Seed Capital Investment – What we look for?

Given the early-stage profile of companies in which we finance, we focus on the experience and capabilities of the management team and a large addressable target market as the primary determinants of success. We look for a strong and cohesive team which has the right balance of passion, vision, flexibility, realism and confidence.  Typically, we are the first institutional investor into the company and in a majority of the cases, we lead the investment round.

At the seed stage, we are looking to partner with companies that have:

  • A core team in place with relevant expertise.
  • A clearly articulated targeted market space for the company’s solution
  • A defined value proposition for company’s solution
  • Uniqueness of the company’s solution and the continued ability to maintain competitive differentiation
  • Capital efficient execution
  • Large addressable market size and the ability to capture a significant share of the same

In addition

  • Product companies should have a working (or close to working) prototype and are targeting pilot implementations with named customers.
  • Service companies should have demonstrated execution abilities through paid engagements with a few customers

At the seed stage, we don’t necessarily seek companies with revenues and we are open to considering pre-revenue companies.

While we are focussed on seed stage companies, on a selective basis we are open to considering companies at a pure idea stage/pre-prototype stage or companies that have progressed beyond product development and are seeking funds to expand.

Our investment process is simple. Based on the initial meeting, we assess the attractiveness of the opportunity and those that meet our criteria are invited to meet with all our partners and then we initiate our due diligence process. In terms of time frame for making financing decisions from the first meeting, it varies from business to business and could take anywhere from 4 weeks to 4 months. We have made a few investment decisions within a couple of weeks while some have taken couple of months.