How Can I Sign Massachusetts Banking Document

How to industry sign banking massachusetts document myself

[Music] hello everyone welcome to tricorn resurgence and thank you for joining in this very interesting session i am akriti bhargav co-founder of viziki and your host for the session today you know we gather to understand the art of fundraising look it is indeed one of the most important and the big question always is the need for funds what time should you start realization it's fundraising is realization of aspirations and dreams for any founder however it need not be a mystery and that is the purpose of this session you know we have a iconic personality vani vani cola is the managing director at kalari capital an early stage venture capital firm she is a renowned investor and a visionary known for identifying emerging markets some of wani's notable venture capital successes include dream 11 you know curfed snap deal myntra among others wani is technology focused investor with many of her investments having now become very successful this validates her aptitude for picking the best young minds and mentoring them to build high growth i look forward to the session and with that over to iowani thank you you know sometimes there is a lot of stress around fundraising and i have been there as a entrepreneur myself in the mid 90s and then again in early 2000s having built two software companies i know enough and more about the rejection the frustration the uh anxiety of uh fundraising and funding doesn't have to be this mysterious uh sort of like a genie and you don't know what the outcome is over years i think everyone can benefit in my opinion by making fundraising a systematic function in the company often you know founders say oh once i finish the fundraising i can go back to building my product building my business and gosh you know fundraising is the only thing that is stopping me from building a great company i rarely see anyone who cherishes or looks forward to fundraising so maybe that's a bit extreme maybe no one looks forward to fundraising but it is important to take it seriously and say it is one of the functions and we have to be very good at it just like we are good at building a product customer service sales finance hr marketing so why not fundraising why do we not think about it as a critical function in the company after all this is the most essential sort of oil for the engine to run and why would you not make this a strategic part of your best practice and why would you not give this the same attention you would give any other function in the company so in fundraising i want uh two main takeaways for you to think about first fundraising fundraising is like a high touch enterprise b2b sales process what do we mean by that if you had to build a sales organization what would you do you would of course create a prospect list prospective investors in this case you would match the prospect to the product so who would be the right investors that are likely to connect with you with your product so you create short list of your pipeline and you relentlessly do stage 1 stage 2 stage three stage five so the b2b sales process is very well understood you move people along the pipeline and you establish some probability based on how it is moving to closure so if you think about fundraising like a sales function and much like you would build systematic collaterals systematic messaging and a systematic process from pipeline to closure and if you think about it like that and get organized from a crm system uh even and uh you know you would run this like any other sales function the so that's the first point establish a systematic process continuously like you would do in any uh sales approach the second is much like in sales in investing also you are likely to hear no quite often i think in my first company i would have probably gotten 70 to 80 people saying no to me and every no actually teaches you something but what's important much like a great salesperson knows this when you hear the word no you have to approach the next one that it could be a yes and you know you will find that match so don't be dispirited by the no and start a fundraising process largely maybe there are a lucky few who get the bullseye match right away but generally you might hear a no for any number of various reasons we'll talk about that later but don't give up you have to keep going so the two things build a consistent process second be prepared for a no and going to each session trying to convert that to a yes now how do you convert that to a yes you know in anything planning is a essential part of creating success and i think without planning you fundraising is going to likely be haphazard and yes there are some aspects you can delegate but i think it's very important as a founder as a ceo at any stage of your company to be very much in touch with the nitty gritty and minutiae of the planning process and make sure that there is a well thought out plan that you evaluate re-evaluate and measure and readjust how long should you plan for fundraising typically it could be a six to nine month process and rarely do people more out of wishful thinking willing to really let that reality be something you embrace up front it's inevitable but oftentimes there's a euphoria that oh we could raise in three months for any less than five percent example of reality of that happening in rare cases the average time it will take is six to nine months but this and you can break that into a few steps the preparation and without preparation this could take even longer we will talk about what preparation means the second of course is the actual exercise of having conversations with a dozen plus people and moving that process along remember we talked about stage