For someone who is not a part of the venture ecosystem in India, the tag line does look like a simplistic solution to how we could approach venture investing. However I do believe this is the first step towards trying to demystify something more complex.
For the uninitiated – LetsVenture is a marketplace that helps early stage startups discover investors and syndicate the fund-raise on the platform. Over the last 4 years, we have learnt, adapted and delivered to what the market asked us. The early stage marketplace today offers a founder :
- The ability to stay private and stealth while she raises her angel round
- Personalized connects to investors based on their sector expertise and investment thesis
- Syndicate their round along with complete paperwork support.
Till date, we have enabled 135 businesses raise over USD 50 Mn on the platform.
Almost a third of the founders are now actively looking to raise their next round of funding. Almost all of them need customer connects. A very obvious need for all angel funded companies which is unaddressed today emerges from this – access to alternate capital, which could also be strategic and could bring in business and customer connects.
On the supply side, in the beginning of 2017, we discovered that there was a trend emerging – of family offices and corporates now starting to look at startups as an asset class. At LetsVenture, we are firm believers in the paradigm that true value is unlocked by breaking down information asymmetry, which aligns with the core objectives of marketplaces. In the last 6 months we have met more than 75 family offices – and the core need we heard was thesis-based discovery, ease of information access, governance and a safe space for conversations. This was the objective of launching LV Titans.
LV Titans represents a closed door, curated offering for the Titans of the business world – you can call them old age economy or large business houses - but these are veterans and stalwarts who have built large, sustainable, profitable businesses in the pre-venture world. A group of industrialists that has high business acumen, connects to other businesses, government and regulators and who are looking to now diversify their investments into the emerging startup space. The handshakes that could happen are obvious – and we want to be the ones who make this easy, pleasant and genuine.
LV Titans is almost like a new company being launched – we are leveraging our knowledge of the network effect we have built around the early stage for startup curation in the past five year period. However, we do believe there will be new learning around the LV Titans – learning’s which we will bring back to make the offering stronger. Our vision is to build a curated space for private conversations around startups as an asset class. A first step in this direction was the formal launch of LV Titans.
I will continue to share what we learn, what we hear and what we deliver – its almost like building LetsVenture all over again! A step actually taken is better than ten we dream to take. As always, I am the unapologetic enthusiastic entrepreneur hoping this will change how Venture Investing grows in India. I welcome your thoughts, suggestions and feedback as we add this offering in our bid to create a healthy, vibrant venture investing ecosystem in India.
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