About Us - Lemon Ideas

Founder's Message

Welcome to Lemon Ideas!

Since 2013, it has been a journey of madness, passion and a single driving thought of converting the huge potential of ideas, talent and aspirations into a meaningful outcome in the form of innovations, ventures and job creation opportunities. We are among very few truly entrepreneurial ecosystems for entrepreneurship development and startups support in the form of being financially viable in generating our own fuel and preaching lessons of entrepreneurship to others based on our own experience, challenges & learnings at Lemon.

Over the years we had all good, bad, ugly experiences and experimentation outcomes which have given shape to a much evolved, transformed & matured form of organization. Whether it is launching a non-conventional education academy or creating a platform for challenges, contests or building frameworks, pedagogies of learning models or spinning off a focused accelerator, Efforts at LEMON have challenged the status quo, push the agenda of innovation and do what is said. It has certainly been a journey of reflections and purpose towards a better & sustainable world. Nurturing Job creators (entrepreneurs) also propel the vision of making India a Self-reliant country and we are glad to be part of it.

Today, Lemon is an enabling & self-sustaining ecosystem for the creation, nurture and growth of entrepreneurial ventures through various initiatives propelling innovation, self-reliance and job creation for Bharat. A major contribution of Lemon includes awareness building, training, mentoring as well as venture creation & acceleration. Lemon ideas deeply engages selective cohort of ventures every year for acceleration driven by conscious business principles with a major focus on the Education & Sustainability domain.

I thank all entrepreneurs, startup founders, innovators & change-makers who have been part of Journey at LEMON and have added to our learnings & experiences. We feel blessed to have been able to make a small contribution to their journey. Lemon has been a story of co-creation and all mentors, trainers, partners, team members & advisors have contributed to arrive at where we stand today. I thank all for their support & wishes during this adventurous ride of ups & downs. Welcome to Lemon and experience the magic of co-creation.

Jai ho!
Deepak Menaria

Lemon Journey

2013

Lemon Ideas launched

2014

Innopreneurs launched

2015

Lemon School of Entrepreneurship launched

2016

Lemon Gurukul and first LSE cohort launched

2017

Startup recognition by Govt. of India

2018

Entrepreneur in Residence Program launched

2019

Lemonade Stand Workshop for kids launched

2020

Pivoted from offline to online and went Regional to National

2021

National To International

2022

Launch of Community Initiative

LEMON IDEAS

A strong youth force is a country’s greatest asset. And luckily, India is known to have quite a huge number to leverage it for igniting bright minds and boosting innovation. The concern of unemployment can be tackled if as a nation we start focusing on producing jobs rather than merely applying for jobs. So we need to have jobs and ‘Who will create jobs?’ was a question that we thought about and that needs to be answered. Nothing could be better than our own youth creating jobs for many while they hone up their innovative skills and creativity.

The major missing component here to showcase the innovation was the lack of proper guidance and encouragement. So there were a few seeding thoughts that went into a kind of a mixer and the mixing element finally came out as Lemon Ideas. The need of the hour is to channelize the energy of people in a meaningful direction. Carving a path out for innovations out of conventional business models and churning out fresh ideas from young minds were amongst the major challenges that demanded positive re-orientation in the ways people are trained or the way they are educated. So, Lemon Ideas came into existence to rethink the solutions of the mentioned challenges. We took our baby steps into the unseeming world of innovations, training workshops and shaping mere ideas into successful ventures. We constantly strived towards helping people pursue their ideas and innovations. So a year apart, we slowly gained recognition as start-up and venture space from a pure innovation space.

Lemon Ideas is on a mission “Innovation by Everyone” and is striving towards empowering talented individuals to convert their ideas into Reality (Business Ventures). With hundreds of ventures being incubated-mentored & supported, and thousands of entrepreneurs nurtured & trained, Lemon Ideas has become a known name in the startup and entrepreneurship ecosystem over the years. At Lemon Ideas, we believe and follow a unique pedagogy and experimentation approach for real-life entrepreneurs. Lemon offers acceleration and various mentoring programs for startups and seasoned entrepreneurs with innovation and technology as key drivers. Lemon is on a mission to ignite, nurture and support 10K innovators, entrepreneurs and change makers in 10 years of contribution with a greater focus on building the ecosystem in tier 2 and 3 cities.

We went for a profit model, where the idea was to make everyone a stakeholder in the complete co-creation effort, trainers & team members were stakeholders in the entire organization and the spirit was clear to co-create it.

LEMON SCHOOL OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP

The predominant rigidity in our conventional education system made our heads scratch for a personal space that had the freedom for our experiments, developing our own pedagogies and executing things based on our beliefs. And that is how the Lemon School of Entrepreneurship happened in 2015. It followed an unconventional design model and was driven by our beliefs of ideal learning and training.

We staunchly believed that the ultimate learning is a product of self- realization, self -reflection and insight development. Lemon School of Entrepreneurship (LSE) is a unique new age Gurukul with a vision to support, mentor and train budding as well as early stage entrepreneurs. The pedagogy is learning by doing, learning through reflections and real life experimentation.

LSE is neither affiliated to any University / Governing Body nor provides any recognized degree or diploma. We believe that creation of a work portfolio through experiential learning and pre-incubation training is vital for entrepreneurship. We offer entrepreneurship training programs and business training workshops. We also work with colleges and universities to build a robust ‘Innovation & Entrepreneurship’ ecosystem (includes pre-Incubation consulting & experiential workshops).

INNOPRENEURS

“Be the change you want to see in others”- The quote stands true to its word in today’s millennial era where we as a nation find it difficult in taking the disruptive ideas or concepts to a colossal extent. To bridge this gap, the need of this hour is to promote and support the start-ups for collaboratively rectifying the issues which hinder them from becoming a giant. Immediate need is to hunt for core problems and the right solutions for better tomorrow. Bright minds in huge numbers have approached and worked with Lemon to get the right guidance for their ventures. In the first year where we were experimenting, one of the first platforms that we created was Innopreneurs to encourage innovations and showcase ideas.

It gradually became a start-up competition and is today a very strong platform that we have for entrepreneurs, innovators and change-makers to showcase their start-up venture or their idea. INNOPRENEURS is a yearly startup contest hosted by Lemon Ideas since 2014. It is much more than a conventional B-plan contest.

It is a international level platform that encourages individuals/ students/ professionals to bring ideas, innovations to the platter for others to devour and earn mentoring, funding and network support. Since 2014, Innopreneurs has become a prominent platform for entrepreneurs with over 1000+ registrations received yearly now. If you Google ‘startup contest’ in India, you are most likely to see Innopreneurs in top few search results.

GURUKUL

Lemon Gurukul is a social initiative by Lemon where we provide mentoring to budding Entrepreneurs on complimentary basis. Lemon Ideas regularly conducts the ‘Lemon Gurukul mentoring sessions’ and ‘Gupshup sessions’ with the aim to serve aspiring entrepreneurs and early stage as well as seasoned start-ups. These sessions are open and free for anybody who wants to take benefit of expertise and support from Lemon mentors. Entrepreneurs who are facing challenges, who are confused, want to diversify their existing venture or are on look out to bring on innovation through technology are benefited through the ‘Gurukul’ initiative. Gurukul helpdesk has been set up in collaboration with Vidarbha Industries Association (VIA) to offer one to one mentoring & guidance to entrepreneurs.