth and impactful journey for both mentors and participants, we’ve put together a few simple guidelines.

1. Your Role as a Mentor

You will be assigned to 1–2 participant teams based on your domain or business expertise. Your role is to:

  • Offer strategic guidance
  • Help to clarify the tools and frameworks or guide with more case studies
  • Help teams avoid common early-stage pitfalls
  • Provide honest feedback and constructive pushback
  • Encourage them to think deeper, plan sharper, and build smarter
  • Be a sounding board, not a taskmaster

2. Time Commitment

We understand you’re busy. Here’s what we’re requesting:

  • At least One mentorship sessions per week for your assigned team  (virtual) during the program (May–June)
    • Each session may be 45–60 minutes
    • Scheduled based on mutual convenience
  • Optional support during the final pitch week (late June)
  • You are welcome to continue beyond the program if you feel the team has strong potential and you wish to stay involved — purely voluntary

3. Mentorship Process

  • Each team will initiate contact and share their brief prior to the session
  • Use your first meeting to understand the idea, ask questions, and offer strategic direction
  • Teams will log your key feedback after each session, which we’ll use to track progress
  • We will stay in touch in case your availability or team needs shift during the cohort

4. What We Request You to Keep in Mind

  • Respect the journey: These are early-stage ideas. Guide without overwhelming.
  • Keep it practical: Theory helps, but hands-on examples and real-world framing work best.
  • Encourage clarity: Help them sharpen problem statements, metrics, and customer focus.
  • Watch out for overbuilding: Help them stay lean, focused, and test quickly.
  • Be honest, but kind: Balanced feedback builds trust and growth.
  • Flag concerns: If something feels off — team behavior, lack of effort, etc. — let us know discreetly.

5. Mentorship agreement

  • As part of SSSIHL university guidelines, we require to execute a mentorship agreement to formally onboard you as mentor for current and future mentorship opportunities at Incubation center and /or the Sri Sathaya Sai REsearch Innovation Foundation ( a Sec 8 company ) 
  • Helps in mutually managing the intellectual property based discussions with the teams

6. Our Support to You

  • We’ll send you a simple mentor pack before you begin: team brief, program flow, and key dates
  • If you’d like to drop in to any live sessions or demo days, you’re most welcome
  • We’re always here to help coordinate schedules, follow-ups, or anything you need

Thank you once again for sharing your time and expertise with Spark Lab. These students and young innovators are here because they have ideas worth nurturing — and your mentorship could be the spark that makes all the difference.

Warm regards,
 Spark Lab Team
 Institute’s Innovation Council (IIC)
 Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning

Expectations for Trainers

  1. Share detailed one page summary to be shared to all participants and university
  2. Understand the intent of the session from the IIC program team  
  3. Maintaining Time:  Show up on time and stick to your respective session scheduled duration
  4. Moderate the training materials that align with training objective and also with the time: To be shared with the Training Program Leader ( Pavan) 
    1. Make the training material be available at least 2 days before the session scheduled to starts  
    2. (pre-session) Prepare offline reads and related material and case studies for the participants before the session  
    3. (post-session) Make any videos / offline material be available for participants to learn more deeper expanded concepts on their own
    4. Make assignments as per the curriculum planned for the participants
  5. Share the training material before hand for the logistics teams to support in presentation / making it available for participants 
  6. Avoid Contradicting or cause confusion to participants on any training modules that are completed. If there is any issue of understanding of a concept noticed, discus with the concerned trainers and clarify to the participants.
  7. Avoid bringing in any sensitive / controversial / political examples into the training
  8. All the sessions are recorded for making them available offline review and revision by participants
  9. Available on video during the training session
  10. Ensure you have required bandwidth for flawless video based training experience

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SPARKLAB 1.0 - MENTORS 2025

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Sparklab: Startup Incubation Training Program

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