• Early stage investor will be interested in Composition of team members, skill sets, how they are complimenting
• What problem they are solving, gravity of the problem
• Size of the market, actual business size, how much can be addressed by startup, execution capacity of the startup
• Investment life
• Deeptech startup has advantage, product are hard to copy and will have longer business and that is one of the reasons for good traction from investors to deeptech
• Market size of tomorrow
• Disruptive product, is the startup going to have significant change in people’s life
  
  

Right timing for fundraising

• Raise when you’re able to raise
• 3-9 months of funds you should have before going for raising money
• Its more about mindset. Don’t dilute too much for too little initially
• Examine closely, the need of raising money
• Sometimes founders spend so much time on raising funds that they overlooked customers
• Raise sufficient
• Look for grants Available from government & other related agencies

Maximizing valuation

• Through acquiring customers and market
• There is herd mentality among investor as well
• Try to get more VCs interested

Interesting sectors from the point of view of investor

• Edtech
• Offline to online enabler
• Healthcare is picking up
• SAAS model getting lot of interest
• Indian startups looking at global markets are attractive
• AI is the horizontal platform touching almost all the sectors
• VCs are more attracted to digital startups
• Investors has started putting money in non-metro cities – digital has blurred the division between urban and rural
• Defense is long/difficult area, limited options, should look for new or investors who actively invest into defense.