by stage and finally you arrive at the commitment but commitment is not same as closing in fact though i did put down commitment to closing of one to two months that's really the best case scenario just even after commitment average time for closing is about three months and sometimes could be five six months and we'll talk about what are uh the factors that make this closing longer or shorter wait a minute hold on one second i'm just trying to get my slides going um so you know uh step one we talked about preparation and i just wanted to say that i'm a big proponent that you know you the more you plan the more you are prepared the more you are likely to succeed and throughout the presentation today you will hear preparation preparation preparation um hold on a second i think something is uh uh hold on i'm not sure where my slides um have uh okay um first there are some questions you need to ask yourself like i said make fundraising and investor relations a core strength and then you have to define you know um why you are raising this investment and uh you know in fact just give me a second i know we are uh um uh here but uh something uh i will just stop sharing guys just because i think i lost my slides somewhere so i am i will reshare it um yeah okay [Applause] um give me a second here okay hold on let's go back here and share screen [Music] and share here go into this okay sorry about that um so like i said you know you can learn to succeed at fundraising make it a core strength uh be clear how much capital you need and what are you going to deliver and lastly like i said make sure in choosing your shareholders you know you have aligned expectations okay um but in the preparation the first step is to prepare the collateral because you know you approach me let us say okay i'm listening to these categories so i say okay uh can you give me your data room can you send me a pitch deck and often times for two weeks you don't hear back right so keep all your material uh you know available and current so there is nothing you can more you can do to distract from your fundraising than not having everything organized and together so don't be in a rush to reach out to an investor because the impression when you are not responsive to their request of anything data projections customer case studies whatever is a comprehensive set of collateral that you need to help investors make decision be extremely responsive no more than 24 to 48 hours to respond to it which means there is a background preparation to help you be that in a in a way that you can be responsive without that preparation closing the fund takes uh longer but more importantly i think you leave behind the wrong impression about um who you are and uh about the maturity of the company and also before you engage with the investors as you prepare your presentation always keep in mind what are the one or two takeaways you want uh the investor to know ultimately the entire conversation with the investor is about that because and depending on the stage of the company are you the best team are you uh what are some of your advantages maybe you have the shortest sales cycle maybe you have figured out how to acquire customers very efficiently maybe you know you know how to uh cut costs on this uh product that gives you a competitive advantage but think about a few highest level uh takeaways that the investor should be excited about your business right and likewise be clear what do you want from the investor and these two things will help you streamline your conversation with the investor much more easily and these should kind of flow into your collateral into your presentation into your messaging in a very very strong way now one of the things is uh fundraising and talking to investors or talking to your customers is sort of like storytelling you know here's what i have done often even once you have your presentation ready though this is really you know not comfortable and no one likes doing it necessarily videotape yourself presenting it and review it and see what parts you like what parts you don't like and repeat and perfect your script and that is a very important exercise that you have to do in your preparation next present to advisors and friendly vc's maybe they are not your right target but they are going to give you feedback so you need to take that candid and genuine feedback and include that so the practice before you go to the vcs you really want to go to and when you present we talked about takeaways so see if they were able to you were able to effectively communicate these takeaways and see where there was a friction in their ability to understand the messaging of what you want them to really know about your business use that feedback into continuing to improve your capacity to tell the story of yourself and your uh business right so until you are satisfied repeat this get to the right investors or your core target investors after you have gone through this exercise right but even while you are pitching to the investors you know remember we said we are going to run this like a sales process so rank them based on your uh comfort with them but also what you think their conviction was about your business after all if you need to reduce friction it it is about finding deeper uh and stronger alignment between you and the investor on the way forward however in doing all this there is no perfect pitch so you know don't take too long to get here about a month for this whole process before you start pitching is broadly the time that you should consider taking now when you are pitching uh prep a lot some of the common mistakes that i see there are co-founders but you haven't figured out beforehand who's going to tell which part of the story and how do you if multiple people