Business Incubator Series: John McIntyre, Citrix Startup Accelerator (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: How much funding support does Enterprise Ireland usually provide to those entrepreneurs who are qualified?

John: It’s in the low hundreds of thousands. If you go to the Enterprise Ireland site, it specifies that it changes with time. Obviously, over the past few years, Ireland’s gone through some changes. In fact, Ireland’s looking to entrepreneurship more than ever to get them through their recessionary period that was caused mostly by land speculation and real estate speculation. >>>

Business Incubator Series: John McIntyre, Citrix Startup Accelerator (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

I am talking to John McIntyre, senior director at Citrix Startup Accelerator, which is an outgrowth of Citrix Labs, an internal research and innovation organization at Citrix with offices in Sydney (Australia) and Redmond (Washington), as well as a presence in Cambridge (UK), Santa Clara (California) and Fort Lauderdale (Florida).

Lunched in December 2010, Citrix Startup Accelerator is looking to invest and accelerate early stage businesses that are doing cutting-edge work in software technology, especially in the areas of mobile and cloud computing. They have a physical location in Santa Clara, but it’s a global program. They don’t want to be seen as exclusive to Silicon Valley. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Pravin Gandhi, Seedfund – Mumbai, Bangalore, New Delhi, India (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Vandana Upadhyay

Irina: You invest not only in technology companies but in companies in other sectors, right?

Pravin: Yes. India has many opportunities and challenges; technology adoption is not the best here. There are enough opportunities in different business models on how to do things better and more efficiently. We have done a bunch of hospitals in class B and class C cities. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Pravin Gandhi, Seedfund – Mumbai, Bangalore, New Delhi, India (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Vandana Upadhyay

Irina: How many people do you have working in your incubator now?

Pravin: We have four outside advisors who work once a month or once a week, with these companies depending on the requirements. We have somebody who understands retail, somebody who understands the Internet, or somebody who understands media. The appropriate people get assigned to the companies. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Pravin Gandhi, Seedfund – Mumbai, Bangalore, New Delhi, India (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Vandana Upadhyay

Irina: How do you find your current deals?

Pravin: We have been in the game since 1990. Individually, we are quite well known in the early-stage business. Because we have been around, we have a very good network with investment bankers, and we are very active in TiE. The CarWale deal came to us through an angel who had invested in this company that was also known to me. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Pravin Gandhi, Seedfund – Mumbai, Bangalore, New Delhi, India (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Vandana Upadhyay

Pravin: So, we went with an idea of a $50 million fund. It turned out to be quite easy to raise and within six months we were all ready to go. We had interest from variety of funds. We could have raised more money but we didn’t because for us this itself was an entrepreneurial challenge to prove that this concept works. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Pravin Gandhi, Seedfund – Mumbai, Bangalore, New Delhi, India (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Vandana Upadhyay

I am talking to Pravin Gandhi, a founding partner at Seedfund, which is one of the India’s leading early-stage venture capital funds, with operations in Mumbai, Bangalore and New Delhi.

Seedfund was founded in 2006 by Bharati Jacob, Mahesh Murthy, and Pravin Gandhi.  In 2010, they raised Seedfund II, which is a $54 million fund. The fund also runs its own incubator.

Irina: Hi, Pravin. Let’s start with your personal background. Where are you from and where did you receive your education? How did you arrive at this point in your life?

Pravin: I was born in Mumbai and did my schooling here. I did my undergraduate work at Cornell and then returned to India after I finished my undergraduate degree. Then I worked in a couple of companies because I really wanted to be an entrepreneur. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Bruce Wright And Molly Gilbert, Arizona Center for Innovation – Tucson (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Where do your revenues come from?

Bruce: First of all, we get grants from the university and other folks. We also charge fees to our clients. It’s on a sliding scale. In our first phase, startups pay a modest fee.

It increases in Mentored Launch, and then when they come into residence, they pay more fees. If they want to stay on longer beyond that, then they would move to regular lease rates. We generate revenue from our client fees, but that’s probably only about a third of our total budget. >>>