Capital is critical for startups. Unicorns cannot be created just by hard work. Very rarely do founders have access to an inexhaustible source of capital or flow of funds for operational requirements of a startup in its early stages. Funding sources that young startups can turn to meet their capital or fund requirements would be venture capital firms and other seed funding sources such as angel networks. However, it needs to be taken into consideration that getting funding requirements met by VCs is not easy. Thousands of startups are founded every month, but only a handful of them are successful in getting funding from Venture Capitalists. One of the reasons for the poor success rate is that more often than not, majority of the startups are unable to approach those VCs whose investment thesis are aligned with that of the objectives of the startup.
Finding the right set of VCs to approach for funding is a key imperative for startup founders. How to shortlist a handful of VCs and funds from the hundreds that invest in Indian startups? VCs from YNOS has been developed precisely for that purpose. For a large majority of the Venture Capitalist firms, the number of fund investments they make in a year do not cross single digits. This indicates that VCs are extremely choosy in the firms that they invest in. Since they also receive a large number of investment proposals, it is also difficult to get their attention unless the startup is clearly in their line of interest. Since multiple rounds of discussion take place before a successful investment, fund raising cannot be approached as a game of probabilities.
VCs from YNOS helps startup founders to approach fund raising from Venture Capitalists in a more systematic manner. The objective of the platform is to reduce the element of chance and provide a greater degree of control and certainty in the hands of an Indian entrepreneur. The search feature along with the various filters help the entrepreneurs to quickly shortlist relevant Venture Capitalists and funds that they could approach. The VCs platform also helps to compare different VCs and funds in a manner that has never been possible so far. Apart from startup founders, this platform can also benefit the fund managers to benchmark themselves against other players in the market.