“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.” Once Warren Buffet made this quote. He is know as sage of Omaha, and the one who gave probably the theory of Value Investing.
These days we have seen a 360 degree change in the way investment is being made in startup companies. So when we talk about startups the "VC" or Venture capital becomes most sought-after thing.
Every business after successful running some time need to grow or expand their market reach. To achieve this they require huge capital, they start looking for different ways to raise money.
There can be numerous ways in which startups or any company can raise fund. Some of them are Seed funding, Agel Investors, Crowdfunding, VC, Series A to E funding.
Let's first understand the various ways a business can acquire capital.
Seed Funding It is the critical funding stage for a startup, as it is done before company starts earning, mostly in Ideation phase. It's a type of funding by an investor in a company in early stage, in return the Investor gets equity stakes. As the name "Seed" itself describes that the strong seed funding will determine the future of company growth. Sometimes the founders themselves provide Seed fund to the business , in this case it is called Bootstrapping. Seed funding may cover cost of infrastructure,machinery, marketing and sometimes initial hiring too. Sometimes this money is raised from banks in form of loan or from family or friends, called Debt funding. Few seed funding companies in India are - Bloom ventures, The Hatch, Oja Ventures and YourNest .
Angel Investment These are individual Investors who support an startup when they are in dire need of capital, in return they get equity shares or partnership in the business. These are high net worth persons having spare cash with aim of getting huge margin on their investments rather than investing in traditional setups.
Most renowned angel investors are - Sanjay Mehta, Devesh Chawla, Binny Bansal & Sachin Bansal , Kunal Shah, Anupam Mittal, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Ratan Tata, Bhavish Aggarwal and many more.
Few Angel Investors network in India are - Indian Angel networks, Mumbai Angels and Chennai angels.
Series A B C D and E in Funding
Series A funding is generally done, when business has run for a while and looks lucrative for Investors. But mostly at this stage company has not reached break-even and owner is aggressive to expand the business. Therefore the risk factor for Investors at this level remains higher side.
Series B round of funding is far more safer side, risk factor is low hence the chances of profit is also lower side. In this stage most businesses becomes profitable, and the owner is looking for Investors to infuse capital to expand the business in newer markets.
Subsequently Series C,D and E of funding comes in business growth path. Mostly at this stage business becomes stable and has a proven track record. Now the company is looking to acquire some smaller businesses or companies which may be startups or in growing stage. C, D & E series of funding establishes the company as a market leader in its segment.
Till now we looked at various ways of funding. Now we will try to figure out how companies or startups should attract investors.
There have been some legendary investors worldwide like Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett , Peter Lynch and Sir John Templeton. In India top VC firms are - Helion Venture Partners , Blume Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Intel Capital India , Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital, Matrix Partners and SAIF Partners etcetera.
Every business is unique so we can not say VC is granted on networking skills, emotions or previous track records or mix of all these three. In my opinion any business to attract VC should be one which solves some real life problem, with high growth prospects and should be achievable. So do your paperwork well before start chasing these Investors.
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