1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Naganand Doraswamy, Managing Partner and Founder at Ideaspring Capital (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Our observation is that all deep tech out of India is going to be global companies, even the non-enterprise facing. What we are seeing though is people can validate with customers in India. They can get a dozen customers, get the product validated, get some revenue before coming out to the Valley. Especially in COVID, entrepreneurs love the fact that people are willing to buy without meeting them.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Naganand Doraswamy, Managing Partner and Founder at Ideaspring Capital (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What is the check size that you like to write?

Naganand Doraswamy: When we started the first fund, we said anywhere around $500K to $750K. Then we would participate with another $500K in the following round. The target was about $1.25 million per company. The second is double the size.

We’re looking at $2.5 million total per company. The first check can be anywhere from $750,000 to $1.75 million. We realized that our companies needed a little bit more runway to show the traction necessary to raise the next round. $1.25 million is too small an amount to make some decisions in companies.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Naganand Doraswamy, Managing Partner and Founder at Ideaspring Capital (Part 1)

Naganand Doraswamy, Managing Partner and Founder at Ideaspring Capital, adds to our thesis on great investment opportunities within the sub $100 million exit space.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by having you introduce yourself as well as Ideaspring.

Naganand Doraswamy: I grew up in Bangalore. I did my undergrad there and then came to the US in 1999 to do my Masters in Virginia Tech. After my Master’s, I moved up to Boston. I joined FTP Software where I wrote the first implementation of IP security of Windows 95.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With BV Jagadeesh, Managing Partner at KAAJ Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Excellent. Is there one that you have done from India that you would like to discuss a little bit?

BV Jagadeesh: Let me take Futura. They used to be employees of MindTree. They approached me through some common connection. They hadn’t started yet at that time. They were thinking of getting into this analytics space in heavy engineering areas. Even though they came from a services background, they had the desire to do a product business.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With BV Jagadeesh, Managing Partner at KAAJ Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Great! In terms of geography, you’ve invested in India and Silicon Valley. What is your group’s investment thesis in terms of geography?

BV Jagadeesh: Primarily because I like to spend more time with the entrepreneurs, I like to do more companies out of Silicon Valley. My heart is still in India. I do have about two or three companies in India. I want to limit myself with that. Otherwise, it starts to eat into my morning and evening times which are very important to me. SVQuad is primarily centered around US-based companies.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With BV Jagadeesh, Managing Partner at KAAJ Ventures (Part 1)

BV Jagadeesh, Managing Partner at KAAJ Ventures, and a super accomplished serial entrepreneur, discusses funding Bootstrapping with Services ventures.

Sramana Mitra: BV is a very well-known and accomplished entrepreneur in Silicon Valley and I’ve known him for a very long time. It’s great to have you here.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deepak Gupta, Founding Partner at WEH Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: One of the trends that we see in the Indian small funds is that some of them are exiting their investments into the Series C or Series D. Is that something you are doing?

Deepak Gupta: That is certainly a path for us. Unless we keep investing substantially in the later rounds, it doesn’t make sense to keep holding a position because you do get diluted. We have raised funds from domestic investors who have a shorter lifecycle view on investments.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deepak Gupta, Founding Partner at WEH Ventures (Part 1)

Deepak Gupta, Founding Partner at WEH Ventures, discusses his fund’s pre-seed and seed funding strategy for Indian startups.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a bit about yourself as well as WEH Ventures.

Deepak Gupta: I had been part of the venture ecosystem over the last 20 years off and on. In the last six or seven years, I have been running a fund called WEH Ventures. We are now on our second fund. We do pre-seed to seed investments which are primarily focused on the Indian market. We have a few companies that are facing overseas. We are fairly sector-agnostic.