We do whatever it takes to make our companies successful. We have invested in over 50 companies and 95% of them are alive and well. We have 7 profitable exits and 1 IPO so far. We have only ever had 5 shutdowns.
We do whatever it takes to make our companies successful. We have invested in over 50 companies and 95% of them are alive and well. We have 7 profitable exits and 1 IPO so far. We have only ever had 5 shutdowns.
We partner with you on a 7x24x365 basis for a long time (all of us!) We are entrepreneurs first, financial investors next. We will be there with you whether you're doing your IPO, selling your company,shutting it down and starting your next venture!
We do whatever it takes to make our companies successful. We have invested in over 50 companies and 95% of them are alive and well. We have 7 profitable exits and 1 IPO so far. We have only ever had 5 shutdowns.
We do whatever it takes to make our companies successful. We have invested in over 50 companies and 95% of them are alive and well. We have 7 profitable exits and 1 IPO so far. We have only ever had 5 shutdowns.
We partner with you on a 7x24x365 basis for a long time (all of us!) We are entrepreneurs first, financial investors next. We will be there with you whether you're doing your IPO, selling your company,shutting it down and starting your next venture!
We are long term investors. When we come into a company, we have high conviction that the founders will build a large independent company and we would ideally want to hold till an IPO or a sizeable M&A event.
We are long term investors. When we come into a company, we have high conviction that the founders will build a large independent company and we would ideally want to hold till an IPO or a sizeable M&A event.
Each of our fund’s duration is for 10 years wherein we invest during the first 3 years. Based on when we invested in your company during the 3 year cycle the holding time will be 7-10 years. This is set as we do have limited partners (our investors) and fund boundaries. We have rarely if at all done a secondary sale in any of our 50+ investments.
Our process is straightforward and quick, although it will vary from company to company, below are standard steps each founding team will go through:
Our process is straightforward and quick, although it will vary from company to company, below are standard steps each founding team will go through:
You will typically speak to anyone on the Investment team (Sanjay Swamy, Shripati Acharya, Amit Somani, Gaurav Ranjan, Shivani Kulkarni or Pankaj Agarwal) based on a referral/outbound/inbound. Your first meeting will be an in-person/virtual meeting for 45 minutes to an hour where you get to tell us everything about your company, team, market and problem statement. In the first meeting we like to spend time understanding the team and going deep to understand the problem you are trying to address.
Note: watch these videos as preparation for your first meeting: Fundraising Tips from Pankaj and Fundraising Tips from Shivani
If you’ve come to this stage, we are definitely keen about your business as most of our ‘passes’ happen after the first meeting. Here you’ll meet with the lead partner to explain the business opportunity in detail and learn more about each other.
We’re serious about this partnership, at Prime we make decisions as a team. At this stage you will get an opportunity to meet all our Partners and the Investment team. In parallel, we will initiate our reference and due diligence process to validate our belief in your business. This will involve deep-dive on product, customer discovery, technology evaluation and validation with industry leaders.
We are entrepreneurs ourselves, so we will be very respectful of your time. Irrespective of whether both you or we chose to work with each other, the decision making process will be thoughtful and valuable. Depending on the sector, it can take anywhere from 3 to 6 weeks to make a decision.
We are early-stage investors and prefer to be lead investors for founders, however we also co-invest whenever we find fit.
We are early-stage investors and prefer to be lead investors for founders, however we also co-invest whenever we find fit.
The first cheque can be anywhere between $1M - $4M with the remaining amount allocated as reserve capital for subsequent rounds of financing. With this ticket size at an early-stage we prefer to do the full-round or meaningfully lead the round. We do not write small cheques as part of large rounds.
Typically, we allocate about $8M - $10M per company in the life of the fund. We ensure our portfolio companies are well capitalised for hitting the right business milestones for their onward journey to success.
Note: these numbers might vary based on the nature of the business and its capital requirements.
We are looking for a founding team with a deep passion for the problem they are trying to solve. We love a Missionary, Collaborative team with a strong ‘Learning Quotient’, ‘Bias for Action’ and a ‘Big Vision’.
We are looking for a founding team with a deep passion for the problem they are trying to solve. We love a Missionary, Collaborative team with a strong ‘Learning Quotient’, ‘Bias for Action’ and a ‘Big Vision’.
We do not believe in a top down market sizing. We prefer bottom up sizing for the problem you are solving; even for category-defining startups, there are often proxies for demand and customers’ willingness to pay.
We are looking for solutions to real-world problems that are 10X (1000%) better than the current state of the art. This 10X differentiator could be in the form of product, go-to-market, business model or industry / consumer insights.
1-10-30 refers to how long and how much invested capital will take for the company to get to $1M, $10M and $30M of revenue.The first $1-10M gives us a sense for getting the company of the ground; the $30-$100M+ tells about the possible addressable scale in the market.
The best way is to approach us through someone we know in common. These people could be founders of our portfolio companies, or others we know in common in the industry such as angels, other founders or even other investors.
The best way is to approach us through someone we know in common. These people could be founders of our portfolio companies, or others we know in common in the industry such as angels, other founders or even other investors.
We are also often seeking out founders through outbound efforts. So we encourage founders to talk/blog/vlog/write about the problems they are solving, why they are solving them and how the world will become a better place as a result of it!
The least effective way is to send a cold, cookie-cutter email/message due to the high-volume we receive. It is recommended that you find a referral or establish thought leadership for outbound. However, if you’re unable to do either please reach out to our investment team.
Our preference is to be an early lead investor in the company. Our sweet spot is to back companies that have established some initial product market fit, and ideally, an “initial” business model. Having said that, in many cases, we have backed companies even before they've written a single line of code or had a single dollar of revenue.
Our preference is to be an early lead investor in the company. Our sweet spot is to back companies that have established some initial product market fit, and ideally, an “initial” business model. Having said that, in many cases, we have backed companies even before they've written a single line of code or had a single dollar of revenue.
We love meeting founders at ALL stages - ideation to mature startups. In the past, we’ve invested between Seed to Series A - our goal is that every founder that meets with us benefits from that interaction. Whether we partner or not in your journey, we really wish and help all founders to become successful in their ventures.
While we have invested at the idea-stage, validation on your idea improves the odds of our partnership. Key indicators by which we measure early validation are revenue traction, engaged users or exceptional founder-market fit.
We were fortunate to invest in MyGate when it was in 30 apartments (today in 25,000), Quizizz when they had 20 teachers (today have 1M+), WheelsEye when they managed 100 trucks (today in 2.5M+). Companies like Niyo, Happay, and Freo started out from our office.
But all of our companies have one thing in common - we met the founders when they were early in their journey.
- Business - Product, GTM, Sales strategy and execution
- Team Building
- Partnerships
- Subsequent Fund Raising
- Evangelism
- Operating help on Finance, Legal, PR & Community
- And literally anything else that the founders need that we could help with. We are always working for our founders and the best ones leverage us to the hilt :)
While we debate, discuss, dispute, challenge all of the above with our founders, we do not make ANY decisions with respect to your business.
Those are all yours to do! The best founders use us as a sounding board and use our skills and our network to accelerate building a great company.
- Business - Product, GTM, Sales strategy and execution
- Team Building
- Partnerships
- Subsequent Fund Raising
- Evangelism
- Operating help on Finance, Legal, PR & Community
- And literally anything else that the founders need that we could help with. We are always working for our founders and the best ones leverage us to the hilt :)
While we debate, discuss, dispute, challenge all of the above with our founders, we do not make ANY decisions with respect to your business.
Those are all yours to do! The best founders use us as a sounding board and use our skills and our network to accelerate building a great company.