About Me

 

Utilizing this digital window to share my understanding of the funder and founder relationships and….
several other things that intrigue me!

Entrepreneurship

Analysis, Entrepreneurship, Investments, My Funding Picks, News, Opinion, Venture Capital

Every Monday, I review the funding activity of the previous week and pick three favorites. This week, I picked Tech plays as my favorites.

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Every Monday, I sit with my team to review the funding activity of the previous week. Then, I pick out a few companies that I would have loved to invest in or find founders doing similar things from that list. Here is my rationale behind this weekly exercise. 

Last week 19 startups raised $46 million; the numbers indicate a dip, but it just a temporary lull. This fire burns on burning coals and will not die out for a long, long time.  

This week, 18 deals were in the early-stage rounds (compared to 23 last week), making my weekly analysis cut. After sifting through the news (aggregated from Tracxn, Inc42, and YourStory), I picked three as my favorite funding news from last week! 

Name: QuickSell 

Amount Raised: $2 million from InfoEdge Venture Fund and BEENEXT. 

What does QuickSell do? 

Edited from Tracxn: QuickSell provides catalog management solutions for retailers. It enables sellers to create product catalogs with photos, prices, and other details and share the catalogs on different social media, via mail and SMS. In addition, sellers can track the time spent by each customer on every product and forecast demand based on the analysis reports. Its app is available on Android and iOS platforms. 

Why do I like QuickSell? 

The frequent lockdowns and the internet’s broad reach make it essential for any fashion boutique to have an online strategy. Instead of selling via websites that are often difficult and cumbersome to maintain, Quicksell allows these retailers to get online and start selling – asap.   

Name: Refyne 

Amount Raised: $16 million from partners of DST Global and RTP Global.   

What does Refyne do? 

Edited from Website: Refyne partners with organizations to help build their staff’s financial resilience and nurture a productive and happy workforce. Refyne developed a mobile-first Earned Wage Access (EWA) platform that enables companies to allow their employees to acquire their real-time income any time before their monthly salary is due. 

Why do I like Refyne? 

I loved Refyne’s idea of converting monthly wages into daily (or weekly) wages for employees to access before payday. Used responsibly, this could unlock a wealth of opportunities for the borrower and become a critical credit unlocking mechanism for the consumer ecosystem.  

I’ll be watching this one closely with excitement!   

Name: Truemeds 

Amount Raised: $5 million from InfoEdge Ventures, Asha Impact, and Indian Angel Network Fund.   

What does Truemeds do? 

Edited from Tracxn: Truemeds is a provider of the e-pharmacy store. It is an online pharmacy store offering medicines for senior care. The user can order medication from multiple brands and manufacturers. The company has developed the AI-based proprietary Triple Check (TC) flow to check the orders before delivery by the doctor or pharmacist. 

Why do I like Truemeds? 

Truemeds is expanding on pharmacy tech with its unique offering. The simple application and the ability to sell high-quality generics that could save thousands of rupees for the end consumer are valuable.  

#DamaniTalks, Entrepreneurship, Learning

Arcatron Mobility builds the next generation of innovative physical aid devices to enhance people's lives with limited mobility and elderly care needs. Last year Arcatron launched a premium range of products to COVID-protect its customers. The success of this new line has wholly revolutionized

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Arcatron Mobility builds the next generation of innovative physical aid devices to enhance people’s lives with limited mobility and elderly care needs. Last year Arcatron launched a premium range of products to COVID-protect its customers. The success of this new line has wholly revolutionized the trajectory of the company, with its product consistently featuring at the top of eCommerce store product rankings! 

Ganesh Sonawane is the cofounder & CEO at Arcatron and is changing the game for those in need through his innovation. Before Arcatron, he was working with Bajaj Auto Ltd as an R&D Assistant Manager. Ganesh completed his Engineer’s Degree from the National Institute of Technology, Calicut. 

