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Funding Venture Capital How to get VC funding
Funding Venture Capital How to get VC funding
| How to get VC funding |
| Funding - Venture Capital | ||
| Written by Krishna Kumar | ||
| Thursday, 01 November 2007 00:00 | ||
|
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Even as the funding market hots up, it is still a story of too many entrepreneurs chasing too few VCs. There are a few things that help you improve your chances of getting funded Sai Kumar (name changed) could not understand what was happening. He thought that he had all the right credentials and was there at the right time. An alumnus of one of the IITs, he had spent a decade and a half abroad, working on prestigious software projects. He then came back to India and set up a software firm with his own money. Unlike the many that opted for project and body shopping setups, Sai decided to go the product route. Five years later, there he was, with a product that he believed was as good if not better than what was available elsewhere and even a few marquee clients. And there were more clients to be had if only he could set up a good sales and servicing infrastructure. That was why he could not understand why VC after VC that he approached for funding was refusing to bite.
Sai Kumar is not the only one caught in this predicament. Take the case of Ganesh (name changed), who again was working on a product idea with teams in India and Singapore when he approached a well known VC firm for funding. The advice he got has put him off from approaching any other VC. “I was told that we will get a serious valuation only if we show sizable income and growth potential or if we can become a real threat to existing players or big competitors.” Or of Stanley (name changed), who gave up after talking to a few, discovering that they were just not interested in the sector he was operating in, even though his idea may be path breaking. On the one side, we have reports of millions being invested daily into virtually unknown companies with seemingly me too ideas. Where is the disconnect? How do you as an entrepreneur looking for funds find the right VC? What else can a VC offer you other than funds? Are you ready for a VC? Different stages of a business idea require different levels and types of funding. Unfortunately, a profusion of business model competitions have lumped all these funding options under the umbrella of the VC leaving may entrepreneurs confused in the process. From a funding angle, a business can be divided into four stages – the seed or concept stage, the venture capital (VC) stage, the Private Equity (PE) stage and the initial public offering (IPO) stage. The seed stage is when the business is pretty much an idea. You do not have a product or clients. Possibly you do not even have a team or a business plan. Perhaps a prototype is ready. And you know that you need more funds than can be organized by borrowing from friends and immediate relatives. This is NOT the stage to approach a VC. Laura Parkin has been on all three sides of the table. She has set up two entrepreneurial ventures with funding, has worked in a VC firm and now, as Executive Director of the National Entrepreneur Network regularly acts as an interface between budding entrepreneurs and various funding entities. According to Parkin, VC funding is really not for startup stage companies. “Other than seed fund, most VCs are looking for a proven business model and customers and would like to see their funds used to scale up the operations, rather than test a business model. Even Angels in India would like to see working prototypes”. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs choose to approach a VC at this stage; and get badly burnt. This is the stage at which you should look for seed funding or Angel funding. Your funding requirements are smaller and more importantly your company is probably a long, long way away from value realization (IPO, acquisition etc.). Angels will also probably give you more of their time and expertise, which is very critical and important at this stage. But, there are VC funds that do look at concept stage companies. GVFL (Gujarat Venture Finance) started by Vishnu Varshney, who is considered to be the father of the Indian venture capital industry is one who invests into concept stage companies. Varshney says that “if you are a startup or an early stage company, private funds will not give you the money. Most of them will ask you to go get the money from somebody else and bring it to some stage where they see fit to invest in. We don’t do that. We will be looking at even early-stage companies. More than 30% of my investees are at the concept stage. We do not wait for them to scale up. If the promoter is good, the concept believable and credible, we do not mind giving money to start-ups”. The second stage, where you have a prototype, if not a product ready, have bagged a few customers or at least have a few customers interested and have a realistic business plan ready is when you should approach a VC for funding. Here again, too many business plan contests have spoilt it. You can make a great business plan in Excel, but what about market realities? Remember that a good VC like Varshney, who in seventeen years has received over 5,000 proposals, and has invested in 61 companies comes with experience across many companies and many, many business plans. Comments (16)
  written by JerryMirro, May 25, 2010
The difference of course is you can use many of the other tools you mentioned today. Not so much with Avairy. I am sure its a better product, but its also an unreleased product so the comparison losses some merit.
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It's quite nice, although I liked and not all pictures.
But as a whole they... http://ambienbuy.net report abuse
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 written by Sudhir Gandotra, November 08, 2009
OpenLX Linux is the First indian Linux that gives the compelling Desktop as well as Enterprise Server grade product to its users. While being free to download, the revenue model is based omajorly on Services to enterprise, Training and Suport.
