Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Padmaja Ruparel, President, Indian Angel Network (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: How many investments have you made in the past 12 months?

Padmaja: Within the past 12 months we would have done five.

Irina: And how much do you usually invest per deal?

Padmaja: We’re touching $400,000 to $500,000 per investment. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Padmaja Ruparel, President, Indian Angel Network (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Padmaja: There are other entrepreneurs whose plans we look at and play the devil’s advocate, punch some holes, and have the entrepreneurs really improve their presentations and really make them more investable. Or make them more palatable to investors. We make them think through their numbers, operations, and even valuations, which can really be over the top. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Padmaja Ruparel, President, Indian Angel Network (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: How many investments resulted from that competition?

Padmaja: This whole program was really to inspire entrepreneurship in the country. A large number of them benefited from the mentoring. In fact, every single person who was declined was given specific feedback as to why he or she was declined, and given suggestions, and relevant connections were made; that is, relevant investors and debt financing organizations were introduced. In short, we did all what we could help with. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Padmaja Ruparel, President, Indian Angel Network (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: What are your current sources of deal flow?

Padmaja: There are various sources. One is, of course, our own members. For each of them, if you look at our website and go through the profiles of our investors, you can see that they themselves are brands in their own right. So, a lot of entrepreneurs connect with them and send them their plans and, therefore, they send it on because they basically joined the network to help reduce risks, leverage collective domain expertise, and participate in the co-investment process. One source of deals is clearly the members themselves. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Padmaja Ruparel, President, Indian Angel Network (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the eighth interview in our series on seed financing and angel investing. I am talking to Padmaja Ruparel, president of Indian Angel Network. She is based in New Delhi, India.

Irina: Hi, Padmaja. Let’s start with your telling us a little bit about yourself.

Padmaja: I have been in the early-stage entrepreneur ecosystem in India for over a decade now. It was something I did in addition to working for a software company as head of Indian corporate communications strategy. I operationalized The Indus Entrepreneur’s (TiE) Delhi chapter back in 1998. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: M. Todd Dean, Keiretsu Forum, Northwest Chapter President (Part 7)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Do you have a success story to share?

Todd: The one that stands out is Napo Pharmaceuticals, which went public in a 24-month time frame. The investors got a fifteen times return. That was nice.

We’ve had a lot of positive returns on the real estate over the past ten years. Obviously, that has not been the case over the past year and half to two years. But from 2000 to 2008, we had great returns on real estate. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: M. Todd Dean, Keiretsu Forum, Northwest Chapter President (Part 6)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Do you have a sector preference?

Todd: I’d say it goes across the board. But we sold more medical device companies last year. I don’t know why, but we haven’t seen as many this year. It was just kind of one of those years where for whatever reasons, we started seeing more medical device companies.

This year, I’d say it’s much more across the board. In previous years, we’ve looked at a lot more real estate. We’re just starting to look at real estate again. It’s a roller coaster; it goes up and down in different sectors. We haven’t seen as much clean tech and sustainability stuff lately. Two years ago, we saw a lot of it. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: M. Todd Dean, Keiretsu Forum, Northwest Chapter President (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Do you pay attention to the total available market (TAM) for companies’ products or services?

Todd: Absolutely. We’ve invested as high as $13 million in a company. That was a company where we were swinging for the fences, and we were hoping that that would be a grand slam, a home run, and the jury’s still out on that particular investment. >>>