Key takeaways from the episode: 

  • How did Ganesh’s education help him in his entrepreneurial journey? Why did he decide to build an innovative wheelchair for his college project? Why did Ganesh refuse the grants to develop the design further during that time?  
  • What was Ganesh’s role at Bajaj? What were his key takeaways from this experience? Why was losing out on a 1st-year bonus at Bajaj Ganesh’s favorite mistake?  
  • What does Arcatron mean? How did Ganesh choose his cofounders? Why did Ganesh start Arcatron Mobility? 
  • What was the experience like providing wheelchairs to military rehabilitation centers? How did Ganesh help Saravana Kumar- a national-level wheelchair table tennis player in his tournament? 
  • What was COVID19’s impact on Arcatron? What made Ganesh decide to expand his product portfolio outside of assisting the differently-abled?   
  • How did Arcatron transform itself from a struggling business to one that is doing over $1m in quarterly revenues? 

Ganesh’s book recommendations: 

Watch this episode: 

Brand, Entrepreneurship, Learning

I am a huge believer in the applicability of blockchain and cryptocurrencies in the real world. I am incredibly confident that cryptocurrencies will impact the fintech space and a firm believer in the smart contract application of blockchain.   However, when I sit in the

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I am a huge believer in the applicability of blockchain and cryptocurrencies in the real world. I am incredibly confident that cryptocurrencies will impact the fintech space and a firm believer in the smart contract application of blockchain.  

However, when I sit in the seat of an investor, I believe that blockchain is witnessing its AI/ML moment. 

Scores of founders are approaching investors with business plans with purported “blockchain applications” that will revolutionize an ecosystem. However, many of them are using the buzz word to get in the front door, only to get shot down when investors realize that: 

  1. There is no actual application of blockchain required 
  1. The founding team has ZERO tech experience or bandwidth with blockchain  

I have spent my life in sales; therefore, I respect and appreciate the effort it takes to meet with a potential investor. However, misleading comments that will fall flat on its face during due diligence are too costly in a universe of fewer than 500 funds with less than 5000 employees! 

In a nutshell, if you do not know how blockchain is a USP for your business beyond explaining how a smart contract works – you do not understand why you are using blockchain.  

So until you can explain that, do not pitch something you do not understand or know how to build upon. There will be more to learn, leverage, and grow on by just trusting your current capabilities and committing to expand upon your knowledge.  

It is one of the reasons why I love the guest coming on DamaniTalks tonight: Ganesh Sonawane.  

I met Ganesh at the WebSummit in Lisbon. He was very early into an assisted living hardware play that was interesting but difficult to scale, especially since he wanted to go direct to consumer versus the traditional route.  

But I liked Ganesh’s focus and belief in a challenging product play, and he kept in touch after returning to India. While I was not a big fan of the space (as an investor), I really like Ganesh as a founder. Therefore when Indian Angel Network offered a chance to invest in his startup, I decided to back the founder instead of the idea.  

Ganesh endured challenges at several levels, business, personal, professional, and consistently struggled to keep the door open. COVID-19 was a death knell for his venture, but he found an opportunity in his adversity.  

He added a range of stylish and comfortable COVID-19 protection products that revolutionized his business. He goes live with me at 9 pm tonight, coming off Arcatron’s best quarter since inception (8 figures and growing).  

I am looking forward to peeling back the layers and discussing his journey from a struggling startup to a thriving business!  

Analysis, Brand, Career, Entrepreneurship, Learning, Opinion

There was a time when a degree from a top college guaranteed a prosperous life. But, because the knowledge taught within those walls got confined to those that researched it and taught it, it was unavailable to those unworthy of getting into the prestigious colleges. The broad penetration of the internet

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There was a time when a degree from a top college guaranteed a prosperous life. But, because the knowledge taught within those walls got confined to those that researched it and taught it, it was unavailable to those unworthy of getting into the prestigious colleges. The broad penetration of the internet changed that all.  

Now we live in a world where institutionally taught knowledge gets outdated within 2 years of getting disbursed. The institutional learning ecosystem pigeonholes the individual into a rat race for a big paycheck demolishing their creativity. Therefore many top companies like Google and Apple want to hire kids without college degrees.  