are going to do the pitch how do you make it smooth and how do you make sure that there is an easy hand off and others interject role play and practice accordingly it's really important that you are not talking over each other and you come across as not really aligned in the core messaging of the business and surprisingly i see that uh many times also think of the tough questions someone might ask you and be prepared with the answers and don't say i haven't thought about it or i don't have an answer for you though i don't mean that you should have a answer for every question but what i mean is that the more you've thought through what are likely questions that they are going to ask and you have thought through your answers the more i think your credibility and in fact investing is a lot about the credibility of you and the credibility of your possibility which is the story so the more you do to create the authenticity the credibility and the connect i think the higher the chances of success so once you're prepared on fundraising and seeing it through uh build your investor pipeline prepare an investor list use a crm product if you need to just from having documentation on details when did you last talk to them when was the last time you sent an email if they haven't responded a week later you can try again with a template number two message and uh you know so on so forth so much like a sales process prepare and um the target list of who are likely to be right for you from the sector interest and the amount that you are trying to raise of course if possible try to get warm introductions from network but if not you can send a cold email also and you know it's not unheard of where you do and can get response even if you are self-introducing yourself but some of the common mistakes i see is don't cut and paste that clearly comes through and sometimes there are comical mistakes i might get a uh email uh but somewhere they have mentioned the name of the firm wrong or even my name wrong so you know no one is gonna return uh a uh response to you when they feel like you have done a mass mailing so personalize your outreach to each vc think through what is relevant for them and do try to find a way that your message connects with them we'll talk more on when to use the banker but here what i wanted to say was while a banker will do a lot of the work the common mistakes that i often see is the plan comes across as a banker plan and not the management team's plan and worse yet when it comes to financials the founder will turn to the banker and say they'll take over here no you have to be in control of your business and the whole process the banker can help you but you have to lead everything from the front line because i invested in this investing into your credibility and your vision and your execution so that you are in control of it is really really important and also try to cultivate relationships with investors before you start the fundraise and there are many ways in which you can do that and that will serve you really well which is why thinking of fundraising as a chore and something that you have to endure is the wrong way to think about it you have to think about it as a continuous process of building your business after all as you go from success to success even if you're a large public company you are still soliciting and recruiting investors uh to your business so investor management is something here to stay through the life cycle of your business so plan it that way and engage with it as you would with any other function on a continuous basis now targeting investors should you consider strategic investors i my personal opinion too early in the life cycle of a company if you bring strategic investors and especially most strategic investors have special rights that they carve uh the that they carve out and also if they have significant ownership in the company i think getting financial investors to are really of that situation of course if you are a later stage company strategic investors could be quite uh invaluable should you hire a banker it's not a bad idea though i think more often than not what i see is founders hire bankers that are not asking them tough questions the banker could come and say oh yeah i think we can raise 10 million dollars at a 50 million valuation you might want to hear that but the banker may not be able to deliver that they are just saying that to get your business so when you go through this process of talking to the banker see if they're asking you the hard questions about your business see if they're challenging you on your business you ask them what are reasons why we could fail in this fundraise or what will it take to absolutely you know get this fundraise done what do i need to do so you kno form the connect not based on them telling you you know the good news but whether fundraising is a grueling process whether they are really telling you as it is and more often than not um they are not because that's not uh what at times founders want to hear should you syndicate a deal what does that mean let's assume you're raising 5 million dollars and you want three investors to put that money together that's fine for certain firms and certain investors will not do some a deal like that because mostly investors have ownership targets so you have to be careful about it and suppose you come to kalari we typically invest when we have 20 to 30 percent ownership and that's why we are an early stage investor now if you're raising five million and there are three investors that are going to be part of it we would have a very small ownership in the company and that would not be something that would be interesting to us generally uh to invest in so try to understand these kind of factors on what so if you