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Tag: startup funding

  • How to Choose the Right Debt Provider for Your Business

    How to Choose the Right Debt Provider for Your Business

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    When founders think of raising debt, they often imagine going to a bank. In my three years advising companies on debt financing options, I frequently remind founders that banks are certainly an option — but not the only one. Founders exploring debt should familiarize themselves with all of the options in the market, from traditional asset-based loans to more innovative venture debt and revenue-based financing solutions.

    These various lenders don’t just have distinctive structures and terms for their capital, they also each have a particular set of criteria to qualify for a loan. By acquainting yourself with the entire market upfront, you can focus on the lenders that suit your business the best, maximize the number of term sheets you receive and spend less time chasing dead ends.

    Related: Why Founders Should Embrace Debt Alongside Equity

    Banks

    Banks themselves come in various shapes and sizes. When it comes to business loans, you have your regional community banks, large multinational banks and specialized venture debt banks. Sometimes one large bank may roll up all of these divisions under one roof, providing a range of options from revolving lines of credit, term loans, warehouse lines and more.

    Oftentimes these banks have access to the cheapest available capital and therefore can offer you the lowest interest rate. But bear in mind that while this is usually the cheapest option, banks also have a high bar to qualify for their capital. They may include covenants or other performance requirements to ensure the business continues to meet their benchmarks throughout the duration of the loan.

    For many small businesses, taking a loan from a local community bank can be a simple low-cost option. But be aware that they may have minimum asset or cash flow requirements to qualify or even ask for a personal guarantee.

    Venture debt banks, on the other hand, specialize in VC-backed cash-burning businesses that show huge growth potential. Oftentimes, getting a loan from one of these banks requires several rounds of equity from brand-name venture capital funds, providing up to 25-35% of your most recent equity raise amount.

    Eventually, once your business is generating several millions of dollars in cash flow, an even wider spectrum of bank options opens up including some of the largest multinational banks.

    Venture debt funds

    More traditional venture debt offerings are very similar to those one would find at a bank. A three- to four-term loan structure is standard, though generally, rates are more expensive than banks with the flipside of a greater quantum of capital.

    Similarly, venture debt funds look for VC-backed companies or at least some form of institutional backing, rapid growth and high LTV/CAC. More bespoke options do exist as well, oftentimes branded as growth debt rather than venture debt, since they can provide capital to angel-backed or even fully bootstrapped businesses.

    Both of these options typically come at a cost of capital in the teens with interest-only periods and can be quite creative in structure. Founders should be aware that for both venture debt banks and funds, loan packages often come with warrants — effectively an option to purchase shares of the company in the future at a fixed price. Meaning, a small amount of dilution should be expected, though some lenders in this space pride themselves on being fully non-dilutive.

    Related: When is the Best Time to Raise Venture Debt – Here’s the Key

    Revenue-based financing (RBF)

    An increasingly popular non-dilutive financing solution for early-stage companies is technically not debt. Revenue-based financing functions more akin to a cash advance. Capital injections are repaid as a percentage of monthly revenues, as opposed to a fixed principal repayment schedule.

    If you’re looking for the fastest path to receiving capital, revenue-based financing is the solution. Many firms that use API integrations to your accounting and commerce data are able to aggregate that data through their underwriting systems and offer terms in 24-48 hours.

    While this capital tends to be on the more expensive side, speed and flexibility make up for it. Unlike other lenders, RBF facilities usually don’t require collateral or impose restrictive covenants that may limit your ability to grow.

    In terms of qualifying for an RBF, monthly revenue minimums can be as low as $10K with at least six months of operating history. The crucial requirement is to show evidence of recurring revenue. This usually means SaaS revenue with low churn, but can also be applied to most subscription-style businesses or even transactional ecommerce businesses that show a strong history of sticky customers.

    Non-bank cash flow lending

    Traditional private credit funds lend to established companies that have several years of traction under their belts. They generally are EBITDA or cash flow positive, some starting at as low as $3M annual EBITDA while others require $10M+. Businesses can be founder or sponsor-owned, and range from fast-growing later-stage tech companies to more traditional businesses and even turnaround financing for distressed situations.

