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. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Bruce Wright And Molly Gilbert, Arizona Center for Innovation – Tucson (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Bruce: Medipacs [one of the incubator’s success stories] is a very low cost,  highly reliable infusion pump. The inventor is a man named Mark Banister.

Medipacs pumps could be produced at a fraction of the cost of the current pumps available on the market. The pumps could be used for three or four days, and then they’re disposable. They also allow for continuous monitoring of the medication being administered. They have a number of cool applications. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Bruce Wright And Molly Gilbert, Arizona Center for Innovation – Tucson (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: What is the application process to your incubator?

Molly: They have an application that they need to fill out. We sit down and we meet with them, probably a couple of times, and try and sort out what their technologies are, what they’re trying to build their companies around, so that we have a pretty good idea. >>>