come to us and say we want three investors we would not even spend time on the deal right so think through what works for each investor and plan accordingly now who should you target within a firm so you did your work on which firms and whether they are series a series b whatever who should you target within that form at least i'll tell you what you should do oftentimes there is a blanket email and everyone 10 people in the firm are copied on that that is definitely not a strategy because you are not likely to get response from anyone so i think it's important to figure out and spend some time researching who exactly do you want to target um so once the you get a response from the vc firm try and get a meeting in person but if that's gonna take too long even though that's the preference at least get on a call don't take too long to take something warm and build upon it um and make sure that you keep the investor even if they have uh taking time to respond back to you on some regular intervals receive updates it could be we just signed a new customer or we added a key member to our team or you know whatever or we just did a product release whatever those things are or here is something new about our industry so create collateral through which you can stay in touch which is very important and then make sure you find the investment sponsor what do i mean by that you will meet many people in one firm but you have to find who's going to sponsor your d and each firm has its own process so don't worry about uh trying to normalize that um if you come to us and tell us the process about some other firm and whether we can match that likely we won't um because we have a process of our own we may take uh uh time before we go to our ic but by the time you come to ric then there is a lot of internal conviction already some firms may put you in ic very early i see being investment committee but they may take a long time after that to make a decision so try to understand what their process is but through this interaction it's important for you to judge whether a vc is serious or not i recently had an entrepreneur who said i spent 300 hours with this venture firm i said why you know if you're spending 300 hours and in the end they didn't get a term sheet so somewhere you know you haven't also like a sales process understood whether this prospect is likely to convert into a customer or not just as you would not spend time with a prospect who's unlikely to convert into a customer at each stage of the process you have to see how serious is the vc and look for the indicators as you invest more and more time so qualify the investor at every step of the process and don't waste your time with wishful thinking so every vc fund is an investment committee that takes final decisions in order for the investment to go through and like i said some of them may be okay to bring you into investment committee sooner some may take you later and that has to do with process versus it has to do with how fast you are likely to get the deal closed um and some vc funds are very consensus driven so you need everyone in the investment committee to agree and some are more conviction driven not that you would know the details of this but try to understand as much of this as possible to talking to your sponsor but one thing is very important you need a strong sponsor who wants to support you in the uh investment committee and in and when you present as the final step to the investment committee observe and take notes and see what were the questions what were the reservations and don't be defensive when someone challenges you on your business something i see happen very often they're there to understand your business and challenge because that's the process of building their conviction after all to uh decide whether they want to invest or not so challenge is not criticism and it's okay if you don't have answers to all the questions but offer that you will come back with the answer and show authenticity rather than offer a unsatisfactory answer it's okay for you to come back with more details if you don't have that handy lastly getting a lead for your investment is very important the thing that is not impressive at all is someone says look i'm raising 5 million and i have somebody who's already committed 1 million that is irrelevant to the lead investor because oftentimes people commit small amounts and say we will close when you have a lead that is to me completely useless because getting the lead is your highest priority uh which a lead is someone who will give you a term sheet uh valuation and all of that you can always easily add more people to the round once you have a high quality lead established so that's really where you should spend maximum of your time until you get a lead you have no progress in the fundraise and if you do have multiple term sheets choose the investor that you are likely to be most comfortable with long term the small variations in valuation of 10 15 will get normalized over time but people with whom you may not deepen the relationship will be a problem for you long term so choose people with whom you are likely to be comfortable in the long term and don't take money very randomly one of the common mistakes is having large cap tables which means large number of people in the cap table as the company grows the effort in keeping everybody in sync many many shareholders in sync will really be very very difficult so try to see if you can have a very strong lead established and then you can add a few more people into the round but don't have a large number of people on your cap table if you can help it now once you have a term sheet from a lead of course you want the best terms and that's fair and you should do that but you have to be very