Fundraise Advisory & Due Diligence

Fundraising - An overview

In the early stages of a startup when founders are figuring out the Product-Market Fit and trying to hit the escape velocity, fundraising can be a daunting task. Raising investment for attaining growth and scale involves time commitment from founders when they already have their hands full with building the company. Building the pitch deck, financial projections, and reaching out to investors involves strategic planning. Most startup founders in India find it difficult to navigate the ever-evolving Indian VC landscape with:

• Valuating their venture
• Assessing their venture's investment readiness
• Crafting a winning narrative for their pitch deck
• Accessing credible fundraising experts and legal experts for due diligence
• Finding and connecting with the right investors
• Pitching to Investors
• Negotiating the deal
• Closing the round

How to raise funds for startup

The very first step of your journey with Vakilsearch during your fundraising journey will be helping you assess your venture's investibility. We offer early-stage startups our proprietary Vakilsearch Investment Readiness Score that helps you self-assess your venture.

We make startups understand how much their company is worth? And whether the business is ready for venture investment?

• We Analyse - Share information about your business and your team. Our investment team will undertake a deep-dive analysis and help you put together a narrative for the pitch deck.
• We Design - Our visual design specialists will craft your pitch deck that reflects your startup's vision and ambition
• We Deliver - Within 14 business days, we help you with a completed pitch deck.

The various funding stages:

Seed round (commonly called seed funding): As the name suggests, the company gets ‘seeded’ with the initial funds to conceptualize the business idea and bring it to the market. At this stage, a business may not even have a fully working prototype and could still be working towards developing the product.

Series A: Once the company develops the product or service and begins to gain traction and Product-Market fit, it starts looking out for VCs for the next round of funding, to aid in its early stage of growth.

Series B: By this time, the business would have established a working business model and gained sufficient credibility in its target segment. Now, with the potential to grow further, additional capital would be required to expand operations and reach more customers.

Series C: This round of funding happens when the company has proved its mettle in the industry and is on the lookout for further expansion of the customer base in new markets, targeting acquisitions, and looking at innovation on other types of products. This may also be the last stage in a company’s growth cycle after which it might go for an initial public offer (IPO).

Process of Fundraising for Business

Vakilsearch helps ambitious entrepreneurs and early-stage companies with best-in-class fundraising service to scale up their business. Our experts can be instrumental in getting your business off the ground.

• We Write - Just tell us about yourself and what you're working on, and we'll put it all together in your pitch deck
• We Design - Our design specialists will make sure your pitch deck reflects your brand's image and concept
• We Deliver - Within 14 business days, you'll receive your completed pitch deck.

Why choose Vakilsearch for your Fundraising journey?

Vakilsearch offers the most comprehensive end-to-end support for founders in their fundraising efforts right from assessing their investability to the transactional advisory.

We have curated a network of credible angel investors, Micro VCs, VCs, Family Offices, and corporate VCs from the Indian startup ecosystem.

We assist you with:

Mentorship

Startups have the opportunity to be mentored by VC Analysts, successful entrepreneurs, and our in-house experts who have previously raised millions of dollars in funding from VCs. Our mentors work with entrepreneurs to enhance their storytelling and pitching skills. And startups get exclusive access to -

• Specially curated content on fundraising
• Assistance from financial experts and chartered accountants in arriving at projections, valuing the startup, understanding the startup's financials and financial planning, etc
• Guidance from legal experts on understanding the investment terminologies, term sheet negotiation, safeguarding your rights and obligations, and more
• Dedicated compliance team that ensures your compliances are in place by conducting a basic no-cost free diligence check.

Investment Pitch Deck

A pitch deck should effectively communicate effectively to your potential investors your startup's business plan. Most venture capitalists, private equity firms, banks, and other financial institutions demand a business plan in one form or the other before scheduling an Investor Committee meeting. A pitch deck needs to be visually attractive with minimal text and at the same time self-explanatory, effectively communicating your startup's business potential. Investors or prospects spend less than 4 minutes* on a deck.

Some of the key components that go into a well-thought pitch deck are:

• Elevator Pitch - A quick and crisp synopsize of your startup - the problem it is solving
• Solution - Your answer to the problem you are trying to solve and how it is different from existing solutions
• Market Analysis - Insights into the market and a detailed analysis of the demand to solve the problem
• USP - How does your business differ from other businesses and why it will succeed
• Business Model - How will you generate revenue and grow the same.
• Go-to-Market Strategy - What’s your strategy to acquire customers
• Current Traction - What’s your current traction and key business metrics
• Founding Team - Background on each founding member their expertise and other key partners, advisors,etc.

Vakilsearch has built an in-house team of investment professionals to craft your business plan so that you can succinctly convey the potential of your business to investors.

Investor Connect

Once your startup is investment ready, we facilitate connections to our curated network of investors, who showcase interest to invest in your business. We match startups with the right investors for the sector you operate in and the mutual interest from investors. Some of the key investors in our network are the likes of kStart, The Chennai Angels, Advant Edge, Astarc Ventures, Veda VC, and more from the Indian startup ecosystem