Startup Stages: From the Initial Concept to the Final Product
Pearl is one of the country's youngest female venture capital general partners. She has nearly a decade of financial services experience in Austin, New York, and London, working for endowment funds, investment banks, and private equity funds. She returned to India after her global stints and founded Eximius Ventures in 2020 to pursue her passion for fostering tech led innovation.
For the past ten years, traditional venture capital funding has been expanding in the Indian startup ecosystem. However, thousands of new businesses enter the ecosystem each year, the VC game and investment playbooks have undergone significant changes, and the FinTech industry has evolved from a newcomer to the norm in the financial services industry over the last ten years.
Micro VCs, & Financing firms are becoming more Prevalent in the Indian Startup Ecosystem
The Indian FinTech market is a one-of-a-kind microcosm of entrepreneurs, established institutions, BigTech companies, and regulatory entities all cooperating to support its growth. However, it has sparked interest in a wide range of financial, insurance, and technological fields, including FinTech. Because it will enter a pre-seed stage while a creator is still conceptualising an idea and validating the POC, the founding team and founders are the most important component of the search criteria. In order to find the one the client's desire they can therefore refine it. These pre-seed stages are the two characteristics that truly matter the most, and the rest will arrive afterwards. However, the majority of micro VC funds will only have one or two on the market. On the other hand, some micro VC funds are particularly sector focused and may have experience in deep tech or gaming.
Challenges for Early Stage Business
Investors are frequently used to fund the expansion of early stage businesses. These investment funds, however, are prohibitively expensive.It vividly recalls making the decision to start a business at the age of eight. They were also rising early in order to truly hustle and make a life for themselves. Due to the fact that these entrepreneurs needed assistance, our community as a whole had to develop and flourish in order for us to emerge from the situation. Now, this community no longer exists. But in a way, the group of Indian businessmen could relate to at the time was very distinct. It could think of no other way to give back other than through our businesses.
Collaboration & Measurable Accomplishments
They have been making roughly one to two investments each month, therefore it is true that being able to return to India and establish a fund within two years while having made 20 investments is something that would view as a countable feat. One and a half years after the first investment. Additionally, despite the fundraising winter, none of our portfolio companies have yet closed their doors. In fact, one of them has gone ahead and completed two rounds. Which have also observed three issues with zero mortality.
So overall, looking back, it's a very fruity kind journey, to see how things are shaping up in the initial days, terms of upcoming collaborations, the idea is to continue to sort of invest in 15 to 20 more companies out of this fund, while taking bets on some of the early winners that are coming out. But outside of that, we've also sort of created an entire ecosystem around gaming. And the idea would be to sort of do investments as well as, community collaborations in that space to be able to propel the gaming community.
In addition to that we also have for student venture partners that we work with, to be able to propel student entrepreneurs to come out of it is and bits and those sort of colleges. Even if that is already taking place, many of them are not receiving the proper funding or mentorship to truly enter the real ecosystem. Therefore, it wish to create these avenues for them to communicate with our campus representatives. They are especially excited about these two areas because, in our opinion, they will significantly increase the number of ecosystems that receive attention compared to other areas.
Importance of Financial Modeling for an Organization
Financial Modelling appears to be really essential. When you look over into last year, in 2021, the majority of investors made investments motivated by FOMO, it can be very difficult to separate the merits of an investment from the emotions that you're feeling while sort of putting down, and that's where being able to put everything on an Excel and model it out and see what the merits are of a particular deal has been very important for us.
This ambition to invest more in order to be able to sort of showcase yourself is nothing more than a very deep fear and emotion. This year's investment has more than doubled from last year and predicted that half of the companies will lay off employees. And it was all becoming very obvious. Due to the amount of capital available during that time, growth will start to slow down after months of age. And as one can sort of see now, those things are beginning to occur.
Web3 & Gaming
It's going to be tremendous for gaming; as the quality of the games that has being developed was incredible. There are some broad tendencies, but three years ago you weren't seeing those kinds of games coming out of India. Out of the 400 million players there are just 20 million were regular payers among Indian gamers. However, statistics from the Play store indicates that there are 100 million payers. The majority of the population also plays for four to five hours each day, thus the market's engagement, retention, and total growth are only going to increase from here. Because if technology were an industry that was just emerging today, as gamers are playing extremely simple games like Candy Crush or possibly Farmville before they wish to play more complex games. It is predicted that this industry will expand by at least two to three times in the upcoming year. And for that it be supported, investors will need to keep up with it. Therefore quite eager to invest in these various industries.
Gaming wasn't always that way because it was primarily console based, necessitating the purchase and installation of physical hardware. Furthermore, the majority of homes occasionally lacked more than one television. As a result, you are unable to setup it in your living room TV because the entire family uses it, where people did not feel as invested in gaming prior to the development of smartphones, in contrast to how they do when watching entertainment in a theatre or other public venues, but decent bandwidth smartphones today are capable enough right where you could run huge games. However, we've noticed that gadget quality has improved over the last three years, and that more people are holding highquality smartphones in their hands. They have the same level of involvement, joy, and dopamine release while gaming as they do when they are not.
Video Games: A Greater form of Entertainment
Video games are now more popular than movies because they allow you to actively participate and are a fantastic form of entertainment. Advances in technology, as well as trends such as streaming services and mobile gaming are now transforming the future of video games. The content in today's games is of high quality and has the potential to influence. As a result, video games are becoming more popular than movies because they are a great form of entertainment in which you can actively participate.