careful about it if you shop around your term sheet too much you might lose your lead because word does get go around and after all who wants to be used right and so you have to be very thoughtful and careful in optimizing the fundraising outcomes so how should you think about competing term sheets uh we talked about that you know don't try to play one off of the other too much i think it's important that you uh think about if you're lucky to have many term sheets to think about working with the right people that you align with and when should you walk away from a signed term sheet because that also is a reputation that happens you know very very rarely be very careful about it i do see this sometimes but i think it really creates um a bad reputation in the industry that longer term can come back and harm you however there are some valid reasons to walk away from a term sheet where you know as you go through the process if you see that you are not going to connect with this investor and they it isn't alignment then you just be honest about it and then amicably walk away if you can um do that now what are the key items to negotiate on a term sheet oftentimes in closing a lot of time goes because every item in the term sheet a first-time entrepreneur unaware is trying to negotiate because they've left it to the lawyers and lawyers want to take time to negotiate everything trying to protect you but very few things in the term sheet can really be negotiated yes valuation and amount of capital that's the most important thing beyond that if you are working with a high quality firm they probably have a term sheet template on which very little uh they are willing to negotiate so then don't waste your time to come to that answer so figure out what is negotiable what is not but the most important thing is close as quickly as you can make the choices to close sooner rather than later don't drag out the investing process because many deals fall through from commitment to closure because the process took too long so you know and it is not done till the money is in your bank so the sooner you can close it's important so not delegating everything to lawyers but being very hands-on in the closing process to make sure you can move this as fast as you can is very important like i said it's not done till money hits the bank so you know closing your term sheet closing documents is not the same so make sure you clearly understand all the terms and clauses because uh investors can walk away anytime from this process and there is very little recourse you have uh you know and make sure hence at all times all the parties there may be multiple investors you know diligence providers uh are all aligned at all times and it's a great idea to have a very structured project plan and weekly standing calls getting all hands to ensure that things go don't go uh you know out of plan and you are suddenly a month later unaware that you're really not on track so make sure there's a weekly standing call that you're checking all the dependencies to move this smoothly while fundraise is a great milestone to get the word out um you know don't try to leak before money hits the bank and that's another thing that i see and i'm usually baffled why uh you know one would take such a risk it is a significant risk so don't try to keep this under the wraps and as much as possible very very um uh uh uh tight in terms of information until actually you have completed the uh uh closing uh before you uh share the news with uh too many people so uh you know i'm happy to answer any questions the purpose of this is uh to be a resource and be helpful to each one of you and uh i hope all of you uh you know have very successful uh fundraising and build great companies at uh kalari we invest in seed and series a companies and we're always eager to support and chat with passionate entrepreneurs we have many of us been entrepreneurs ourselves and uh i'm uh uh happy to uh answer any questions that you might have funny that was fantastic i think we got a lot of uh understanding of how to go about fundraising would be would it be possible for you to quickly throw some light on how to build the investor relations team over the course of the journey of you know from a from angel to series b series so angel series say and to some degree even series b you as the founder are the sole investor relations okay now of course as the company gets larger we'll get to that in a minute um but i think in the beginning while you do need some support on who's going to prepare the deck how do you put together the business plan the projections of the business all of that but you are carrying the investor relations which includes who are the right investors shortlisting build deep relations with them doing the pitching all of that i really don't see any shortcut to that nor i i believe that if you took someone else to own that uh you will actually succeed uh in in fundraising because at that early stage really one very big factor in investment decision is the founder founder or founders themselves right because there isn't much revenue profit customer validation so what else do you base this on market opportunity and founder those are two big things that are the defining decision points so the more you can build direct credibility the better by the time you get to depending of course series b series c i think having a strong cfo who can handle the data room who can handle all the backend requirements of the investors is a good idea uh and if you have the right cfo they can multiply your bandwidth in the fundraising process significantly but that is still the administrative aspect of the investor management from relationship building i think for a long time you have to be in the front line in making that direct