    Use of capital covers a huge spectrum from funding leveraged buyouts or asset purchases to growth capital. Funding structures run the gamut, from senior secured to mezzanine debt (below senior lenders but above equity-holders) or even preferred equity in the capital stack. Rates are typically higher than banks from single digits to mid-teens, with three- to five-year terms. Closing fees and exit fees are common, as are covenants, and loan sizes are derived either holistically on the business fundamentals or as a function of cash flow.

    Non-bank asset-based lending (ABL)

    An ABL facility allows borrowers to use an asset as collateral for a line of credit or term loan. The asset can be as liquid as accounts receivable and inventory or as illiquid as real estate or a specific piece of equipment. Some of these loans can be secured with just one asset. For instance, a company needs a new warehouse and gets ABL financing for that, or it could be a combination like A/R and inventory.

    Asset-based lenders will often focus on a specific industry and require a minimum amount of whichever asset(s) they specialize in (accounts receivable, inventory, capital equipment, real estate or even intellectual property). Those assets can be held on the books as collateral or in some cases purchased outright at a discount (receivables factoring, for example).

    Unlike the other debt facilities covered, ABLs normally carve out a specific asset rather than taking a security interest on the entire company. This lowers the risk for borrowers and provides some flexibility to stack on additional debt, provided they can cover it. The advance rate (the amount of cash you get up-front) is usually between 50% and 90% of the value of the pledged assets.

    Related: The Old-School Solution to Cash Flow Problems Hiding in Your Receivables

    Questions to ask yourself

    As you consider which debt provider to approach, you need to think about the characteristics of the funding vehicle that will unlock the long-term potential of your business — while covering your short-term cash flow needs. Don’t forget that each lender has its own unique criteria. Fundraising without a clear plan of action can become a huge time suck for founders, pulling them away from operating the business. By strategizing upfront and learning the market, you can ensure that you only spend valuable time with lenders that can provide a real offer.

    Once the term sheets are in hand, you can now leverage them and pick the terms that are best for you. I’ll discuss that in my next article.

    Tim Makhauri

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  • 7 Tips to Start a Small Business as a Fresh College Graduate

    7 Tips to Start a Small Business as a Fresh College Graduate

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    As a recent college graduate, you have your degree and possibly some experience from an initial job or internship. But now, you’re interested in acting on your entrepreneurial ambitions and starting your own business.

    Starting a small business is an increasingly popular option for young people — 17% of college graduates run their own businesses while they’re still in college, and another 43% plan to do so shortly after graduating.

    Of course, starting your own business is a lot of work and comes with a huge learning curve. Let’s look at seven tips for starting your own small business as a college graduate.

    Related: 11 Steps to Starting a Successful Business in Your 20s

    1. Decide what kind of business you want to start

    Your first step should be to determine what kind of business you want to start and run. For instance, do you want to start a restaurant, offer a service-based business or do something else entirely?

    To determine the kind of business you want to start, think about business ideas you’ve had in the past, and consider the kind of work you like to do. You should also look for current opportunities in the market you can take advantage of. Above all else, consider what skills you have that might provide value to other people.

    2. Register your business

    Your next major step is to register your business. There’s a lot involved with this step, including:

    • Deciding on a business name: Your business name must be 100% unique to your state. For the best results, try to come up with a business name that sounds good, is easy to spell and won’t blend in with the crowd.

    • Apply for an EIN: An employer identification number (EIN) is a unique number assigned by the IRS to businesses operating in the U.S. You’ll need an EIN to open a business bank account and register your business.

    • Choose your business structure: Next, you’ll need to choose your business structure, like an LLC, corporation or sole proprietorship. The business structure you choose can affect what tax breaks you benefit from and how many employees you can hire.

    • Register your business: Finally, register with your state’s Secretary of State office. You’ll need to provide all the above information and pay some minor fees.

    3. Come up with a business plan

    Think of your business plan as the guiding document that outlines what your business is about, how it will achieve its goals and who it serves. A business plan helps guide your business, and it’s necessary if you want to receive financing from investors.

    Write a detailed business plan, including cash flow projections, target audience research and your expected marketing strategy. If you’re unsure where to start, you can use a free business plan template to get started.