While it is heartening to see top firms look at talent without the lens of college degree heavy resumes, it also muddies the water a significant bit. Because choosing someone without the support of a top college degree becomes difficult, how should you stand out from a faceless crowd?  

The answer: showcase your execution. 

Last week a young Avkash Shah scored an internship with an Indian unicorn, Cred, by getting a direct recommendation from Founder and CEO Kunal Shah. Here is what he posted:  

The post got the attention of Cred’s Head of Design, Harish Sivaramakrishnan, who replied.   

I believe this is a brilliant way to score an internship, gig, or job application. Instead of doing it the old way by sending in resumes like the 100s before you (or after you) will. Create something, show your target recruiter your potential through your work, and let the network (read: universe) take it over from there.  

Thank you for lighting the path, Avkash! 

Entrepreneurship, My Funding Picks, News, Opinion, Technology, Venture Capital

Every Monday, I review the funding activity of the previous week and pick three favorites. This week, I picked Tech plays as my favorites.

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Every Monday, I sit with my team to review the funding activity of the previous week. Then, I pick out a few companies that I would have loved to invest in or find founders doing similar things from that list. Here is my rationale behind this weekly exercise. 

Last week 25 startups raised $638 million; as expected, the number of deals and the amounts raised continue trending upwards for the ecosystem. Investors are watching the unlocking process with anticipation to give further guidance on where the short-term trends will go.  

This week, 23 deals were in the early-stage rounds (compared to 12 last week), making my weekly analysis cut. After sifting through the news (aggregated from Tracxn, Inc42, and YourStory), I picked three as my favorite funding news from last week! 

Name: Fable Fintech 

Amount Raised: Undisclosed amount from Pentathlon Ventures, Ashish Kacholia, Lashit Sanghvi, Sumeet Kanwar. 

What does Fable Fintech do? 

Edited from Tracxn: Money transfer software for banks and other business entities. It provides multi-country, multi-currency, omnichannel, KYC/AML compliant rem-tech products. It offers a white label remittance solution for a billion-dollar money transfer business. 

Why do I like Fable Fintech? 

India does over $290 billion in exports and a slightly higher amount in imports. However, remitting money to or from India is highly complex for the end-user. Moreover, there are myriad rules from the regulators that get further entangled with the bank’s internal processes.  The opaqueness and the confusing process is a significant impediment for those that want to invest or do business in India.  

Add to that the massive fees and markups levied by the banks; you have a sector waiting to get disrupted! 

Name: Mars by GHC 

Amount Raised: $5.2 million from Khosla Ventures, Quiet Capital, W Health Ventures, and Weekend Fund and angels. 

What does Mars by GHC do? 

Edited from Yourstory: Mars by GHC provides a full-stack solution for patients with conditions like hair fall, sexual health, weight loss, skin care, etc.   

Why do I like Mars by GHC? 

While the male wellness sector is crowded, I love the unique set of backing Mars investors. It will be interesting to see how Mars makes its mark without burning up the cash on CAC. The key will be the returning customer ratio and referrals that the platform can generate, and they should concentrate on their content strategy. 

Name: Convin 

Amount Raised: Rs 2.5 crore from Titan capital and 9Unicorns.   

What does Convin do? 

Edited from Tracxn: Provider of cloud-based conversation intelligence solutions. The platform enables businesses to capture conversations from multiple platforms, transcribe conversations, and analyze them to generate insights into the market, which helps understand customer requirements, tracking sales, and more. It also allows members to highlight the most critical parts of the call, uncover coaching opportunities, and create a playbook to handle specific scenarios using the best tracks of deals that have closed. 

Why do I like Convin? 

The number of sales taking place without belly-to-belly meetings means that sales managers must equip themselves with Convin-like tools to review, train and upskill their salespeople. Convin’s price point might be steep for an Indian audience, but there are several western geographies where their services could be highly valued! 