connect of course when you get to see these ccd you're a larger company you might have somebody in investor relationships because there is compliance needs that investors have there's information needs that they have and there's a lot and in order to keep all of this timely and your investors happy a relationship management uh is important but there are two aspects to relationship which is the administrative aspect then there is the personal aspect the personal aspect honestly you can never really really outsource fantastic okay understood i know uh founders have to wear many hats there's an interesting question here and uh the question is should it's from dhruv devyas for early stage startup with revenue traction how to work out valuation yeah i mean you know it depends what the revenue is but um let's say you know you are uh an e-commerce company let's just uh call it that right now you could look at uh uh something like wish that just went ipo in us let's say or amazon which is already a public company or flipkart or something but at the early stage the valuation is not as straightforward valuation depends on the premium that they place on the founder and the premium is about how many uh how likely are they to really build a uh leading company how likely are they to make lesser mistakes and that's obviously a subjective um uh decision uh by the investor but nonetheless so the the premium that they place on the founder and then secondly you know in competition how competitive is this deal that does play a sort of a 20 30 percent difference in valuation and you know there is broad um uh probably guideline based on what is the anticipated growth right the higher the anticipated growth the more uh sort of the premium in valuation you are likely to get um today but if you uh approach uh as an early stage company and say oh you know there is precedence for why some company got 10 times sales yeah maybe there was one company that got you know 10 time sales but everybody else gets two time sales so you know i think uh there is some guidance but the guidance doesn't uh that gives you only like a broad direction okay it doesn't give you accuracy so there is a discovery in the market so this is a combination of what the buyer as the investor is willing to provide and what the seller as a founder who's uh you know letting go of equity is uh comfortable with but there are some guidelines you know most cdc companies exceptions aside are probably somewhere between 10 to 20 million in valuation because in the early stage there isn't a lot of things to uh um measure by right after you've gotten to a certain you know size of a company then i think we get more and more indicators on how to uh create a valuation better but you should assume in early stage series a series b you are going to dilute 20 to 30 percent of the company that's great i have another question from anshul and the question is that what are the filters on which you should shortlist the investors and does it vary early on versus lead stage the filters will vary but the process of filtering you have to do early stage or late stage you know what do are they active in this particular sector suppose uh this investor generally has only invested in enterprise sales they're not likely to invest in a consumer uh company uh and likewise maybe the firm focuses on consumer goods consumer brands they may not invest in let's say a deep tech company so there is a broad sector focus you know what you are working on is this a core part of their investment strategy or not not all firms invest into all models of businesses because they have to build core expertise internally you know knowledg and networks in order to be effective so not everybody invests in every uh theme so you can study that by maybe articles they're publishing on and inputs that they're providing uh on social media or what investments they've done in the past or you could just ask them hey have you invested in this would you invest in this so filter those things up front so one is their focus area and matching that second of course is the size and ownership like i said you know if you are looking to raise you know 10 million dollars um uh in series a and the firm uh you know is typically writing one to two million dollar checks let us say you know it's not a great fit um for you likewise you know you are trying to raise um uh you know uh maybe uh 20 million and you're going to a growth firm like let's say general atlantic will not invest unless they are writing 50 100 million dollar check right so you can mismatch on both ways and those depend on the funds own requirements on how much capital they are willing to deploy and what is the size they don't go too far out of those norms that they have in the firm right like for example kalari would not invest small amount of capital let's say like 50 lakhs one crore we don't write such small checks right so though we do do seed investments but you know seed to us is when a company is at a stage where they're looking for three to five crores or something like that right so uh you need to match what are the check size that the fund uh invests in and that's one filter and the you know um third filter is harder are you going to find that personal chemistry and alignment and some of that you might not know until you actually meet them or there are other ways if they are very active in uh their opinion in social media or whatever maybe you can study read them to see if you are likely to align with their approach philosophy some investors are very hands-off some investors are very active and hands-on that's why i said what are the three things you want from investors because if you're not aligned on that then there will be friction down the road so it's important that you uh think