    Related: The 3 Things College Taught Me About Being An Entrepreneur

    4. Identify your target audience

    At this stage, you need to determine your target audience. This is the group of people most likely to buy from your brand or subscribe to your services. You can do this by researching keywords, performing marketing research and doing competitor analysis.

    In any case, you need to know who your target audience is in terms of attributes like gender, age and buying habits. The better you know your target audience, the more effectively you can market directly to those prospective customers.

    5. Decide how you’ll finance the business

    No business can get off the ground without financing of some kind. Unless you have a nest egg you’ve saved up for this purpose, odds are you’ll need to seek out financing from other sources.

    You can do this in a few different ways:

    • Try applying for a business loan, either from a bank, credit union, the U.S. Small Business Administration or non-bank lender.

    • Appeal to venture capital firms and other investors by presenting them with a business plan and details about your company.

    • Ask friends and family members to pool money together, then promise to pay them back once you start turning a profit.

    Consider your finances and how you’ll acquire money before committing to any business idea.

    6. Keep your expenses low

    Even after acquiring funds, your business is unlikely to turn a profit for the first few years of operations. Therefore, it’s wise to keep your expenses low as you start your business. To cut down on costs, you can do things like:

    • Living with your parents, so you don’t have to pay rent.

    • Working a side job while diverting most of your effort toward your entrepreneurial endeavor.

    • Doing a lot of the hard work in your business yourself rather than hiring employees. This isn’t a great long-term strategy, but it may be necessary in the beginning.

    Related: Should Entrepreneurial College Students Go Big or Go Small After Graduation?

    7. Be ready to pivot

    Your initial business idea might not work out as you expect or hope, so you should always be ready to pivot or change your business plan. While it might be difficult or uncomfortable, navigating through hurdles and challenges will allow you to learn valuable lessons on how to run a business and identify mistakes to avoid in the future.

    For instance, let’s say you have an initial idea to provide one product to your target audience, but you discover that you can produce a better product for cheaper. It may make sense to switch your business plan and pivot toward the other product. Being flexible and adaptable are key attributes for all small business owners.

    There’s a lot that goes into starting a business, and almost half (47%) of all small businesses won’t last longer than five years. But by coming up with a plan and being strategic and flexible, you’ll increase your likelihood of success, and you can continue your entrepreneurial journey with the confidence to grow to greatness.

    Joseph Camberato

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  • 4 Crucial Indicators When Raising Venture Capital Funding

    4 Crucial Indicators When Raising Venture Capital Funding

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    In this day and age of shrinking VC funding for startups, you might think your business is the exception. You might think your business model is so ripe for growth with a little cash infusion that VCs should compete to see who can be your primary investor.

    Besides the fact that startup founders are rarely objective about their business prospects, it’s always good to get outside perspectives before heading down the potentially long, winding and soul-bruising road of VC pitches.

    Do you know who you might want to check with as a first step before you sink a bunch of time and energy into your pitch deck? Your marketing agency. (If you don’t have an agency, make a friend with an agency exec pronto.)

    If an agency isn’t your first choice as a sounding board — hear me out. I’ve worked with dozens and dozens of intelligent, ambitious startups since founding Playbook Media. Throughout those relationships, I’ve recognized a few significant indicators of whether your business is positioned to sprout unicorn wings with some extra resources — or whether you have some fundamental issues to address before you take your pitch to your version of Sand Hill Road.

    Related: The 10 Most Reliable Ways to Fund a Startup

    1. Burn threshold

    Also known as “burn multiple,” this metric takes a broad view of your business to calculate how much revenue you bring in for every dollar you spend. Divide your net burn by net new revenue for a given period, and you’ve got your number. (Anything over 2 these days, and you’ll have difficulty getting funding because your operational efficiency needs work.)

    Your agency partners won’t have all that data on hand to calculate your burn threshold, but there are plenty of ways they can help you improve it. They can reduce costs by lowering your average CAC (the cost of acquiring a customer). They can improve your customers’ average LTV (lifetime value) using lifecycle marketing, referral programs, upsell campaigns, etc. They can also run frequent forecasting models to ensure your strategic decisions are informed by current data and market conditions — which have been evolving rapidly.

