For the past decade, India has seen a gradual development in the startup culture. Because of this entrepreneurial culture, India now boasts the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem, trailing only the United States and the United Kingdom.
Often, the minds behind these firms are either recent grads from schools and universities or someone who left a corporate position to follow their goal. Funding a company is a challenging endeavour for anyone. Many people try to fund their ideas on their own, while others seek external funding to meet their demands. Acquiring financing for a business in the Indian market is possible through a fundraising process that includes many stages of startup funding.
You need funding to keep the power on, the staff happy, and the pace moving no matter where you are in the startup journey. Raising capital may not have been your ideal when you first started the firm, but your capacity to do so will influence how far it can go. Understanding the various demands at each step of fundraising will give you the confidence to approach investors with a clear roadmap to what you will both receive out of the exchange. The five phases listed below will help you get started.
Stage 1: Pre-seed Funding
This is the initial stage of the fundraising process, sometimes known as the bootstrapping stage. This stage mostly entails the company owners utilising their own funds or borrowing from relatives and friends.
This level of funding is for the startup’s early stages when it has most likely not yet begun operations. The idea and its practicality are just being examined in the market testing stage. The expenditures would include cash for producing the prototype, planning a product launch strategy, and brainstorming ideas for different marketing and sales operations.
This early stage of seed funding is so soon that it is not often regarded as an initial investment phase. During this stage of a company, proprietors may need to stay on the job longer than required or acquire a second line of employment to supplement their income. At this moment, they normally operate with a fairly small staff.
2: Phase of Seed Funding
“Seed Funding” is the initial step of startup grants. Almost 29 percent of new businesses fail due to a lack of funding when bootstrapping, which is the essential starting capital for launching and managing a firm.
Understand the seed funding stage to be analogous to planting a tree. In an ideal world, the underlying Funding would be the “seed” that would allow each firm to develop. When you supply enough water, for example, a lucrative commercial method, near to the dedication of the company visionary, the startup will grow into a “tree.”
3: Funding from Angel Investors
As your startup’s demands grow and you need to scale or boost funds for product design, marketing, or just expanding your staff to keep the momentum going, you may turn to angel investors for help. If your firm is currently raising funds, your conceptual framework should be validated.
According to the SEC, eligible angel investors are persons having a net value of at least one million dollars and an annual income of at least two hundred thousand dollars alone or three hundred thousand dollars jointly with a spouse.
Angels vary from other investing organisations such as venture capital companies in that they use their own funds and should be considered as such when seeking funding. They might invest individually or as part of a group. Investors will also demand a convincing and well-researched proposal because the money raised at this level might be much more than in the seed round.
4: The Venture Capital stage
Regardless of how their firm is going, the majority of businesses choose this startup funding stage. This method of generating cash entails many funding rounds or a series that is followed. Series A, B, C, and D are included. Each round, the business raises more money and improves its valuation.
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Arrangement A phase
This is the initial round of funding in the venture capital stage. At this time, the firm should have developed a product or service and established a client base with a consistent revenue stream.
The funds generated should be used to generate income. This is an excellent opportunity for new businesses to grow in a variety of areas. Venture capital firms, angel investors, and even equity crowdsourcing provide investment at this level. In this round, funding is often provided by a single significant investor, who is then followed by the other investors.
It is critical to establish a long-term benefit agreement in the Series A grant round. This is a critical phase because many firms fail to acquire series A finance even after receiving seed capital. According to one survey, only roughly 46% of firms proceed with the following round of fundraising after receiving seed money.
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Phase B of the arrangement
This startup discovery stage is the business’s development stage, in which not only the product or service is extended, but also the company’s client base, workers, and management staff. Speculators assist new organisations in broadening their perspectives by funding their market to conduct out exercises, extending their share of the sector in general, and constructing operational groupings such as advertising, company improvement, and client acquisition.
The Funding stage of agreement B enables new firms to flourish with the goal of satisfying the diverse demands of their clients while also competing in competitive marketplaces.
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Arrangement C Funding Phase
New enterprises that reach stage C must be on the development route. These new businesses are searching for more investments to assist them to generate new goods, entering new markets, and even ensuring that others do not match the standards of comparable new company transactions. They may even consider acquiring other fresh underperforming firms.
Investors at this point understand that the firm is doing well and that the odds of it failing as a business are low. After this stage, firms have three options: go for round D of funding, start planning for an IPO, or not raise funds at all. C is the final round of funding for many firms.
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Arrangement D Funding and beyond
Very few businesses see the need to proceed to this level, and those that do choose to proceed to this step do so for one of two reasons. The first explanation may be that the firm has discovered a fresh potential and wants to work on it before coming public.
Otherwise, the firm may want to remain private for a while longer before becoming public. Another reason for the firm to pursue this level of funding might be that they have failed to meet the goals that were set. This is a negative reason, often known as the ‘down round.’ It becomes tough to escape from this when the company’s stocks depreciate, and it is difficult to obtain funding in the following stage.
5: The First sale of shares (IPO)
The IPO, or Initial Public Offering, is the first time a corporation decides to sell corporate stock to the general public. This is the final round of startup funding, and it assists the business in growing and expanding.
IPOs, on the other hand, might be dangerous because the public has no idea how the shares will move in the market. On the other side, the firm may do really well, in which case investors could benefit significantly.
Conclusion
The many levels of startup funding in India enable entrepreneurs to expand their businesses at every step of their entrepreneurial journey. This sizing technique enables them to identify where their firm fits and which possible financial experts would invest resources in their company to help it grow and thrive.
Numerous startup entrepreneurs leave after opening their doors to the rest of the world, so bear in mind that in order to acquire funding, new firms must grow large enough to match all of the standards for a certain grant cycle. By calculating total assets, one may determine where their startup stands and then make a decision.
