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.

This competition was a kind of ecosystem build-up. A whole lot of them received investments from banks, from grants, from VCs, by networks; it came at all levels. We did have people who even wanted $8 million, which is not really an angel bite, but we took the time to vet their plans, have them mentored, and bring in the relevant VCs.

Interestingly, quite a few angel investments are coming through – we are now looking at closing about three or four of them, if not more – they all needed help. They needed mentoring help, rebuilding their strategies, or changing them. We had some interesting ones where we suggested to them that they should close down some part of the business to focus on the other, we’ve shown them where the margins are really coming in.

Irina: How do you work with the investment advisories? What is your relationship with them like?

Padmaja: That’s a simple one. There are not very many angel groups in India. The smaller investment advisories and even the larger ones have groups working on smaller investment bites. So, they connect with us with their clients’ plans and have them present to us, and we take it forward if it’s interesting. That’s a model that has worked out much more easily than we expected. When your companies give good returns to investors, that goes around the network and the grapevine. And that attracts a lot of investment advisories to send in their remits.

Irina: What is the best way for entrepreneurs to approach your angel group directly?

Padmaja: On the website, or write into us directly. (Our contact information is on the website.) As soon as it comes, we pick it up and take it from there.

Irina: Roughly how many pitches per month do you get these days?

Padmaja: Almost 150, and 50% of them comes through the website. And this does not include these competitions that we do. That would be over and above the business-as-usual deals that come in.

Irina: Out of these 150 pitches per month, how many of those deserve a closer look?

Padmaja: We get deals that are at different stages. We pick up the ones that are ready and move them for investor presentation. There is an example in which we moved our deal in almost 12 days from the entrepreneur approaching us to a term sheet. That’s more of an exception, to be honest, but having said that, we’ve done it. There’s meat on the table.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Padmaja Ruparel, President, Indian Angel Network
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