    An agency can be beneficial in understanding your entire marketing picture and assessing where you can cut spending and suffer minimal revenue effects. Agencies proficient at MMM (media mix modeling, which I’ll touch on more in a bit) will be great partners in that endeavor.

    2. K Factor

    Your K Factor is your natural growth rate if you aren’t doing any marketing. It usually boils down to product-led growth and virality stemming from your existing customer base, site users, media outlets picking up on your momentum, etc. This isn’t specific to products, by the way; if you have a software service or platform, you can build tons of product-driven growth.

    Agencies can help you determine your K Factor if they’re proficient at understanding the impact of each of your advertising channels. Ideally, your agency is using media mix modeling to determine the incremental impact of each channel; when they analyze all of your channels and touchpoints and compare it to your overall growth, they’ll be able to isolate a baseline level of growth that isn’t explained by those channels. That’s your K Factor.

    The key to optimizing your K Factor is growth loops. Reforge defines growth loops as “closed systems where the inputs through some process generates more of an output that can be reinvested in the input.” This can go beyond organic loops, too — although K Factors are defined in the absence of ads, you can apply a little advertising budget to great effect if you’re working with growth loops. An example is taking a popular TikTok post from either your company’s or a relevant creator’s page and doing a Spark ad, which boosts the post and prompts more engagement that feeds the post’s organic momentum.

    Related: You Can’t Get VC Funding for Your Startup. Now, What?

    3. Channel reliance

    Despite recent setbacks (check out the last couple of quarterly earnings reports), Google and Facebook still dominate their competitors in gobbling advertising budgets, as we see time and time again with new clients coming to us to jump-start their growth.

    I think brands should almost never spend more than 50% of their budget on Google and Facebook (combined), which is easier said than done. There are several reasons for this, but the two most important are that Google and Facebook are getting increasingly expensive and that all companies should protect themselves against over-reliance on one channel that could get hit by, say, algorithm updates or outside influences like the iOS14 release.

    Beyond those reasons, there are clear warning signs that you should diversify your marketing channels ASAP:

    • Diminishing returns (CPAs keep climbing no matter what you try)
    • A lack of new users
    • Demographic trends shifting away from your core platforms (e.g., younger generations are now using TikTok instead of Google for their search engine of choice)
    • Business goals evolving out of alignment with your core channels

    If any of these sounds familiar, start carving out ideas and resources to reallocate the budget into new channels.

    Related: 9 Extremely Clever Startup Funding Stories

    4. Market penetration

    There are a few market-penetration scenarios that potential investors will hone in on right away (for better or for worse):

    • The market is small, and you’re dominating but might have a hard growth ceiling (example: Wild Earth)
    • The market is large but ripe for disruption, and you have one or more differentiators that will help you carve out market share (example: Dollar Shave Club)
    • The market is new, and you have the plan to build awareness for the market’s need and your solution (example: Fitbit, back in the early 2010s)

    Agencies can analyze and tell you what segment you might be in. For Wild Earth, an agency would help define the target market by segmenting data into silos (e.g., vegans, dog owners, owners who only feed their dogs dry food, owners who order online, and owners who will pay a premium for food and shipping). Cross-reference that relatively small audience that lives in the intersection of those segments with data like rising CACs and relatively high impression share. That company looks like a poor choice for investor funds unless you can leverage what you’re already doing well into other product categories.

    If things like search volume and available impression volume are curiously low, you may have a tremendous opportunity to build awareness for your product or service as the leader of a new market (or market segment). “Video rentals” probably had a ton of search volume when Netflix was in its early stages, but “online video rentals” or “video rentals by mail” were exponentially less popular queries that, when combined with the rising trends of online shopping and engagement, evidenced a market ripe for introduction. Brands like Peleton (spinning classes at home vs. spinning classes) and Rent the Runway (luxury fashion for rent vs. luxury fashion) represent similar scenarios that, when the story is told well, represent catnip for intelligent investors.

    The takeaway

    With startup funding relatively hard to come by, you should recognize that poor indicators in any of these areas put you out of position to leave a VC pitch with millions of dollars. But there’s hope yet. First, most issues in these areas are fixable. Second, fixing them now will mean you’ll be extraordinarily well-positioned to take full advantage of future VC investments when you have a better story.

