 Hi, everyone. I hope you are doing good. This is Shahgul Jain, social media manager at 50 ecosystem foundation, and I welcome you all in our today's panel discussion on standard funding and business code strategies. Today we are going to discuss about funding plus engine funding and code strategies. And for that, we have three great families with us. Mr. Abhineet Gupta is a code consultant. Then we have Mr. Abhineet Gupta, founder of solarpartner.com. And then we have Mr. Abhineet Gupta, founder of strategy. And for our host, we have Tina Arula, managing director at Fund 1. So before we start this session, I just want to make a quick announcement for the audience. If you have any doubt, we can directly shout out in the chat section. And if you want to say something, we just need to raise your hand. I will unmute you. So I think yes, we are all set. So over to you, Tina. Perfect. Thank you so much for introducing us, Shahgul. So it's like I have to break in ice before we start conversating with the team panelists. So it's like, why not we start introducing ourselves in one line? So I'm an investment banker and founder of FundWise, and we help startups with fundraise and acceleration support. So over to you, Abhinav. We would love to listen about you. Hi, thank you so much, Hina and Shahgul for inviting to this wonderful panel discussion. My name is Abhinav and I am founder of a startup advisory firm strategy. And our tagline sums it all for everybody. It is converting ideas into startups. So we try to focus on ideas and try to make a viable business out of it and also helping them with fundraising part of it. Over to you, Dr Bhatia. Thanks, Abhinav. Thanks again, Anupam, Shahgul and Hina for inviting us to this panel. I'm Dr. Saurabh Bhatia. I'm a serial entrepreneur in healthcare IT, as well as I run an internet based advisory service. Basically, as I'll steal from Abhinav that our tagline also sums up whatever we do. So it's about helping startups start up and you can check it out more on my website Saurabh Bhatia.com. Thank you. Over to you, Vinit. Yeah. Thanks, Anupam. Thanks, everyone and Hina for inviting us to this panel. So hello, everyone. I am Vinit. I'm a community strategist, podcast host, paragliding pilot and a math on runner. So I'm a growth consultant who helps companies scale through community building. That is exactly what we do. And over the period of time, you'll figure out how this thing spans out. Thank you. Perfect, thank you so much, everybody for introducing yourself. So Abhinav, we will start with you. I have certain questions lined up already. So you have been a constant source while you have been, you know, helping startups with the fund raise. So what do you think, you know, that what is the whole reason that a startup, you know, indulges into because of which they are unable to raise funds for themselves? A very intelligent question. And because I've been part of both sides of the table, I have been a founder myself and I've been working from the angel investment side also for quite some time. So I'll try to give you a very, you know, honest answer, which is like, like double-edged sword. So it has to be taken with that confidence. So the most common thing when you go for fundraising, especially at early stages, three T's, team, technology and traction. So when any team reaches for a fundraising, the basic evaluation criteria is team correction or technology. So the commerce, the most common thing that we have seen in my expanse is like most of the company's approach for angel funding without having a product ready or without going live. Because that creates a lot of, you know, it leaves a lot of gradient in front of angel investors because nowadays nobody invests in a concept level company. When we hear stories about Konalsha, cred or Jitendra Kumar, Jupiter Bank, these are different stories. They have proven track records and, you know, successful exits multiple ventures in the past. So it's a different story. But when we are starting a new venture and if we reach to an investor with an idea or with the team that we are working on a prototype, it's a working prototype. And we need to raise funds. It mostly does not work out. And founders really need to understand that valuation is derived from, you know, either traction or your revenue. At times, the second common thing that I've seen is, you know, unrealistic numbers that they put in terms of valuation. With an annual sales, just to give you an idea, with an annual sales of say 5 lakh rupees, founders expect a valuation of 50 crores or 100 crores, which does not stand. So I really request and recommend all founders to understand the common multipliers of their sector so that when investors, you know, share the news that, you know, this in valuation that you're asking for is not justified, it should not shatter your dreams. So it's better to be a little bit realistic. And having these three things ready, team, you can still have, you know, one, it can be one person team or two person team with one more co founder you can always have, even after first angel round, that's okay. But traction and, you know, product must be like it is an absolutely must before you go for the fundraising. Thank you so much for your insights on this. So I have another question for sort of, sort of Abhinav talked about valuations. I really want to understand that how do you think that valuations and, you know, could act as a benefit or could act as a corn for the startup while raising funds. So I pointed out, companies with very early traction or no traction at all, which is like minimal sales. It is extremely difficult to put a number on the valuation. And if the valuation is low, as in the cases of very low sales in the initial phase, the valuation of the company also becomes low. And then the founders have to dilute a greater amount of their equity for a small amount of money. So it actually works against the founders themselves, which majority of them do not realize. And in fact, I'm surprised that quite a lot of founders have no idea about this thing. They just come and say, I want to raise 10 crores, and I'll just dilute 15%. And they don't have any idea about how the company be valued or something. They don't have idea about safe notes and the alternate options. So that is something which really, really comes the comes a shock to them. When we say that we cannot really push a valuation for you, like for 40 crores or 45 crores, and when you have like a sale of one lakh rupees a month, which is totaling about 12 lakh, and that also is a revenue, not really a profit. So then they are like why that company did it as a given example of credit and all. So so then it's like, I go around justifying to them that why is one of the unicorns that you are seeing why do they get funding and why don't why wouldn't you stand in the same queue and no track record, nothing and not even having an idea about it. So what I what I strongly feel is that a lot of these these glamorous numbers in economic times probably show a very, very rosy picture to most of the entrepreneurs. And they end up imagining that any number of fundraising is possible just because we have a technology product product is good. So it is important for them to actually read up a little bit on this find out do a little bit of research on the internet to find out what are the ways of company valuation and and it will not be possible to raise any amount of money without understanding valuation and how much equity to dilute. I definitely agree with you sort of the reason being that even we are dealing with startups so we understand we would get startups earning