Indian startups looking for funding

With a recent feature launch at LetsVenture, Startups can have their public profile created with basic information such as Startup Video, Team Info, Product Info, Media & Timeline tabs. The financials and funding ask will not be shown on the public profile. This helps startups curate all their information at a single place and just share the link whenever required.

We talk to the LetsVenture team to understand more about the platform, learnings so far and when is the good time to raise funds.

What is the vision behind launching LetsVenture?

Manish: Currently, Indian Angel base is around 300-400. Given this number, the companies cannot raise money easily even if they are good because angels run out of funds, due to their prior investments. Exits have not happened for Indian Angel Investors, and as a result Angel fatigue kicks in. Till the eco system matures, and we give them that runway – we need to get more people writing cheques to startups. That’s the only way to get more companies funded, and create value for Investors.

We are democratizing the startup funding process through LetsVenture. After information curation, we don’t come in the way. Investors can choose and pick the startup of their liking. Many people are working at the same time, and it’s not limited by our bandwidth.

One of our visions is to make startup funding easy. LetsVenture has enabled lot of HNI( High Net-worth Individuals) to start investing in Indian Startups. We do currently have 250 Investors across 15 countries, and 400+ startups registered on the platform. HNIs have a lot of passion to come and invest in Indian startups. Without LetsVenture, it’s very difficuilt for the HNIs to fund these companies.

Secondly, an entrepreneur is totally at the mercy of the Investor, and usually cannot ask the past investments of the Investors. At LetsVenture, Investors create a mini-investment profile with all the previous investments they have made, areas they have expertise in, areas they can investment in, investment mantra, and angel group affiliations. So, an entrepreneur can check things out before approaching an Investor. This introduces efficiency in the entire fundraising process.

Third, any money committed through is still not money in the bank and a strong offline component is required to complete the entire fundraising process. We fill this gap through our ‘Commitment to Closure’ package, which takes care of the Due Diligence and the broad 3-step process in funding( Term sheet, SHA and Closure).

How different is LetsVenture from angel.co?

Because it’s primarily US focused, most of the investors are looking for US deals, and the companies typically that discover investors are US Startups. So, why is Indian Startup listed over there? Because, some of the 300 angels use it mostly as a documentation platform for their investment. Manish: Angel.co is doing a phenomenal job for US economy. There are thousands of startups in angel.co and around 2500 Indian startups are listed in Angel.co. Listing is different from getting funded. So, you already found an investor, before creating an angel.co profile. It’s different at LetsVenture because you may find your first investor through the platform. For the Indian Eco system, that’s the central focus. Investors in angel.co are looking for startups which they can fund within their area. Investors are signing up on LetsVenture because they want to invest in Indian Startups. This is a platform for people actively looking to invest in Indian Startups. This is a geographical play and has a local element to the funding platforms.Shanti: Because of the scale of angel.co, the moment a startup creates a profile and tags an investor who is followed a lot, the profile gets noticed. There is a network effect that’s created on Angel.co. Though the investors are global, there is still a local aspect to the startup, in terms of verification. The first lead investor is mandated to put in $100K, and this investor will do all the face to face meetings and due diligence before funding. People back the investor more than the startup.

We have made it very easy for startups. We understand the social aspects and work a lot with investors and startups during the funding process. There are lot of social aspects to getting funded. I personally think, though LetsVenture is a very good listing platform, this is successful because of the credibility of the founding team. Today you know you are going to place which is clean and has high hygiene impact.