Sramana Mitra: What stage did you invest in Arkin? Sandeep Singhal: We came in at the very start. We seeded the company. We expect to see more of this going forward. It’s just very efficient if the go-to market strategy is being developed in the US with team members that are based here and the
Entrepreneurs can learn a lot about investors from their process of evaluating the funding-worthiness of startups. Within the Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum, I have asked investors to talk a bit about their own investment portfolios. What have you invested in and why? When did the entrepreneur come to you? At what stage and with what
Entrepreneurs are invited to the 390th FREE online 1Mby1M mentoring roundtable on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/8:30 p.m. India IST. If you are a serious entrepreneur, register to “pitch” and sell your business idea. You’ll receive straightforward feedback, advice on next steps, and answers to any of your questions. Others can register
Sramana Mitra: The India e-commerce market is an active market, but it still operates on this cash-on-delivery mode. Are there indications that this is going to change and people will feel more comfortable with providing credit cards on the internet? That’s going to accelerate the trends. Sasha Mirchandani: It has to change. It’s a mindset
Rob Schultz, Managing Partner at Serra Ventures, discusses catering to startups in under-served geographies. His point of view aligns with what we’ve heard from some other investors.
Nathan Lustig: Another company that fits that model is a company called GroupRaise, which went through Startup Chile. They’re originally from Houston. They now have an office with eight people in Houston, about 15 people in Santiago, and about 40 in the Philippines. What they do is they allow anybody to book an event at
Sramana Mitra: One thing you haven’t mentioned about this company is the business model and the monetization. What validation did you have that these 500,000 downloads were actually converting into paying customers? Sandeep Singhal: Good point. They had a $10 charge for deploying their client for curl. It was a command line interface that you
Sramana Mitra: Which companies would you call out as some of the best companies in the Indian tech industry today and the most likely ones to have successful exits? Sasha Mirchandani: Let me break that into two answers. I’ll talk about companies that I like in no particular order. I can think of Tracto. We