about their working styles and if you don't know that ask that directly here what's your working style right because the investor also wants to make sure they don't want to be in a situation where they're spending their time uh with a mismatched uh investment no great answer there and personally i also understand understood this much better can you there is a quick clarification that is coming in from nirupam uh wants to know uh valuation referred was in inr or usd 10 to 20 million that was quoted well 10 to 20 million was in usd and uh so you can uh think about that as uh uh you know you know 70 to 150 crores or whatever in inr okay rahul johar here asks you know should one be concerned about confidentiality in the process i mean you know this is a very important question but i think very misunderstood uh and uh you know a lot of riling up happens on social media uh even off late right look first of all and then there's all kinds of advice in social media from people who don't actually know whether that advice is going to be effective no investor is going to sign an nda they do at a uh at a growth stage meaning when you are raising that 100 200 300 million at that point i think firms do sign ndas but at the early stage no investor will sign an nda and that's the industry norm now we can debate that from an intellectual perspective but if it's an industry norm then and you're not likely to change that norm then you have to get comfortable that that's the way it is no but on the other hand all investors do personally care about their reputation much like each of us here each of you here care about your reputation so generally i think very few people want to deliberately compromise confidentiality okay uh i'm not saying there aren't people but i do think that you know this is a long term business uh i have been investing in india for uh 13 years now and i hope i invest for another 13 years so you know you can't really compromise people in a uh way that is unethical and actually be effective in the business right so now that is not to say there aren't differences of opinion it's inevitable founders have differences of opinion and uh uh you know uh and friction and so why would it be not natural at home we have friction in our families so you know it is likely that there are differences of opinion that crop up but how do you handle that and that takes maturity integrity and experience in how you handle that so most investors in most firms i think protect confidentiality but having said that you know they may have heard your idea now and they didn't uh invest um and maybe next year they invested in a competing company now was that violation of confidentiality right and i think it and and i think investors will hear four or five companies at least in the same business so they are likely to know you and your competitors uh reasonably well right now would they take your information and share it with the competitors i mean i mean the way i approach it i'll talk about it from when i was an entrepreneur i'm like what is it that they could share that really compromises my ability to succeed right it's not like we are sharing code you know at best they know how many customers you have you know what is your revenue what are some of your you know uh uh customer acquisition costs or you know things like that but to me i don't think a competitor by just knowing that and if a competitor wanted to know there are more than one ways that they can get that information any information that the investor has i highly doubt that is a make or break for a company to succeed but look you always have to be careful when you're dealing with people use your instinct use your gut and you see are these fundamentally ethical people right and uh should you worry about confidentiality yes but if you worry about it too much and you go into every conversation um i i remember one conversation that one of the founders met with a strategic investor who was very interested in an m a and walked into that meeting and then when they asked some question said well how do i know that you're not gonna steal my ip you know the uh an m a which was very critical for this company and they just walked out of the room right so i mean so you are going to take some chances in talking to people and that's why i said calibrate the investor at every step of the way how much information are they asking you and are they moving along the process commiserate to the information that they are asking you so be there but if you're too afraid and too distrusting to talk to people then you are not going to make progress also when you have an employee you are going to disclose some information they could also compromise your confidentiality so it's no different with investors so i'm not saying every investor is fantastic but you know it's a lot of averages i think there are more good people than bad people that's my philosophy about life and you have to watch out for the bad people but don't you know uh lose your ability to connect with the good people just because you're worried about the bad people great i think that ended on a very very interesting note i have a couple of questions vani which are related to your interest in certain sectors and uh you know kalari's own operation so can i put this question out and what are your views on assisted banking and utility services for bharat customers this comes from divakar shukla i mean assisted banking or any assisted services will only continue to grow right we are moving more and more into contactless uh economy at every level and uh and you know transformation of businesses to uh move into that direction is going to happen more rapidly than say we would have anticipated even a year ago so it depends again always uh you know it's the difficulty