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M&A is critical for the Product Startup ecosystem in India

Small $20-30m M&A transactions are the lifeblood of Silicon Valley. Over 400 such transactions happened last year. Israeli companies accounted for over 20% of these transactions. India had only a couple of transactions to speak of. This has to change of Indian has to become a Product Nation. 

iSPIRT is focusing on this issue through its soon-to-be-announced M&A Connect Program. The M&A Connect Program team – led by Jay Pullur and Sanjay Shah – was in Silicon Valley last week for listening meetings with various stakeholders. As a part of this exercise they hosted a long brainstorming session with more than a dozen M&A heads of serial acquirers ranging from Facebook to Vmware.

One other listening meeting was with about 20 Indian product entrepreneurs camped in the Valley. I was privileged to attend this meeting. It was a delightful 3.5 hours discussion. There were three set of issues that were discussed. One set of issues related to improving discovery of Indian startups. It turns out that addressing this is not as simple as doing a SV delegation or getting TechCrunch coverage. More than that is needed. The second set of issues related to the regulatory friction of doing small M&A deals in India. The third set of issues were about improving the readiness and preparedness of product entrepreneurs.

There was active participation by all the attendees. These included:

  • Indus Kaitan,Bitzer Mobile
  • Suresh Sambandam,OrangeScape
  • Manjunath M Gowda, i7 Networks
  • Asif Ali, Reduce Data
  • Vamshi Mokshagund, Credii
  • Rohit Nadhani, Cloud Magic
  • Madhur Khandelwal, ShoppingWish –
  • Kumar Rangarajan & Satyam Kundula, LittleEye Labs
  • Deobrat Singh, Gazemetrix
  • Rajan Arora, SchoolAdmissions
  • Bharath Mundiapudi, Orzota
  • Annkur P Agarwal, PriceBaba
  • Srikanth N, Arktan
  • Jay Pullur and Vijay Sundaram, Pramati (they hosted the meeting) 

 

I was most impressed by the dedication and passion of the iSPIRT team driving this effort. Their selfless commitment to making a difference was heartwarming. I could sense that most of us attendees felt the same way. The self-help community that iSPIRT is creating is truly inclusive and impactful. 

If you are product startup interested in exploring a possible M&A exit in the future do watch for more details about the M&A Connect Program. Try and become part of this. Given what I heard in the meeting, I’m sure that this new Program be game changing for the ecosystem.  

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Getting funded by US investors vs. Indian investors – a perspective

This is another post to force the debate. I have heard many Indian entrepreneurs say that they would rather be funded by a US investor than and Indian investor. In fact most would prefer specific Silicon Valley investors.

There are many pros and cons to both Indian and Silicon Valley investors.

Lets do the valley first.

Pros:

1. Investors move quickly. They make no decisions fast and yes decisions faster. Some companies (Cucumber town for instance) have been known to take a few days or upto a month to raise a seed round of $300K.

2. Investors are willing to invest in breakthrough ideas, instead of me-toos. In fact they have deep liking for disruptive ideas.

3. Willing to lead a round, and help you syndicate other investors.

Cons:

1. There’s tremendous deal flow. Competition to get funded by a valley investor is huge. Lots of companies that have 3 to 10 times the traction as their Indian counterparts for the same stage of company.

2. Valley investors dont like funding anything outside the valley. In fact an investor told me “I dont like to drive to the other side of the bridge (I am sure he mean Dumbarton bridge, given how close it is to Menlo Park) to fund a company”.

3. You have to move to the US (Maybe this is a pro for most Indian founders). The biggest hassle is immigration. H1B visas (working permits) are much harder now than 5 years ago.

Now lets look at India.

Pros:

1. Competition is a lot less. There are far fewer product companies in India than US. Some might even say there’s too much money in India chasing too few deals. Entrepreneur’s dont necessarily agree with that, though.

2. There are many funds raised just to invest in Indian product companies. They are willing to provide the same amount of money, as their US counterparts from as low as a few hundred thousand dollars to many millions.

3. Traction requirements are a lot less. A lot less in India. For a sapling round (assuming you raised a first seed from an accelerator or from friends and family) many companies are getting funded with far fewer customers or users than in the US.

Cons:

1. Indian investors (angel and seed) move very slowly. Slower than molasses in fat. We have a company with a 2 month old signed term sheet, that’s waiting for the money, and expects it will take 6-8 more weeks.

2. Their terms are lot more onerous and they require a higher percentage of the company during the seed round.

3. They rarely add any value after putting money into the company at the seed round, usually only asking for “3 year financial projections” when the product is in beta.

If I were an entrepreneur and I have the ability to go to the US and have some (small or otherwise) network in the valley I’d go and raise money there in a heart-beat. If my customers are primarily in the US, then I’d also consider moving there.

If I have never set foot in the US and want to stay in India or have my market here (for any number of reasons), then I’d be better off raising money in India.

What do you guys think? Did I miss any obvious pros and cons?