Hi, I'm running a software company with an ambitious team serving over 15000 small & medium businesses. The company is currently at a turnover of 3 Cr and is aiming at a target of 100 Cr till 2018 by expanding its operations to Pan India and internationally. We are currently serving thousands of businesses as customers on our Telecom & Business management applications ( Our B2B products are: Enterprise sms, Volume Mailing, voice sms, cloud telephony and CRM etc, which are now under process of being combined in single product ) All our B2B service businesses are recurring in nature and hence customers account for more than 65-70% of sales. I'm a first generation entrepreneur with no business background and started the business with mere INR1000 and with no mentoring and prior experience, I faced many ups and downs in my business in the first 5 years with the peak reaching at INR 5Cr turnover in 2010. Ever since the start, we've been focusing on building processes & have spent a lot on inhouse development. Resultantly, all my applications and the ERP on which we manage our operations are developed inhouse. Now, I wanted to grow my business but I need funds for that. I wanted to know how would the investor's view my company, who would be the right investors, what is the tune of funds I can expect against equity and how do I reach these investors as I don't have a network?
Impressive journey thus far!
Sinus the enterprise resources your B2B offering? Or is that just developed for your own use?
Either way, there are many investors out there who would consider SAAS services, india is a hot market right now actually even for those of us here in the United States. Assuming you have gained the results you've mentioned and not having loans or otherwise large expenses from your internal investment you could consider financing yourself a firm to get your firm to a small cap public offering (IPO) and get funding that way. There are several marketing agencies doing just that right now. An ERP could be used for various processes so that gives you advantage in 'qualifying' potential investors in makerting, SaaS, HR, sales CMS, etc... Investors can be other founders of successful companies who are involved in your industries... Aim to connect with those who would benefit from your success and not see you as a threat at some scale.
You can also go on Quora and ask for leads there, many investors are involved there and some have even given out their contacts there. Angelist is another although you'll be lost within that community because of the size of users, but it does help!
You can also take the most direct approach: look for a current larger business that operates in an industry that you can add value to but don't compete for and offer the company an opportunity to own stake of your market offerings. Consider a cell phone service merging or acquiring a cable company. You might look for a company could in the future benefit from acquiring you completely- but approach them offering only minimal stake. You get your funding that way as well as gain a marketing partner and market share, not to mention the potential of future full acquisition.
Answered 9 years ago
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