For the past ten years, traditional venture capital funding has been expanding in the Indian startup ecosystem. However, thousands of new businesses enter the ecosystem each year, the VC game and investment playbooks have undergone significant changes, and the FinTech industry has evolved from a newcomer to the norm in the financial services industry over the last ten years.
Micro VCs, & Financing firms are becoming more Prevalent in the Indian Startup Ecosystem
The Indian FinTech market is a one-of-a-kind microcosm of entrepreneurs, established institutions, BigTech companies, and regulatory entities all cooperating to support its growth. However, it has sparked interest in a wide range of financial, insurance, and technological fields, including FinTech. Because it will enter a pre-seed stage while a creator is still conceptualising an idea and validating the POC, the founding team and founders are the most important component of the search criteria. In order to find the one the client's desire they can therefore refine it. These pre-seed stages are the two characteristics that truly matter the most, and the rest will arrive afterwards. However, the majority of micro VC funds will only have one or two on the market. On the other hand, some micro VC funds are particularly sector focused and may have experience in deep tech or gaming.
Challenges for Early Stage Business
Investors are frequently used to fund the expansion of early stage businesses. These investment funds, however, are prohibitively expensive.It vividly recalls making the decision to start a business at the age of eight. They were also rising early in order to truly hustle and make a life for themselves. Due to the fact that these entrepreneurs needed assistance, our community as a whole had to develop and flourish in order for us to emerge from the situation. Now, this community no longer exists. But in a way, the group of Indian businessmen could relate to at the time was very distinct. It could think of no other way to give back other than through our businesses.
Collaboration & Measurable Accomplishments
They have been making roughly one to two investments each month, therefore it is true that being able to return to India and establish a fund within two years while having made 20 investments is something that would view as a countable feat. One and a half years after the first investment. Additionally, despite the fundraising winter, none of our portfolio companies have yet closed their doors. In fact, one of them has gone ahead and completed two rounds. Which have also observed three issues with zero mortality.
So overall, looking back, it's a very fruity kind journey, to see how things are shaping up in the initial days, terms of upcoming collaborations, the idea is to continue to sort of invest in 15 to 20 more companies out of this fund, while taking bets on some of the early winners that are coming out. But outside of that, we've also sort of created an entire ecosystem around gaming. And the idea would be to sort of do investments as well as, community collaborations in that space to be able to propel the gaming community.
In addition to that we also have for student venture partners that we work with, to be able to propel student entrepreneurs to come out of it is and bits and those sort of colleges. Even if that is already taking place, many of them are not receiving the proper funding or mentorship to truly enter the real ecosystem. Therefore, it wish to create these avenues for them to communicate with our campus representatives. They are especially excited about these two areas because, in our opinion, they will significantly increase the number of ecosystems that receive attention compared to other areas.
Importance of Financial Modeling for an Organization
Financial Modelling appears to be really essential. When you look over into last year, in 2021, the majority of investors made investments motivated by FOMO, it can be very difficult to separate the merits of an investment from the emotions that you're feeling while sort of putting down, and that's where being able to put everything on an Excel and model it out and see what the merits are of a particular deal has been very important for us.
This ambition to invest more in order to be able to sort of showcase yourself is nothing more than a very deep fear and emotion. This year's investment has more than doubled from last year and predicted that half of the companies will lay off employees. And it was all becoming very obvious. Due to the amount of capital available during that time, growth will start to slow down after months of age. And as one can sort of see now, those things are beginning to occur.
Web3 & Gaming
It's going to be tremendous for gaming; as the quality of the games that has being developed was incredible. There are some broad tendencies, but three years ago you weren't seeing those kinds of games coming out of India. Out of the 400 million players there are just 20 million were regular payers among Indian gamers. However, statistics from the Play store indicates that there are 100 million payers. The majority of the population also plays for four to five hours each day, thus the market's engagement, retention, and total growth are only going to increase from here. Because if technology were an industry that was just emerging today, as gamers are playing extremely simple games like Candy Crush or possibly Farmville before they wish to play more complex games. It is predicted that this industry will expand by at least two to three times in the upcoming year. And for that it be supported, investors will need to keep up with it. Therefore quite eager to invest in these various industries.
Gaming wasn't always that way because it was primarily console based, necessitating the purchase and installation of physical hardware. Furthermore, the majority of homes occasionally lacked more than one television. As a result, you are unable to setup it in your living room TV because the entire family uses it, where people did not feel as invested in gaming prior to the development of smartphones, in contrast to how they do when watching entertainment in a theatre or other public venues, but decent bandwidth smartphones today are capable enough right where you could run huge games. However, we've noticed that gadget quality has improved over the last three years, and that more people are holding highquality smartphones in their hands. They have the same level of involvement, joy, and dopamine release while gaming as they do when they are not.
Video Games: A Greater form of Entertainment
Video games are now more popular than movies because they allow you to actively participate and are a fantastic form of entertainment. Advances in technology, as well as trends such as streaming services and mobile gaming are now transforming the future of video games. The content in today's games is of high quality and has the potential to influence. As a result, video games are becoming more popular than movies because they are a great form of entertainment in which you can actively participate.
