Facebook Joins Hands With Matrix Partners To Helps Early-Stage SMBs Scale With this collaboration, Facebook's VC Brand Incubator Program has completed one year during which it has tied-up with six VC funds and scaled 150 small businesses

Social media giant Facebook on Thursday announced it has collaborated with early-stage venture capital firm Matrix Partners in a bid to scale small businesses in India by providing them digital skills.

This latest collaboration is a part of Mark Zuckerberg-led Facebook's VC Brand Incubator Program. Under this program, the San Francisco-headquartered company collaborates with early-stage venture capitalists to aid support to early-stage small and medium businesses (SMBs) to maximise their digital potential. This collaboration also marks one year of the program in which Facebook collaborated with six venture capital funds such as Sauce.VC, Fireside Ventures, SAIF Partners, Sequoia Capital, DSG Ventures and Matrix Partners India to skill and train more than 150 brands.

Commenting on the recent development, Archana Vohra, director-small and medium businesses at Facebook India, said, "Facebook is committed to supporting the growth of small businesses in India, and this charter is stronger than ever as we work towards enabling their recovery from the pandemic. We are thrilled to partner with Matrix Partners India as part of the VC Brand Incubator Program to scale and support small businesses at such a critical time. In light of the current constraints, we've taken the initiative online along with a host of our other skilling initiatives such as Boost with Facebook and Advertiser Vintage program to ensure uninterrupted skilling and support for small businesses."

Matrix India's Sanjot Malhi said, "We're excited to create a platform of partnership between our portfolio companies and Facebook. Brand building is a crucial part of growing and scaling your company, and Facebook's incubator program is a great stepping stone for early stage consumer-focused companies who are looking to build awareness and engagement with a digital audience. We've been early backers in many challenger brands from across the spectrum – eCommerce, gaming, CPG, neo-banking, healthcare, content – to name a few, and we're thrilled to see them create world-beating products and leverage Facebook's platform to reach their end consumers, and bring about large scale impact. Over 20 companies from our portfolio, including Country Delight, Stanza Living, OZiva, ManMatters, Zupee, The Whole Truth, Dealshare, have now partnered with Facebook on this program."

The social media giant has also Campaign Lab as a part of this program to help D2C small businesses get creative solutions.