    Bryan Karas

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  • Avoid These 4 Mistakes When Raising Venture Capital

    Avoid These 4 Mistakes When Raising Venture Capital

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Founders who raise venture capital tend to focus on optimizing around four things:

    • Getting to the next round of funding as quickly as possible

    • Increasing valuation

    • Maintaining their reality distortion field

    • Attracting and retaining employees who are motivated by potential future value rather than the current mission

    Notice that there isn’t anything on that list focused on what it takes to build a great business. Focusing on short-term outcomes and motivations can lead your startup down a dangerous path. Here’s how to avoid these pitfalls.

    Related: The Basics of Raising Capital for a Startup

    1. Don’t set an arbitrary deadline for your next fundraise

    When you raised your last round of funding, you probably expected that you would be ready for your next fundraise in 18-24 months. As that timeframe approaches, you might feel pressure to raise again from your board and current investors who are worried that you’re not making enough progress. If you succumb to this pressure before your startup is ready, you’re likely to increase spending to chase vanity metrics and top-line growth, even as your core metrics suffer and cash burn accelerates. You’ll quickly lose sight of product-market fit and pull precious resources away from potentially higher-value initiatives that need more time to play out.

    Set key milestones that will support another round of funding. React to data that suggests your original assumptions were off, and give yourself time to find a better growth path. Leave room for the possibility that your startup won’t reach venture scale, recognizing that it could still be personally and financially rewarding. Don’t treat getting to your next round of funding as a Hail Mary pass. The concept of “go big or go home” sucks if you’re the one going home.

    2. Avoid over-emphasizing valuation

    Founders often over-emphasize the importance of valuation, particularly in the early rounds of funding. Focusing on maintaining or increasing valuation when your business hasn’t achieved the proper milestones leads to longer fundraise cycles, putting your startup at risk. You might save yourself from some dilution only to end up with worse economics and less control in the future. Higher liquidation preferences, ratchets and valuation hurdles can limit future options if you need to raise or sell. And you’ll be more likely to attract mercenaries focused on maximizing their economic outcome rather than missionaries who believe in you and your vision.

    What’s more important than maintaining or raising your valuation? Adding high-quality investors who can best support you through the ups and downs of building your startup. Manage your cap table to protect the future economic outcome for you and your team and keep as many options open as possible.

    When it comes to startups in distress, valuation gets the headlines, and liquidation preferences and other investor-friendly terms get the cash. A flat or even a down round isn’t the end of the world if it keeps you and your team in the game and your future options open. Play the long game when it comes to valuation.

    Related: How a High Valuation Can Run Your Business Into the Ground

    3. Don’t get trapped by the reality distortion field

    Founders have to believe in opportunities that others often can’t see. It’s the fuel that powers you through obstacles and allows you to leap into the unknown. But that power to believe can also be a trap when your best-laid plans run awry and your startup isn’t hitting your milestones.

    Too many founders believe that they must put on a brave face for their employees, their board and the press, regardless of their startup’s struggles. They worry that any crack in the perception of inevitability would lead to the downfall of their startup. That’s the trap.

    You can truly believe in the future opportunity ahead of you while being honest about the roadblocks and challenges on the path to getting there. If you don’t open up to your employees about where your startup is falling short, you’re no longer aligned, and they won’t solve the right problems or exploit the most important opportunities. If you hide challenges from your board, they can’t help you along the way, and they will pull back when you surprise them with bad news.

    4. Hire missionaries, not mercenaries

    Sixty-five percent of VC-backed startups fail to return 1x of capital. When you hire employees, if you overemphasize the potential value of stock options in their compensation package, you risk attracting mercenaries that are more motivated by the potential of future riches than in helping you realize your vision.

    Even for the most successful startups, the path to creating real value in your equity is never straight up and to the right. Mercenaries will jump ship at the first sign of trouble, in search of the next startup that might be on a stronger path to the mythic unicorn status.