OpenLX Linux was judged as the best Operating System in 2008. KalCulate is the First Linux based financial accounting package, worldwide. Together, this gives an Affordable, Secure and Friendly (also Virus-free) business desktop to users. The products are ready, test marketing done with good results and now we are looking for a funding partner to take it to National and then International levels. Additionally, we ofer Linux based services, support, training and maintenance. During the test-marketing, we have created thousands of users, distributed over 2,00,000 copies apart from hundreds of thousnads of downloads from ours and other servers. Various people have resold our product through their sites. We created channel partners across india and found that the product can become hot-selling item, if backed by promotion and support. This is what brings us to the stage of looking for a VC / Funding partnet. Linux is becoming relevant as economy is on downslide. Linux based Open-source has grown 22% over the last year. Linux offers the Affordable, Secure and Friendly environment to users, who then, don't have to bother about viruses and frequent break-downs. OpenLX + Kalculate gives the compelling offer of business desktop, that works, works and just works. More details can be obviously provided to the interested VC / funding partner. Sudhir gandotra. sudhir@openlx.com report abuse
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written by Sudhir Gandotra, November 08, 2009
OpenLX Linux was judged as the best Operating System in 2008.
KalCulate is the First Linux based financial accounting package, worldwide. Together, this gives an Affordable, Secure and Friendly (also Virus-free) business desktop to users. The products are ready, test marketing done with good results and now we are looking for a funding partner to take it to National and then International levels. More details can be obviously provided to the interested VC / funding partner. report abuse
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 written by M A J Jeyaseelan, September 11, 2009
Innovation is the best of all forms of capital, because it alone creates new values.
Innovation is also the most significant yield of the investments that a country makes in the educational sector Yet, I am yet to come across countries that have built mechanisms to take the maximum advantage of innovations. Innovations are treated, unfortunately both by governments and academicians as a matter of risk taking and hence most could avoid it. Innovations are what has brought human civilization this far and would decide the pace of development in future. It is only those countries that do not leave the all important task of nurturing innovations to the whims and fancies of fund managers would reap good harvests in future report abuse
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 written by Abhay N., April 08, 2009
Manufacturing technology professionals seeking financial partners. 2 year old, early stage, founder raised, pre-revenue company, with global footprint. Alternate advanced manufacturing technology. USP: To reduce weight and cost of structural parts, mainly automotive, which is key business driver today. Founders are recognised experts with 20+ years of cumulative global experience. Excellent reputation and credibility of promoters and company in domestic and global market. Helped many OEMs in last 2 years to cut costs and improve products. Focussed on technology and IPs. Focus on "process ownership" and not product and hence multi-product production and high growth potential. Proof-of-concept proto ready for technologies with extremely high demand. Interest from numerous automotive OEMs. Signed collaborative agreement with them for development. Further new concepts to be honed on proto scale.
Seek investment in the range of 1-3M USD for setting up development trial proto facility scaleable for production in India. An investment of 1M is already committed through Canadian Angel. Detailed business plan available. Exit options from 3 year end onwards. RoI > 30%. Revenue 50M USD by year 5. Addressing market size of USD 30Billion. Scale up: Global. report abuse
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 written by Bharati, April 05, 2009
Hello All,
I represent Olive Touch, a health food supply and service company. Olive Touch has been operational for 9 months now and has provided services to several corporates and individuals in the form of regular food services and nutritional consultations. Olive Touch is differentiating itself from other food services in the manner of food preparation and the amount of attention to detail that is given to every serving. We have vastly experienced chefs and dieticians on-board who provide their expertise in the operational and cooking process. At the moment Olive Touch is looking to expand its operations and setup more central kitchens that will help us market our services better. In this regard we are looking for investors who can help us grow and provide us with an impetus to excel in our services. If provided with an opportunity, we will be glad to share our expansion plans and the reasons why we think we can succeed. Kindly share your email id with me. Regards, Bbharati report abuse
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 written by Shailesh Pisalkar, March 28, 2009
Dear Sir
We are working as Ngo for the Poor people, our Support go's through income generation allied activities at present we are working with SHG consortium for Pulses production. In this regard we need venture capital Support for us kindly u go through our profile. looking for healthy partnership Your's Shailesh Pisalkar Secretary BDBGVS report abuse
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 written by Arpan Deb, March 09, 2009
My venture is past the concept stage and is already running well with many clients and a healthy revenue flow.
