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If you want to do something, don’t over-analyze it! We do mostly Series A Funding! Helion Ventures #ThinkInvestor

ThinkInvestor is iSPIRT and ProductNation’s new initiative to serve as a catalyst between Venture Capital firms, Angels, Angel Networks and Entrepreneurs. It is to go beyond brochure ware and dig deeper into the whole life cycle of a typical investment; from introductions, funding, styles of on-going engagement, to exits. And in the process, capture their views on global and local trends, and the entrepreneurial ecosystem in India. This interview is done with inputs from Shashi Bhagnari.

think-investor-helionHelion Venture Partners is a $600 million venture fund focused on India with offices in Bangalore and Delhi. The company is an early to mid-stage investor in Indian startups in sectors such as Enterprise software, Internet, Mobile, Outsourcing, Retail, Education and Financial Services. In a conversation with iSPIRT, Helion’s Alok Goyal, Partner, talks about the company’s funding strategy, evaluating projects and making the right investments.

Tell us about the company’s background. What is its focus? What is your current fund? What is it looking at?

We formed the firm in 2006 with four founders that included Ashish Gupta, Sanjeev Aggarwal, Kanwaljit Singh and Rahul Chandra. Besides our team of analysts, our CFO doubles up as an operating partner for finance. We also have an HR advisor who works closely with our portfolio companies. We recently got someone in Product Management from Google to help portfolio companies. We are now a group of 15 people and have our offices in Gurgaon and Bangalore in India.

We focus our investments on early to mid-stage ventures, investing in technology-powered and consumer service businesses in sectors like Outsourcing, Internet, Mobile, Technology Products, Retail Services, Healthcare, Education and Financial Services. We have done about 60 investments so far.

In our current fund, we have raised about $250 million. The focus of this new fund will be divided between technology side and tech-enabled consumer investments. We will continue to look at Internet services like Makemytrip where we invested earlier, taxi services like TaxiForSure etc.

What’s your strategy on verticals? How do you characterize them?

Within e-commerce, we are bullish on Internet-only brands and marketplaces. For example, YepMe–a Web only brand focused on tier two and tier three markets. We have also invested in a venture called ShopClues which is an eCommerce marketplace.

Within consumer services, we have invested in consumer facing travel ventures like TaxiForSure. We have also made an investment in a company that makes planning travel experiences much easier. We have also funded a housing and real estate venture, Housing.com.

What stage of investment are you most interested in? Seed funding or later stage investments?

We are mostly the first or one of the first institutional investors in the company. Our sweet spot would be Series A or Series B funding. I would imagine 70 to 80 percent of our investments are in Series A. We invest between $10 to 20 million over the lifetime of an asset.

Any interesting investments you have made recently?

We had been looking at investments in the healthcare sector for a while now. We have recently invested in Denty’s, a chain of dental care units. This Hyderabad based company focuses on dentures, jaw replacement and other high end dental care treatments.  We have also invested in the area of enterprise mobility, in a company called Rapid Value that provides services in the area of mobilization of enterprise applications. Another recent investment is Linguanext, which has created a unique technology for language translation. It allows Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and enterprises to translate any application from one language to another without any changes in the application itself.

How do entrepreneurs get in touch with you? Is there a defined process they need to follow?

Entrepreneurs are at the heart of the venture capital eco-system. It is as much or more of our job to find entrepreneurs than they reaching out to us. In fact, we use a lot of our bandwidth to get to reach out to entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs are most welcome to reach out to us directly. There are two ways entrepreneurs typically get in touch. First is through our personal network. Second way is through bankers. We also like to make ourselves visible in forums and events so that entrepreneurs can reach out to us and we can reach out to them.

We also have a strong outbound program through a team of analysts.

What is your due diligence process? Is it specific to all?

We view around 1500+ business plans each year. The process is similar for most. Usually the first meeting takes place with one of our analysts, unless it comes from personal contacts. Different analysts focus on different areas and they all gain a good idea after the first meeting, which is then followed up with another meeting with one of the partner(s), to understand the business better.

Due diligence for us is more Market Diligence. We also do primary research, secondary research and make reference checks. After we are through with the entire due diligence, we invite the entrepreneurs to present their business plan to the whole team.  If the partnership is positive, we issue a term sheet after which financial/legal due diligence cycle along with documentation is completed.

The entire end-to-end process is completed within a month and a half typically.

How do you interact with your entrepreneurs? Is there a process outlined for this?

Investment is not only about money. We have developed reasonably strong relationships with our entrepreneurs which begins when we start the process of due diligence. We have both formal and informal interactions on a periodic basis.

In the early stages, face-to-face meetings are held every quarter, in addition to monthly calls. But outside of that, we do not interfere in their work at an operational level. But entrepreneurs reach out to us whenever they need help. For instance, if they need clarity on product direction or to connect with other prospects, they contact us. Those interactions are in fact, quite regular. However, I personally find myself being in touch with them on a very regular basis.

Do you have any avenues where you meet your portfolio company CEOs informally during the year?

Yes, we are doing this once a year. We have also started to form groups now. For instance one group that focuses on product management can share tips with portfolio companies in that area.  We also reach out to our portfolio companies through webinars.

Tell us about your recent exits? What do you think of the climate for exits in India like?

We are just an eight years old entity, so there have not been too many exits. Our first was an IPO exit from MakeMyTrip when they went public. We also exited redBus when it was acquired by Naspers. Then we got out of Amba Research. We are hopeful that the market climate in the next few years will get a lot better for favorable exits.

What excites you about entrepreneurs these days, and what is it that you like to see in them?

In all my discussions there is a general belief that the quality of entrepreneurs has gone up significantly. We are also seeing a whole class of entrepreneurs moving back from the US. We are seeing a generation of entrepreneurs starting their second ventures now. Their scale and thinking is different, very bold.