Brand, Entrepreneurship, Learning, Opinion

I am a strong advocate for my founders to allocate a PR budget to get utilized only in the last 9 months of their seed round budget. I pick the last 9 months because, by the time they hit the market for fundraising, i.e., 4-6 months before running out of capital, they would have a strong

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I am a strong advocate for my founders to allocate a PR budget to get utilized only in the last 9 months of their seed round budget. I pick the last 9 months because, by the time they hit the market for fundraising, i.e., 4-6 months before running out of capital, they would have a strong PR presence helping them in their fundraising efforts. There is one caveat to this expectation.  

The PR budget should get utilized if (and only if) things are going well within the startup. Using the PR tool prematurely or without real traction or a business model to back it up, could be a disaster for the startup and burn a massive hole in your P&L statement without much to show for the expense.  

Therefore, one should use the PR tool with cautious enthusiasm.  

 Here are my top 5 tips for early-stage founders to maintain effective PR: 

  1. Horses for courses â€“ use the channel based on the objective you want to achieve  

Every founder dreams of getting featured on the front page of Economic Times or getting a TechCrunch story. However, not every start-up is meant to get featured in these iconic publications. Moreso, getting into these publications may give you an ego boost, but it may not achieve your startup’s strategic goals, for which you’ve leveraged PR in the first place.  

  1. Amplify business milestones to win investors; Amplify investment milestones to win customers 

Founders must know that disseminating news of their fundraising to other investors is useless. New investors would not want to speak to you until you are ready for a new round of funds, and since you just raised one, why should they bother?  

Besides, establishing your position in a space with investor backing creates credibility that is best utilized for getting new customers and partnerships or winning those customers that were on the fence about your survivability. Therefore, I suggest that founders heavily invest in accurately profiling their startups when disseminating their funding news.   

On the flip side, an excellent way to start or build momentum for your fundraise is to reveal business milestones achieved during your roadshows. These achievements will bolster your startup’s position in its respective sector and classify you as a leader or a viable challenger.  

In a nutshell, it makes sense to be counter-intuitive when making press announcements.  

  1. Use PR agencies for execution, hire internally for ideation  

I was a strong advocate for PR agencies until I realized that their transactional coverage-delivery model does not work for start-ups like mine or the ones I invest in. Nonetheless, PR agencies are excellent at executing releases, press conferences and amplifying your news, but they cannot provide personalized attention to each client’s voice – like I would have wanted them to. There is no point in securing truckloads of coverage clips if it doesn’t align with your central messaging or reach the desired TG. 

Therefore, it is best to hire a full-time PR associate with 3-4 years of working experience within PR agencies. These candidates must have the ability to take your start-up story to create a compelling message with a unique positioning for your company. These individuals would also have enough friends in the journalism world who could listen to their pitch and give you a chance to tell your story.  

Unfortunately, the PR agency model does not allow personalized care and attention when your account manager handles 4-5 clients, each growing fast and screaming out to get heard! 

  1. PR must be a continuous activity  

In a day and age where 5 startups are getting funded every day and tens of hundreds getting started, you cannot look at PR as a one-time activity. It takes 3-6 months of effort to get you considered as part of an industry and get respected publications to begin referencing or writing about your company in industry/trend stories.  

Also, journalists like to write about hot topics; therefore, if you were someone who was spoken about or referenced to more than 3-6 months ago; then you are probably running cold from a media standpoint and probably best to be avoided (from the perspective of the journalist).  

Now you must work doubly as hard to regain the top-of-mind recall in the media sphere instead of just keeping yourself mentioned regularly even in between your funding rounds.  

  1. Create and maintain thought leadership in your category   

Investors want to back category winning startups; therefore, they look for founders who are the thought leaders of their space. Getting the media to recognise you as a thought leader takes time and concerted efforts.  

You will need to write blogs, get on podcasts, and keep a live conversation of your thoughts on Twitter and LinkedIn. You must be original in your thoughts and genuine in sharing information and data. It takes effort, but the results can be fantastic for you and your startup!  

While PR is a potent tool for fundraising, it can also be a strong catalyst for building your brand’s reputation, growing your organic reach, and reducing your CAC. Therefore, PR might feel like you are tooting your own horn. But with pure intent and a clear communications objective, it can be the most powerful tool in your arsenal to grow your business with customers or new funds!  

