The Venture Intelligence Blog

YourStory has an interesting interview with him on the sidelines of ISB Digital Summit where he keynoted . Extracts (emphasis mine) First, I look for interesting ideas in technology that can create an impact. The second most important thing is the team; except for two companies, all my founders have a technology background . I almost never back a non-tech founder in technology business , because in technology startups you have to iterate really really fast and for that you need a strong understanding of technology. Outsourcing is always a bad idea. Number 3 is engineering + produc t expertise. The Number 4 criterion is I look for commitment to the idea in founders. They must have left their secure jobs, must have faced several setbacks but should have never given up . Ability to attract top talent is very important . For example, Druva is a perfect example of sales + product + engineering. Right founding team is very important. Look at Capillary; they seem ...

ET NOW’s Super Angels, a special series on the ‘Starting Up’ show which provides a platform for start-ups to make pitches to Angel Investors, concluded its grand finale on the 24th of March at the Convention Centre, Bombay Stock Exchange. The series spread over 6 months and 20 start-ups pitching to investors culminated in a grand finale with 5 start-ups pitching face-to-face to investors in front of 200 member strong audience. The finale witnessed as many as 3 start-ups out of the 5 finalists raise funding for their respective firms. The 5 finalist start-ups that took to the stage included Live Inbox, Unbxd, Exotel, DroidCloud and Staffoncontract.com. They in turn made their pitches to, India’s most renowned Super Angels including Mahesh Murthy of Seedfund, Vishal Gondal of Indiagames, Sanjay Parthasarathy of Indix, Karthik Reddy of Blume Ventures and Vijay Shekhar Sharma of the One97 Mobility Fund. The first of the 5 start-ups to raise capital and clearly the one, most hotly conteste...

From the Press Release: ET NOW’s Super Angels, a special series on the ‘Starting Up’ show which provides a platform for start-ups to make pitches to Angel Investors, witnessed a Mumbai based start-up company – Fetise.com (Men’s Apparel e-commerce platform) raise capital up to Rs. 25 Crores from Seedfund, represented by Mahesh Murthy, one of the Super Angels on the show. On what attracted Seedfund to invest in Fetise.com, Mahesh Murthy, Managing Partner of Seedfund says, “Very often we see e-commerce start-ups who want to sell everything to everybody. But here we found a team that focussed on one target audience: upscale men and they’ve executed well to build a wide and deep line of products for the audience, as well as significantly differentiate from other e-com players.” On the experience of raising funds on the Super Angels platform, Chetan Bafna of Fetise.com says “The sheer pace of growth within e-commerce in India makes this an exciting business. Our fundraising process started 6...

From the Press Release: ‘Super Angels’ , the ongoing series on ET NOW’s Starting Up – the home for start-ups on Indian television, has successfully completed 14 episodes.14 start-ups have pitched in their business plans to 4 of India’s most influential investors, competing for a spot in the grand finale where the winner gets an opportunity to raise funds between Rs.50 Lakhs & Rs. 2 Crores live on the show. Speaking about the show and its format, Harshal Shah, Founder and Managing Director of Reliance Ventures said this “The format of the show is very hands-on, impromptu, and educational. It is also informative to entrepreneurs as the process of a formal or informal education in the VC space is not something that most Indian business schools are able to expose their students”. Vishal Gondal, Founder of Indiagames said that the key difference with the show was with its format, “The format is spread over 6 months rather than the 1-2 months other shows have aired for. The 6 mo...

Edited extracts from the Press Release: 24-hr English business news channel ET NOW has launched ‘Super Angels’, a path breaking series which will witness start-ups raising funds on national television, for the first time. The show will feature 20 of India’s most innovative start-ups and 4 of India’s most influential investors along with a national audience who will choose India’s next ‘Super Entrepreneur’. The 4 Super Angels on the show are Mahesh Murthy, Managing partner; Seed Fund, Vishal Gondal, Founder; Indiagames, Harshal Shah, Founder; Reliance Ventures and Sanjay Parthasarthy; Entrepreneur and Angel investor. The show will be anchored by Sudhir Syal, Editor; ‘Starting Up’. Every week one start-up will make a pitch to an investor; the TV audience will then be given a chance to vote for the pitch through SMS, email and Facebook. Five months, after the completion of 20 start-up pitches, the audience votes and the investor’s votes will be collated to choose the final 8 Start-Ups, wh...