BRETS Founders Programme
A year of everything a startup needs. At no cost.
What is included
Everything the group can give, given
Learning
langvr.com₹1,00,000 of founder courses, free
Full access to the LangVR course library for a year — business English, communication, presenting and negotiation, the skills a founder is judged on in every room they walk into. Fees waived for the programme year.
Free IELTS practice
The free practice section, for a founder or a team member preparing to study or work abroad. Already free to everybody; listed because founders routinely do not know it is there.
The digital marketing internship, free
The same structured programme BRETS trains its own marketing people on — three or six months, online, with a verifiable certificate. Put a co-founder or a first hire through it.
Software
brets.techERP and CRM, free for a year
A full tenant on the SaaS tier: HR, payroll, attendance, tasks, expenses and assets, plus leads, pipeline, a calling desk and follow-ups. Your own data, exportable at any time, and no obligation to continue when the year ends.
App hosting support, free
We set up and carry the hosting for your first application for the programme year — deployment, domains, SSL, backups and monitoring. Third-party costs that genuinely have a bill (a paid API, a large media budget) are yours; our time and our infrastructure setup are not.
App development support
Allocated engineering hours each month against your own product — code review, unblocking, integration help, and the parts a first-time team reliably gets wrong: payments, auth, file handling and deployment.
Reach
anoqr.comYour business, listed and findable
A business profile on the ANOQR directory with your location, contact and catalogue, plus the three free ads every account carries. Free to anybody; set up properly for you.
An ANOQR identity and QR presence
Your own ANOQR ID and QR surface, so a sticker, a poster or a shopfront reaches your page and your phone. Useful long before you have an app.
Advice
brets.techTechnology consultation
What to build, what to buy, what to postpone, and what it should cost. The single conversation that saves first-time founders the most money, because it is usually the one that stops something being built at all.
Compliance consultation
Entity choice, GST, founder agreements, ESOP structure and the sequencing of it — decided before it becomes expensive to reverse. Filings themselves are made by licensed professionals we brief and coordinate.
Money and status
Guidance onlyKerala Startup Mission — help applying
KSUM registration, the Idea Grant and Seed Loan routes, incubation, the Innovation Grant and the procurement and event benefits. We prepare the application and the documents. KSUM decides, not us.
Startup India — help applying
DPIIT recognition and what it actually unlocks: the income-tax exemption route, self-certification, the rebates and the tender relaxations. Free to apply for and routinely missed. Recognition is granted by DPIIT, not by us.
Funding readiness
Cap table, financial model, metric definitions, deck, demo script and a data room that survives diligence — for Indian angels and VCs and for global angels, VCs and family offices. Readiness is what we deliver; a term sheet is theirs to offer.
About the government schemes. Kerala Startup Mission and DPIIT decide who receives their grants, loans and recognition — we do not, and nobody who tells you otherwise does either. What is included here is the work that decides whether an application is any good: working out which schemes you genuinely qualify for, preparing the application and the documents properly, and making sure the company is not refused for something avoidable.
Who it is for
Five things we look for
- You have a business idea you can describe in plain language, and somebody who would pay for it.
- You are the founder or a co-founder, and you can commit real time to it this year.
- You do not have a technical co-founder, or you have one who is stretched too thin.
- You are in India, or you are an Indian founder building for a market elsewhere.
- You are willing to be told your idea needs changing, or that it does not need software at all.
Who it is not for
And three it is not
- Anyone looking for cash. Nothing in this programme is a payment to you.
- Anyone who wants an app built free of charge. Support and hours are included; a full custom build is a paid engagement.
- Anyone who needs a guaranteed grant or a guaranteed investor. Those are other people’s decisions and we will not pretend otherwise.
Taken in small cohorts because every place includes real consulting hours, and hours are the one thing that cannot be scaled by writing more software.
How it works
Four steps, and nobody is ghosted
You apply
The form below. Fifteen minutes, and no deck required — plain sentences are better than a pitch at this stage.
We read it properly
Every application is read by a person, and everybody gets an answer either way. A rejection comes with the reason.
A conversation
Forty minutes about the business, not the software. This is where we tell you honestly whether the programme helps you.
The year starts
Accounts opened, courses unlocked, the ERP tenant created, and the first consultation booked in the first week.
Apply
Fifteen minutes. No deck required.
Questions
Including the sceptical ones
Is this genuinely free, or is it a trial that bills me later?
Genuinely free for the programme year, and nothing auto-renews into a charge. Nobody is asked for a card to apply or to start. At the end of the year you decide whether to continue on the ERP and the hosting as a paying customer, and if you do not, your data is exported and that is the end of it.
What is the catch?
Two things, both stated plainly. Places are limited, because each one includes real consulting hours from people who have other work. And we are building a reputation as the technology partner for founders who do not have one — some of the companies in this programme will later buy paid engagements, and that is the entire commercial logic of it. We take no equity and there is no obligation.
Do you take equity?
No. Not for this programme, and not as a substitute for fees on paid work. An agency holding equity in a company it also bills is in a conflicted position, and it usually ends with neither side happy.
Will you build my app for free?
No, and that distinction matters. The programme includes development support — allocated hours, code review, unblocking, help with the parts first-time teams get wrong — plus hosting and deployment carried for the year. A complete custom product build is a paid engagement, quoted in a written scope like any other.
Can you guarantee a KSUM or Startup India grant?
Nobody can, and anybody who says they can is misleading you. Kerala Startup Mission and DPIIT make those decisions on their own criteria. What we do is work out which schemes you actually qualify for, prepare the application and the supporting documents properly, and make sure the company is in a state where the application is not refused for something avoidable.
Can you introduce me to investors?
Our job is to make you ready — cap table, model, metrics with their definitions written down, a deck and a demo that survives questions, and technical diligence you will pass. Where a genuine fit exists with an investor we know, we will say so. We do not sell introductions and we do not take a success fee on a round.
I am not in Kerala. Does that matter?
Only for the Kerala Startup Mission part, which is a state scheme and needs a Kerala presence. Everything else — the courses, the ERP, the hosting, the development support, the consultations, Startup India and the funding readiness work — applies anywhere in India, and the software and advice apply anywhere at all.
How long does the application take?
About fifteen minutes. No deck, no financial model and no business plan document are required — if you have them you can mention it, but plain sentences about what the business does and who pays for it tell us more at this stage.
Still unsure whether it fits? Ask on WhatsApp before you fill anything in — that is a completely normal way to start, and it costs you nothing to find out that the answer is no.