In May, when Sathish Balakrishnan wanted to hire a few people for a short period to execute some projects for his start-up, he thought it would be difficult, considering his company was bootstrapped and the need was only temporary.

Jumadi Online Services Pvt.
Ltd, which Balakrishnan co- founded, is an online shopping portal for books, music CDs, DVDs and lifestyle gadgets.

However, by posting his need on Twenty19.com, a por- tal which helps connect stu- dents to start-ups for intern- ships, he got exactly what he wanted.

“We got a good response from there and hired students from engineering colleges to do algorithms and graphic de- sign for us,“ says Chennai- based Karthikeyan Vijayaku- mar, founder of Twenty19.

Similarly, about two years ago, when Saurabh Jain, chief executive, Spire Technologies and Solutions Pvt. Ltd, realized his firm would need to file a patent for one of its products, he didn't quite know how to go about it. Spire is a software technology firm that develops products to help companies in talent analytics and intelli- gence enterprise capability management.

He approached Brain League IP Services Pvt. Ltd, which handheld the company through the process and helped manage it as well. “We just went up to them and told them this is our business mod- el and they told us exactly what was needed and made it sim- ple for us,“ says Jain. “If we had to go to any other professional, we would have to know what was needed first.“ Also, the fee would have been higher.

In the past two years, several products and services have cropped up that cater specifi- cally to start-ups. “There is a market for these type of com- panies,“ says Sandeep Singhal, co-founder, Nexus Venture Partners, a Mumbai-based venture capital firm. “One of our portfolio companies has taken similar help from a cor- porate branding designer which caters to start-ups,“ says Singhal.

“We were keen on working with start-ups,“ says Vijayaku- mar. Before starting Twenty19 in November, he was part of National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN), a non-profit initiative that supports entre- preneurs. The idea for starting Twenty19 came during NEN events at colleges, where he saw a lot of interest among stu- dents for start-ups.

Many of these firms provide services to big companies but, considering the huge pool of start-ups, provide them to en- trepreneurs at subsidized costs. A case in point being Brain League, which also ca- ters to corporate entities.
There are other models too.

“While some start-ups can make part payments, others can't, so we take a small equity stake which later gets diluted when the start-up is in a posi- tion to pay us,“ says Kalyan C.
Kankanala, chief knowledge officer, Brain League.

Gurgaon-based EntrAct Consulting is another firm set up recently to provide consult- ing services to start-ups. The services it provides include helping start-ups to find cus- tomers, fine-tune their ideas, get them connected to mentors and experts and basically guide them every step of the way. “We have come across entrepreneurs who are sitting on gold mines but are either not aware of it or don't know how to go about it,“ says Ro- han Rehani, co-founder En- trAct.

While corporate entities can afford the Bains and McKin- seys of the world and don't have to worry about the fee, start-ups need more attention at lower cost. “The idea is to have a personalized approach and make start-ups under- stand that you are in for the long haul,“ says Rehani.

According to venture capital investors, such services could help improve the quality of start-ups and enable them to get early stage funding, an area which has witnessed low ven- ture capital investment.

In 2009, early stage invest- ments (deals less than $5 mil- lion, or Rs23.05 crore) de- clined to 78 deals worth $185 million from 96 deals worth $236 million in 2008. As of 6 August, there have been 32 deals worth $91 million this year.

However, start-ups need to exercise caution. “Sometimes when these service providers take an equity stake in lieu of cash, they end up holding a significant position,“ cautions Singhal. “I have seen situa- tions where they end up hold- ing 30-40% stake.“