is in the detail you know uh uh you know uh um assisted banking um uh uh uh or any other such opportunity the question is what is unique and how easy and effective is it for the customer and how cost effective is it for uh the bank or the institution right as a general social trend more and more uh contact lexus contact less services will definitely be a defining part of our life that's great one question is that what is the role of existing investors in fundraise for you know next stages so do they play a role at to what extent and how deep first before you go into any fundraise clarify that question from existing investors there could be a small fund and maybe they can't invest into the next fundraise it's better for you to know that upfront and it's better for you to make that clear from the very beginning in your conversation with new investors and if the new investor takes a dixie opinion that oh unless existing investors participate i will not invest then there's no point because existing investors may be too small and they may not be able to invest and your new investor doesn't want to invest unless existing investors participate so clarifying these is very very important the clarification you need is existing investors should tell you before you start fundraising if they will participate if so by how much and taking that to market is important for example if you go and say i'm raising 10 million in series b and my existing investors have already committed 3 to 4 million that's a certain pitch and so knowing that very very clearly is important second of course your existing investors have relationships the more they can facilitate the introduction to potential investors the warmer that introduction for you from uh you know securing funds will be it's not that because they have made the introduction your guaranteed investment obviously right but the introduction at least gets you a chance to present and that's all any existing investor can do they can get you the chance to present right and the uh last part is existing investors have to be your critics meaning use them to say hey this is my pitch deck tell me uh what i could do to improve it what do you not like about it what is the point that's not clear to you um you know the more it's kind of like you know when you release code you want people to test and identify bugs ahead of time and not have your customers find all the bugs right so you're gonna go through uh that uh process and it's the same thing your existing investors are your greatest resource and ask them hey you know take this apart you know challenge me question me role play with them so you can perfect your pitch so these are some things you can expect and should um use your existing investors for depending on the stage of the company if you are not able to build your annual operating plan or you need their support they do have resources of portfolio services and analysts that can work with you in preparing for the fundraise most firms will be able to offer resources to help you with that wow that must be something that not many people know here uh fantastic i have a question which is again very kalari rated thus a thin here wants to know does kolari help in accessing overseas markets once they have invested in india based companies i mean yes and no we do and most firms do but within that any oh i'm assuming by overseas market we mean customers overseas but every company and uh and even when a firm says yes we do um every company has different profile of customers that they're uh looking for let's assume uh you are selling uh into banking and or hospitals or uh whatever you know i mean to fmcg companies to expect that your investor will know the ceo cio of every bank overseas or every you know fmcg large company overseas or whatever whatever telecom company or whatever i mean if they say so i think that's uh uh probably uh uh not possible just think about it in a logical realistic way having said that most firms have reasonable networks right but sales is a very very structured process could they help you hire the right sales person could they help you hire the right sales team i think most firms can help you do that could they get you one or two introductions they can the notion that a investor can somehow and this may be not something candidly people want to hear again you know there are answers we want to hear whether they are realistic or not that somehow they can get you 20 introductions to your core customer base imagine how does the venture firm have that kind of depth of resources right they will be able to make some introductions but and they'll be able to help you with the strategy they'll be able to help you with the hiring and setting up of the team and they can probably bring credibility to strategic accounts and support you but can they you know close your first 20 customers i mean i don't know i think that's all as we say vaporware that is marketing and not reality so many more questions vani i think you've been fabulous through this and uh there are questions so if they can write into you i'll be running out of time yes and i had fun with everyone in the virtual world we don't get to actually physically see and interact but i wish you the best and please do write and if we have answers we are more than happy to be uh support you in your journey and uh fabulous uh third day uh thai team uh super excited with all the sessions and apathy thanks for a wonderful moderation yes thank you thank you vani for being very insightful very engaging session anupriya for pacing and matching and interpreting for everyone here the thai team as well as the you know support team here thank you so much you've been a fabulous audience and we close a session with this thank you anu thank you [Music]