    Hire people who, first and foremost, believe in your vision and are excited about the challenges you’re trying to solve. It’s easier to step outside your reality distortion field when you have a team ready to grab an oar and row in the same direction. You will face this moment. Who will be in the trench with you? Who will be the first to jump out and run away?

    Related: How to Get Funding: The Dos and Don’ts of Raising Capital From Investors

    When you jump on the venture capital flywheel, you instantly feel the pressure to shorten your time horizon, thinking only of the next fundraise and the sprint to get there. Short-term execution is critical, but don’t optimize your decisions around the fundraise cycle — or you’ll miss the long-term goals that help you build something great.

    Eric Ashman

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  • Drone delivery start-up Skye Air Mobility raises seed funding from Chiratae Ventures, Mamaearth, Curefit founders 

    Drone delivery start-up Skye Air Mobility raises seed funding from Chiratae Ventures, Mamaearth, Curefit founders 

     

    Drone delivery start-up Skye Air Mobility has picked up $1.7 million in seed funding from Chiratae Ventures, with participation from Lead Angels, O2 Angels, Agility Ventures, LetsVenture, and others. Leading angel investors, including Ankit Nagori (Curefit Co-founder), Varun Alagh (Mamaearth Co-founder), Rajeev Chitrabhanu (MD-CEO of JM Financial), among others also joined the round.

    Skye Air, which currently operates in eight cities, wants to double its footprint in the next 24 months. It plans to use the funds to drive greater efficiency across verticals, bring in faster deliveries, reduce costs and carbon emissions, as well as improve accessibility to locations that are difficult to reach by road. Earlier in March, Skye Air had announced that it plans to expand its fleet size to ~120 drones and traverse 1 million kilometres in the next 12-15 months. 

    “This investment comes at a time when we are intensifying our efforts to expand our services and collaborations in the Indian market. We are convinced that the new funding will facilitate our team to open untouched channels, allowing us to bring drone delivery services to more customers in India and beyond,” Ankit Kumar, CEO, Skye Air Mobility, stated. 

     “We also believe the investment, which is so far the largest in the delivery-focused drone segment, is testament to the fact that Skye Air is leading the way of drone delivery technology in the country with its proprietary SaaS technology,” he added. 

    Founded in 2020, the Delhi-based start-up offers drones for the delivery of retail and ecommerce products, postal services, and food products. It also provides last-mile drone delivery services for healthcare, defense, medical and ambulance supplies, and military supplies. Skye Air claims to have completed over 2,200+ BVLOS flights delivering more than 720,000 packages of products, covering an aerial distance of 11,800+ kilometres.

    Its client-partners include Flipkart, Dunzo, Swiggy, Redcliffe Labs, Aster Healthcare, Blue Dart, Curefoods (where Ankit Nagori is CEO) and many others. “We are excited to partner with Skye Air Mobility to disrupt the first and last mile logistics in an efficient and climate-friendly manner, beginning with the healthcare domain, and expanding into other sectors with its logistics and SaaS solutions,” Mandeep Julka, Vice President – Investments, Chiratae Ventures, said in a statement. 

    The new drone rules and PLI scheme introduced by the government have been a shot in the arm for homegrown drone start-ups. The Indian drone delivery industry could potentially grow to $18 billion as per estimates. 

    Dhianu Das, Founder, Agility Ventures, said, “Drone delivery is increasingly gaining ground across logistics providers to tackle inefficiencies in last-mile delivery, and is expected to grow at more than 50 per cent CAGR over the next six years. We believe Skye Air has a head start in the same and is poised to be a leader in the industry.”

    Also read: Early Flipkart backer Chiratae Ventures marks first close of maiden growth fund at Rs 759 cr

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  • 20 Indian start-ups bag funding of over $1 mn in Dubai expo

    20 Indian start-ups bag funding of over $1 mn in Dubai expo

    A total of 20 Indian start-ups – all portfolio companies of Agility Ventures, a global angel investor network – raised over a million dollars cumulatively at the recently-concluded GITEX Global event at Dubai. 

    During the week-long tech expo, which is held annually at Dubai, these start-ups also made over 50 potential business connections and managed to bag more than $100,000 worth of potential business. 

