What kind of impact will the Funding Winter have on Indian startups?
What advice would you give Entrepreneurs seeking funding?
What to watch out for when investing in a business?
The managing partner of the investment firm Vishesh Rajaram,Co-Founder,Speciale Invest, speaks with Channeliam.com.
- The biggest thing we look for in founders is what they know that most people don’t know, which in other words means they should have a deep domain expertise, knowledge or technology expertise which the other people don’t have. We are largely founder based investors. Most of our investments are in founders who have deep knowledge of a certain sector or technology in space, robotics, aviation. Those are some heavy engineering companies we have invested in.
- Unfortunately funding is associated with success, people think that when you raise funds, you are successful. But the truth is you can be successful without raising capital. My core advice to people in the industry is raise capital only when you want to because with lots of capital comes lots of responsibility to build , scale and manage expectations. Sometimes not all businesses have prepared for that sort of scale and ramp up. So you can be successful even without raising funding and bootstrapping and lots of companies like that exist. You should celebrate them as much as you celebrate unicorns.
- India as a country is still positively growing. As an investment destination it is in the top three or top two. So i dont think funding will disappear. But at the same time, capital has become more expensive, which means what you do with money, what you can achieve with money has to be more than what it was last year. Hence allocation of capital will go to different sectors , but capital is definitely available.