Entrepreneurship, My Funding Picks, News, Opinion, Venture Capital

Every Monday, I review the funding activity of the previous week and pick three favorites. This week, I picked Tech plays as my favorites.

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Every Monday, I sit with my team to review the funding activity of the previous week. I pick out a few companies that I would have loved to invest in or find founders doing similar things from that list. Here is my rationale behind this weekly exercise. 

Last week 16 startups raised $403 million, marking a trend of improving deals and amounts raised. The good news should continue, and we will have record numbers in amounts invested into India startups in FY22.  

This week, 12 deals were in the early-stage rounds (compared to 15 last week), making my weekly analysis cut. After sifting through the news (aggregated from Tracxn, Inc42, and YourStory), I picked three as my favorite funding news from last week! 

Name: Scenes 

Amount Raised: Undisclosed amount from Tanglin Ventures, Better Capital, Whiteboard Capital, iSeed Ventures Blume Founders Fund, and angels. 

What does Scenes do? 

Edited from Tracxn: App-based messaging platform to connect with new people. Its platform allows users to meet new people with similar interests. The company leverages blockchain technology to reward users for making conversations. Its mobile app is available for Android devices. 

Why do I like Scenes? 

The resounding success of Clubhouse was going to replicate itself through a founding team in India. I am not a fan of copycat startups, but there were several places where Scenes trump Clubhouse when you start looking beyond the surface comparisons. I like the crypto-rewards of Avacoins to top engagers, but whether those coins will actually have value will remain to be seen.  

Name: Kodo 

Amount Raised: $8.75 million from Brex, Y-Combinator, Goat Capital, and others. 

What does Kodo do? 

Edited from Tracxn: Kodo offers credit cards for startups. It can be used for business expenses, money transfers, online/offline purchases, and more. It provides tools for monitoring transactions. The credit limit can be increased/decreased by the locks/unlocks on the card. 

Why do I like Kodo? 

Credit cards for startups and/or small businesses are a huge opportunity, and I am super excited that 3 well-funded startups are working on this massive opportunity. The banks have a gigantic blind spot for this opportunity, and it would take 5-8 well-scaled startups to fully address the demand for these corporate credit cards!  

Name: Get My Parking 

Amount Raised: $6 million from IvyCap Ventures and IAN Fund. 

What does Get My Parking do? 

Edited from Tracxn: Acts as a parking spot marketplace, with automobile owners on one end and parking lot managers on the other. Users can search for parking lots, obtain pricing, and book in advance. It offers services like cashless booking, event parking, valet parking, etc. It provides a mobile-based POS system for parking lot owners to manage their assets.  

Why do I like Get My Parking? 

Get My Parking pivoted from a B2C offering to a B2B SaaS offering, opening up a plethora of revenues for itself by solving the problems of parking lot owners. There is a large and growing market for this in India, but I believe that the ARPUs in overseas markets are severalfold of Indian ARPUs.  

There is a bright future for managing a much-mismanaged asset!   

Entrepreneurship, My Funding Picks, Opinion, Venture Capital

Every Monday, I review the funding activity of the previous week and pick three favorites. This week, I picked Tech plays as my favorites.

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Every Monday, I sit with my team to review the funding activity of the previous week. I pick out a few companies that I would have loved to invest in or find founders doing similar things from that list. Here is my rationale behind this weekly exercise. 

Last week 19 startups raising $285 million showed a steady revival in the number of deals closed and the aggregated fundraising amounts. A strong reason for the slowdown could’ve been the slowdown and SOP disruption caused by the second wave. With most people comfortably working from home, these disruptions seem to have gotten resolved.  

I am confident that there will be more weeks like this in the near and immediate future! 

After sifting through the news (aggregated from Tracxn, Inc42, and YourStory), I picked three as my favorite funding news from last week! 

Name: Skyroot 

Amount Raised: $11 million from Greenko Group founders Anil Chalamalasetty and Mahesh Kolli. 

What does Skyroot do? 