    Some of the start-ups that received significant interest at the expo include BattRe, Kidbea, Brainwired, Fixigo, Glamyo Health and Marj Tech. Further, the raised funds will be utilised by the start-ups to expand operations, enter new markets and launch new products. 

    Agility Ventures was launched in June 2020 by angel investor Dhianu Das and chartered accountant Prashant Narang as an open platform for new investors, who could learn about start-up investing and angel investing. The aim was to democratise angel investing and allowing potential investors to experience a new asset class – start-ups. 

    Agility has got approval from capital markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) for a Category 1, AIF – Alternative Investment Fund — for a ₹450 crore fund and since the start of the year is investing through the same in many start-ups. 

    Spread across over 25 chapters in India, Canada, the UAE, Australia and the UK, Agility currently has a network of over 2,500 angel investors from across the globe and over 35 start-ups under its banner.  

    It invests in high-growth, early-stage start-ups across sectors such as education, technology, healthcare, electric vehicles, robotics, agri-tech and manufacturing. Some of the portfolio companies include Glamyo Health, Battre, Power Gummies, FlipHealth, Gobbly, Pumpumpum, Vanity Wagon, SkyeAir, Monrow and Tagz. 

    “The success of our portfolio companies at this global event is testimony of our start-up selection process and nurturing,” said Das, Co-founder, Agility Ventures. 

    More importantly, he further added that while this year 20 portfolio companies of Agility participated in the global expo, the network aims to send at least 50 start-ups in the next edition of the event, which provides tech start-ups the opportunity to network with the ecosystem, potential investors as well as government agencies.
     

    Also read: Tax incentives and breaks can help start-ups innovate: NASSCOM report

    Also read: Indian Angel Network takes a step closer to backing 500 start-ups with new Rs 1000 cr fund

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  • New Hallo Report Finds Just 40 Black Founders Raised Venture Capital in Q4 2020

    New Hallo Report Finds Just 40 Black Founders Raised Venture Capital in Q4 2020

    Press Release
    –


    updated: Jan 20, 2021


    LOS ANGELES, January 20, 2021 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Diversity recruiting platform Hallo has published the findings from their latest research report — Black Founder Funding Q4 2020. 

    This is Hallo’s second quarterly report in their Black Founder Funding series which aims to track the funding raised by startups led by Black founders. 

    Last year, as nationwide protests against racial injustice began, many venture capital firms acknowledged the problem — less than 1% of founders who receive venture funding are Black, despite making up over 13% of the U.S. population. Many outlined initiatives and action plans aimed at tackling this problem. Hallo’s objective with these reports is to create a benchmark around the progress being made towards fulfilling those promises. 

    This new report analyzed 1,537 companies that raised a round of capital between Oct. 1, 2020, and Dec. 31, 2020, with a total funding amount between $1,000,000 and $50,000,000. 

    Hallo’s research found that out of the 1,537 companies analyzed, 40 were led by Black founders. The companies combined raised $12,368,156,928 with $260,844,766 being invested in Black founder-led startups. 

    Commenting on the findings, Hallo’s founder and CEO, Vern Howard said: “for those VC’s who simply posted their “we stand in solidarity” message across social media back in June, yet haven’t taken any meaningful action to back Black founders, you should be ashamed of yourselves. The Black founder community doesn’t need VCs to just say they stand in solidarity. What we need is for you to stop talking, start listening, and start investing and supporting Black founders. That’s the only thing that will truly move the needle in creating equal funding opportunities.” 

    Hallo plans to continue publishing these reports every quarter. Howard said: “Our objective here is to keep a pulse on progress being made so we can ensure that all the awareness and momentum that was built last year doesn’t slowly fade away.” 

    To access the report’s findings, visit here.

    About Hallo 

    Hallo is a diversity recruiting platform that helps connect college students across the country with leading companies like Apple and Google. Hallo has raised  $1.9m in funding from Canaan Partners, Tribe Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and many other leading VCs. 

    Methodology: 

    The numbers represent the global startups who raised a round of capital between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, 2020. The total funding criteria was $1,000,000 – $50,000000.  This data was sourced from Crunchbase. Companies with a founder CEO’s who were Black were included. 

    Media: 

    Holly@FrontLines.io 

    Source: Hallo

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