What we’d like to see is stronger talent in Product Management. It is relatively more difficult in India compared to a place like the Bay Area. We are also not seeing as many deep technology assets. What we are seeing are more applications based and light IP based businesses from India. Over a period of time, I have no doubt that India will create more deeper technology companies as well.

What advice would you like to give young guys who want to start a new venture?

You should ask yourselves if you have the entrepreneur inside you or not. If you are over analyzing, you are probably not. An entrepreneur has to be “foolish” enough to purse the dream besides being passionate about it. If you want to do something, don’t over-analyze it. The important thing is the ability to take the plunge.

Entrepreneurship is not a solo sport; but a team sport. You need to find complementary capabilities in others. The bottom-line is that you should be able to pull together a team that has complimentary skills and the same passion to do it.

A startup is successful because it is focused. Defining that focus is important. Startups succeed because they choose a specific market segment or a specific problem or a specific customer set etc. and serve that market better than anyone else.

Lastly, it is important to be close to the market. You need to continuously listen, learn and act with agility. It is important to be able to iterate quickly. 

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The time is ripe: Indian product start-ups are geared to disrupt IT adoption across the enterprise

For most food enthusiasts in India, the start of summer signifies the beginning of the much awaited mango season. The “King of fruits”, as it is most aptly described, is in the market for a few weeks before it completely disappears. Drawing a parallel, it’s an equally good time to be a technology start-up in India as well – of course, the season will certainly last more than a few weeks but tech start-ups are certainly the talk of the town and the opportunity is here and now.

A recent report by Helion had three key pointers that give a boost to the software product ecosystem. Significantly, CIOs and top IT decision-makers keen to look at start-ups. Though common belief may be otherwise, 90% of IT decision makers said that they are likely to see a demo, implement on a trial basis or conduct a review of new technology products. As many as 72% of respondents said they were likely to invest in a limited implementation of the solution, while 54% are willing to invest in a full implementation of the solution. IT Decision makers also recognize that newer technologies would increase the agility and flexibility of their organizations. Surprisingly, cost is not a major factor that is driving the adoption of these new technologies as less than half the respondents (43%) strongly believed that it had impact.

The other key fact to note is that Indian product start-ups are geared to disrupt IT adoption across the enterprise: As many as 82% of the respondents have developed and deployed applications for various business use cases. Business analytics and big data solutions are being offered by 46% of start-ups that responded to this study, enterprise services on the cloud by 30% and mobility solutions are served up by 21%.

Key functions targeted by these solutions include sales (73%), business development (70%), service delivery (66%), HR (51%) and supply chain (48%).

The third heartening fact is that Technology buyers keen to fuel the start-up ecosystem. The survey shows that IT DMs are demonstrating a new-fangled willingness to help start-ups. 85% of respondents stated that they are willing to work (and play an advisory role) with the start-up to help evolve or improve the product. A majority of respondents (82%) are keen to provide customer references while 68% agree that being one among the first five customers for a start-up is acceptable.

But start-ups also need to realize that IT decision makers primarily worry about the reliability of the solution (78% cited this as a high risk) as well as the long-term quality of support from a start-up vendor (72%). Scalability of the solution and its performance are also aspects which IT buyers believe that start-ups must fine-tune in order to seal the deal. As long as tech start-ups can build on the trust element they are sure to have a clear growth trajectory ahead of them.

 

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#ReversePitch “The day VCs pitch the Startups”

Depending upon who do you ask the question, the answer to “Indian Startup ecosystem has a shortage of good quality?” would oscillate between kick-ass investors and great customers. While the presence of both is crucial to validate the success of the startup, founders always seem to be cut-off from both of kick-ass investors. With India poised towards climbing up the entrepreneurial ladders, no wonder we would see more first generation product startups coming out of unheard Indian towns and cities.

With this in mind, the recent edition of #ReversePitch took place at 91SpringBoard. The premise is simple, at any conventional networking/demo event the startups are the ones pitching their ideas and its potential to a room full of investors. But by turning the tables in favor of the startups the idea of reverse pitch was born. Investors now make their pitches to a room full of potential startups as to why they are the best bet.

For those of you wondering whether this was another bout of “networking” and “gyaan” session by investors making tall claims for their funds haven’t seen Mukund Mohan in action. Seeing that the founders were taking time to warm up that too in a room full of people having the exact same question in mind. Mukund brought everybody at ease and what followed were interesting rounds of presentation by VCs and subsequent Q&A by the audience.


The questions were spread across the entire spectrum from the usual one on how to raise their seed fund to a startup specific. What tricked both the founders and the VCs were the most simplest of questions which required the greatest insights. Not many might have wondered about “How do VCs actually decide their investment amount?” or our personal favorite “Who gives money to the VCs?” The latter had the entire crowd glued should they find their secret!


With the wheel set in motion the post event discussion was full of its own share of fun. Where else can you find a startup sharing their experiences on raising their first round with a former-founder-turned-VCs chipping in to reminisce about his own life.


This was not the first time #ReversePitch took place in India and this will definitely not be the last time it takes place in Delhi. Nothing is more better than learning from shared experiences. For those of who missed the event can search for the official hashtag #ReversePitch on twitter and relive the moments and maybe even catch the VCs no hold barred in the after party!


A handy list of the VCs who presented at #ReversePitch in no particular order of their likeliness to fund your venture:

 


The pitch sessions was followed by networking with the investors and the community had an amazing time. Thanks to Subhendu(ReversePitch), Mukund, Mukul(Saif Partners), Apurv & for the 91Springboard team for putting together an amazing show. Stay tuned for some more excitement in the next few months!