I run a very small web solutions company, with a twist. Very few people or companies in India do what I am doing, and my products and services are selling very well. But for this to grow, it needs proper mentoring and an infusion of funds. I buy websites and domains that are not performing well , at very cheap prices, turn them around in a matter of weeks and sell the websites for a profit or we retain them and sell advertisements, traffic and co-brandings on them. I have found the literal sweet spot. I started this two months ago and my monthly turn over is already Rs. 2.8 Lacs, with just 40 web sites. Currently my wife does the selling and marketing and I look after the acquiring of sites, negotiations. We get 3 new clients a day on an average. And a phenomenal 87% of my customers place repeat orders. But for this to grow, it requires serious infusion of funds to hire high quality human capital and spread the positions across 100's of online properties. With ever increasing online ad spends and branding exercises, my venture is well poised to make a killing. I am looking for an investor and a mentor to invest roughly 1 crore to increase the monthly turnover to Rs. 40 Lakhs and more. I am looking to expand the operations into a full fledged one, with hundreds of websites and a team of professionals to handle them and provide other related services to my existing list of clients. Arpan arpan.deb@gmail.com report abuse
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 written by GAURAV BANSAL, March 05, 2009
we are interested in seed funding to the IT startups, with strong fundamentals . The company/startup should have the core expertise on web development(php,mysql)/internet marketing(seo,smo,ppc,ad agency). Young , dynamic founders are invited, with a v.strong team and expertise .
feel free to contact. Regards Gaurav Bansal Executive Director Eduvision India Services report abuse
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 written by dhiraj, February 24, 2009
i m plannig to start a rose polly house project on my piece of land. i do not have money bank ready to finance upto 1.5 cr ie 75 percent of my project i m short of remaining 50 lakhs only .can i have ameet to discuss the same in details which will show the profitts of the projects.
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 written by B.C.Chechani, October 24, 2008
I think one can not focus to promote muliple products and it is one of the negative point while approaching VCs
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 written by Tom Iyer, October 15, 2008
Dear Kalyan,
Looks interesting. Send me an email at t_iyer@yahoo.com giving your contact details & then let's talk. May be i would be able to help you. Regards, Tom report abuse
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 written by kalyan kumar, September 25, 2008
Dear. Sir/Madam
This is a proposal under consideration of business growth perspective. ‘NKCS Pvt ltd’ is a Bangalore based software and management firm that cater into the vertical domain, we are one of the outsourcing company too. We outsource application on different domain. I am Ch kalyan Kumar director of NKCS Pvt ltd. We have implemented a hospital information system in India last week, with in a week we have got over 58 clients. Now we are looking for Partners/Investors/Venture Capital Funding to promote & market this unique product to capture this large untapped market in India. If you are interested please let me know. The following are some of the unique features of this product Health Online is unique and novel software that can greatly impact the health care sector by providing low cost customized solutions for day to day management of patient information. Health Online is a the web based hospital information system that can integrate services provided by hospitals, clinics, medical practitioners, diagnostic centers, blood banks, health insurance companies, TPAs & medical colleges that will benefit patients across the world. With the help of Health Online, patients can directly interact with the doctors of their choice for telemedicine and treatment. Doctors will be able to monitor the progress of patient’s health condition after their discharge from the hospital without the need for physical presence of the patient. The software also includes options for searching blood availability, emergency medical response and easy and quick health insurance claims settlements. Our goal is to make this highly resourceful product reach small and remote health care entities so that it can make health and allied services to be more efficient and reliable Benefits of Health Online Totally Paperless Automation Automated Reception Wizard for the Doctor Virtual Doctor Blood Search Doctor Search Hospital Search Ambulatory Search Beauty Centers Search Emergency Centers Search Online Appointment Electronic medical record Insurance Claim Healthcare Jobs Online Blood search from networked blood banks The online appointment scheduling system will enable your patients to make appointments with your practice online 24/7.Most Economical & Secure Configuration Market Analysis Summary Presently there are over 1, 46,000 hospitals in India, out of which about 26,000 hospitals are big hospitals /larger facilities (200+ beds). The total target market potential represents Rs.3, 200 crore per annum. Small company need to have group effort to encash the opportunity. We are throwing up an offer to your nurturing company to get associated on promoting as well as maintenance & development partner to encash the growing market. Apart from that, we have below mentioned applications ready. Our applications are: HIS: Hospital Information System HMS: Hospital Management System PMS: Pharmacy Management System ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning CRM: Customer Relationship Management CMS: Content Management System MMS: Mass Mailing System CMS: Consultancy Management System CMMS: Computerized Maintenance Management System HRMIS: Human Resource & Management Information System SMS: School Management System Accounting Software Web designing and web developing Employee Attendance Tracker We look forward for positive response from you With regards Kalyan Kumar Director kalyan2201@gmail.com NKCS Pvt Ltd info@sidbiventure.co.in report abuse
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now started to disassemble
the servlets...so was useful.
only I wonder what will happen to them, because "Sun" bought ...
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