We are
a team of experienced founders / promoters that struggled extremely hard to obtain capital for growing our businesses.
Challenges we faced
| Collective observations | Private Equity | Loans | Private Banks | PSU Banks |
| How it worked | Dilute stake, at very low valuations | Bank / NBFC loan/s against property / gold or at very high rates | Claimed to understand our business, but never really did | Were disinterested |
| Timeline/s | 18-48 months to raise funds | 120 days to raise funds | 60 days to raise funds | 180 days to raise funds |
| After funding | Forced to go IPO | Forced to beg for reduction of interest rates | Hazy interest rates | Lowest loan amount possible |
| We noticed that | Owner/Founder is pressured to work by committee | Owner/Founder is pressured by the EMI burden | Owner/Founder is pressured by the EMI burden | Owner/Founder is frustrated by the lack of customer service |
| And we asked ourselves | Should we give majority control to strangers? | Would paying a higher rate of interest be worth the growth? | Would this bank provide anything more than money? | Was it worth taking ULIP plans for getting a loan? |
At some point of time , we just gave in and lumped it.
Through the course of our individual interactions, we got friendly with some of our bankers. Their friendliness stemmed from a personal interest in our firm’s growth/expansion and the willingness to help us explore other avenues – for example, a friendly NBFC loan manager helped one of our founding members get in touch with a co-operative bank for a low-interest rate loan.
As a way to thank the NBFC loan manager, this member posted a message on a networking site, describing the entire incident and that the loan manager was willing to help others and a few other entrepreneurs responded with names & contact information of other loan managers / bank managers / close friends – all folks that were willing to help founders / promoters with getting access to growth capital.
The initial post and the subsequent responses sparked a need for a WhatsApp group to discuss ways to raise funds, and led to a few of us meeting in person and discussing how we could help the MSME ecosystem.
We didn’t want to be ‘consultants’. We wanted to add real value. Value on daily operations, on finding labour/manpower, on how to get ready for an audit, on import/export, on legal issues, on logistics, on engineering (civil/mechanical), on procurement, on taxation, on digital sales, on repayment of loans, on technology for our offices and much more.
We didn’t want to end up doling out bookish gyan or needless lecture-baazi.