Edited from Tracxn: Skyroot provides the building of technology solutions for satellites. The company offers transportation systems and launch vehicles for carrying satellites from earth to space. The vehicle can carry payloads ranging from 200-700 kg to a low earth orbit. 

Why do I like Skyroot? 

Why I like this company is self-evident in the honorable mentions below. I believe that the LEO logistics space has the potential for several players to co-exist, and Skyroot and Agnikul will bring laurels to India in this space!  

Name: Wysa 

Amount Raised: $5.5 million from Boston’s W Health Ventures, the Google Assistant Investment Program, pi Ventures, and Kae Capital.   

What does Wysa do? 

Edited from Tracxn: Wysa provides an AI-based chatbot for managing mental health. It measures the emotions expressed by the user and uses evidence-based cognitive-behavioral techniques (CBT) and micro-actions to help the user feel better. It uses machine learning to understand the user’s emotional state and proactively reaches out to the user for help as and when required. It claims that the symptoms of anxiety and depression have halved in people who have used chatbot support over three months. 

Why do I like Wysa? 

It is evident that the last 14 months have had or will have a severe impact on our psychological well-being – those who lost family members and friends to the dreaded virus or those that lived indoors for 15 months. Fortunately, there is a lot of awareness about the risks associated with living in lockdowns, and there are platforms like Wysa that want to do something about it.  

I am exploring their corporate program for our organization and would encourage founders to do the same.  

Name: Karbon 

Amount Raised: $1.2 million from Orios Venture Partners along with MyAsiaVC. 

What does Karbon do? 

Edited from Tracxn: Karbon Card provides corporate cards for startups. It enables businesses to track expenses and offer rewards to the employees. It provides benefits for spends on Uber, WeWork Labs, Dunzo, MakeMyTrip, OYO, Flipkart, etc. 

Why do I like Karbon? 

Banks in India are notorious for making life difficult for entrepreneurs. The laborious procedures to get a corporate card in India or make changes to your account are legendary. The banks must truly enjoy ruining entrepreneurs’ lives because their attitude to employment creators has not changed despite our vital role in constructing our economy.  

Their loss could be the gain for corporate card issuers like Karbon and unlock a multi-billion dollar market. I have set up a time with the team to understand their credit card program. If it meets our spending criteria limits, I will switch away from our corporate cards at HDFC and Axis bank – their attitude to business customers stinks of elitist arrogance, and I would dump them in a heartbeat.  

Honorable Mention: AgniKul 

I have purposefully excluded Agnikul‘s investment round of $11million lead by Mayfield along with Anand Mahindra, Naval Ravikant, Artha Venture Fund, pi Ventures, Speciale Invest and others. 

Analysis, Entrepreneurship, Learning, News, Opinion

An exciting read forwarded to me by my team inspired the blog for today. Tauseef Shahidi goes into depth about how India's unicorn founders are very similar to each other. He profiles India's 100+ unicorns since 2005 (50 since 2011), discovering

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An exciting read forwarded to me by my team inspired the blog for today.

Tauseef Shahidi goes into depth about how India’s unicorn founders are very similar to each other. He profiles India’s 100+ unicorns since 2005 (50 since 2011), discovering interesting facts. For example, 1 out of 5 unicorn founders did not graduate from an elite Indian college, but 2 out of 5 unicorn founders have a bachelor’s in technology.

An interesting statistic that caught my attention was 28 unicorn founders were less than 30 years old when they began their startup journey. They took an outsized risk with the careers, but the decision paid off handsomely for them.

That is the message that the Indian parents and our startup ecosystem should impart to student creators like Mask Mike maker Kevin Jacobs or astrophotography enthusiast Prathamesh Jaju. These young creators have potential, but that promise could get lost in the pursuit of institutionally taught knowledge that cannot keep up with a rapidly changing business scenario.

Therefore, it makes immense sense for youngsters to express their entrepreneurial creativity as early as their career cycle. Besides, the early risk can get covered in a working lifespan of 50-60 years (probably longer as we all age).

As Bezos said in his 2018 interview to Mathias Döpfner:

“Life is full of different risks. So I think that when you think about the things that you will regret when you’re 80, they are almost always the things that you did not do; they are acts of omission. Very rarely are you gonna regret something that you did and it failed and didn’t work or whatever….”

Jeff Bezos

Entrepreneurship, My Funding Picks, Opinion, Venture Capital

Every Monday, I review the funding activity of the previous week and pick three favorites. This week, I picked SaaS, AI, and Fintech plays as my favorites.

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Every Monday, I sit with my team to review the funding activity of the previous week. From that list, I pick out a few companies that I would have loved to invest in or find founders doing similar things. Here is my rationale behind this weekly exercise. 

Last week 13 startups raised $9 million, indicating a drop in funding in terms of the total amount raised and the number of startups that closed funding rounds. The ecosystem may need a halt after the flurry of activity that has taken place in the best 4-month start for a year in the history of Indian venture capital.  

The overall indicators continue to point to 2021, finishing the year off strongly and setting the 2020 decade!  

After sifting through the news (aggregated from Tracxn, Inc42, and YourStory), I picked three as my favorite funding news from last week! 

Name: RuleZero 

Amount Raised: Rs 10 crore from Zerodha-backed fund and incubator Rainmatter Capital 

What does RuleZero do? 

Edited from Tracxn: Cap table management software for businesses. It digitizes & automates transactions, maintains ownership records and compliances. It features the generation of agreements for due diligence, customized models for financing & ownership, automated compliance, and more. 

Why do I like RuleZero 

RuleZero is an essential ecosystem-building company. The growth in the number of venture capital funds, family offices, and HNIs participating in the startup ecosystem is an opportunity. The platform could make a paradigm shift for people like me who have direct and indirect participation in over 100 startups and use Excel to manage their portfolios. 

Getting a platform that streamlines where all my equity is at, its current value, the latest updates from the founders, budgets, etc., would significantly simplify my daily routine! A RuleZero would be the perfect company with Sevanta for me (instead of Excel).  

On the flip side, a RuleZero would make it easy for a company to communicate with their captable and update them regularly. The RuleZero founders could leverage their access to cap tables to figure out secondary transactions for investors. It is a long shot but a critical problem to solve.  

I am reaching out to them for an enterprise purchase for my portfolio 😉 

Name: Myelin Foundry 

Amount Raised: $1 million from Japanese venture capital firm Beyond Next Ventures. 

What does Myelin Foundry do? 

Edited from Tracxn: Myelin Foundry is a video distribution solution provider. It helps deliver ultra-HD zero-rebuffering streaming on any network and reduces the time and cost to market and deliver AI-powered content. 

Why do I like Myelin Foundry? 

In a world where videos are increasingly getting integrated into our life Myelin Foundry is an exciting application. The ability to stream high-quality video on any network with zero buffer will get many takers, primarily due to the demands of work-from-home life that is here to stay.  

What I (especially) love about this company is its team. It is a well-balanced outfit with the potential to crack this market. 

Name: Rubix 

Amount Raised: Rs 6.2 crore from Cactus Venture Partners, family offices, and angels. 

What does Rubix do? 

Edited from Tracxn: Rubix Data Sciences provides a business intelligence platform for credit risk management and monitoring. The platform offers companies data with analytics and visualization to improve credit, risk, compliance, and supply chain decisions. 

Why do I like Rubix? 

In a data-starved market like India, counterparty risk usually gets underplayed in the name of growth. There are notorious late-payers in the Indian corporate ecosystems, but most Indian SMEs deal with them to continue growing but end piles of bad debts. I am sure that any Indian founder with more than a half-decade in business will have horror stories of the bad debts they’ve incurred.  

When investing in Karza, I realized that banks and NBFCs lacked access to in-depth data on SMEs making intuitive sense to invest in alternative credit scoring algorithm startups. That was the first line of defense; the next frontier is giving these assessments for suppliers and customers to evaluate counterparty risks. Rubix just came and answered all these questions for me.  

It will be interesting to see how that adoption would work and see the accuracy of their algorithms – I have a list of customers (including me) waiting eagerly!