a revenue of five flags and quoting a valuation of 500 crores, we barely, you know, we rarely get in touch with founders who are like, take care, this is the right valuation for us and we accept it. So it's always, you know, everybody who starts a business, I know there are so many startup founders here, please don't mind me saying but there are so many things that you really have to keep in mind while doing it. So sort of I really have to ask you another question, which is in relation to health care, because you are a health care professional. And honestly speaking, the, the experience that you hold for so many years is equivalent to my age. So it will be very difficult for me to ask you difficult questions out there. So really want to understand that what kind of a paradigm shift that you have seen in health care startups? So startups earlier, startups are even the health care companies, which had a little bit of a track record also earlier used to focus mostly on health care, record keeping and automating of the hospital workflows. While now that now that majority of companies doing that failed, it has now with the pandemic thing, majority of companies that we are getting startups are working in the area of either teleconcentration or delivery of medicines. So on one hand, very while I'm happy that a lot more startups are actually coming in and a lot more entrepreneurs are finding health care to be a lucrative area. But at the same time, I also want to comment, especially because there are so many founders here and they will pass on the word. I also want to comment that most of the startup founders in health care area are looking very superficially. And they are looking only at very, very superficial processes of just delivering the medicine or providing an appointment to a doctor and consultation, which probably is just about 5% of the entire health care processes. So they also need to use latest technologies. Nobody is actually riding on the blockchain technology these days. And they are not really utilizing the modern technology to get deeper into the health care processes into the health care devices into health care embedded systems. Instead, most of them are following up on just the just the teleconcentration and medicine delivery. One more point was that in the West and US, what I've seen is that there's a lot of a lot of emphasis on the care of old people. And in India also, we have a lot of people who are in the senior citizen age group. But we have a social support system, family support system better than West. But at the same time, people still require help like for old people falling at home or getting a certain stroke and all. So emergency services are also not that good in our country. But I am seeing very, very rarely, if at all, any startup trying to work in that direction and trying to help senior citizens out. So since there are a lot of startup founders, my suggestion is that there is so much to do in health care IT. But don't focus only on medicine delivery and booking an appointment and doing a teleconcentration. Thank you. Through that. Abhinav, do you have anything to add on to Saurabh's point? Health care sector, sorry, on the health care startups. Actually, Saurabh has very rightly pointed out that most of these solutions, most of the startups that are coming are bringing a solution which kind of already exist in the market. We really need to see people handling maybe diseases or coming up with innovative solutions without solving the health tech problem, not only automation of digitization of the processes for the doctors and delivery. I think there are plenty of startups and it's like quite saturated market now. So people really would like to work on health tech. It's better to use technology like blockchain and other AI kind of technologies for diagnosis of diseases that is much needed. And we hardly have any startup working on that area. I can definitely agree on this. Even we get more entries in startups who are asking for telemedicine and providing the medicine at home. However, I think the delivery has still not been sorted by anybody yet because I have faced the same problem during pandemic and there were so many websites that you could reach out to but I don't think so. Anybody was able to help you out in that particular manner. So we are still hoping and waiting for one of the unicorn in health care startup as well. So we heard about valuations. We heard about how investments are done. We heard about how health care startups work or health care segment altogether works. However, let's hop on to the growth consultant who can actually let us know that how community building could lead to growth of the company. And once the growth is done, you can certainly go ahead and raise funds for yourself. Over to you, Vinit. Yeah, thanks for the question because a community is something, you know, which is very close to my heart. I have been building communities professionally the last six years and I have seen companies scale and grow. So that's that's a very awesome part of it. So just to bring everybody onto the same page. Let me explain what is community building and how it helps in growth. So everybody has a very different different immunity and it is perfectly fine because there is no single benchmark which you can put on to place and see that you know, this is the yardstick with which you are measuring. So community is basically defined as a space or a place that provides member a feeling of belonging. All right. And in a shared interest of what's going on. So this is the basic definition to start with. So when I'm talking in terms of a startup or a business, there are essentially five factors which help them, you know, build the entire thing, the ecosystem per se, which is infrastructure, service providers, networks, knowledge and capital. Each of them play a very significant role in a success of a company. Now, when you create a place or a space where these guys come together, they are comfortable and they start talking to each other. That's where the magic happens. All right. Everybody will bring in their own expertise, the kind of things they do. But when they are talking to each other, mutual benefits can be found out and this leads to exponential growth. So that is getting the every stakeholder on one platform is what I call community building. Now, when I'm talking about growth, how does it happen? So I point this equation, people plus purpose plus guidelines equal to community building plus growth. All right. So at the core of the community is people, you know, we have belonging, we are connected to each other and there is certain what we call bond which we share. So when you get a people who are united by a specific purpose, all right, that this is something they are excited about. This is something they are passionate about. These are the things which you want to do about it in a framework. That's where the magic starts to begin. They start connecting with each other and automatically that will lead to growth. How that there are various things to be looked at and also adding to my friend Abhinav and Dr. Saurav has said that healthcare startups are doing only the 5% of it. So I'll give you an example of a very different startup from India called Cure.ai. And when the pandemic began, a lot of the X-ray records were not digitized. So the fact is in a country like India where what do you call getting the test reports and the record and the medical professionals, specifically the radiologists and stuff, they are very few. What these guys did, they digitized the record, they built an AI algorithm so that depending on when in a place where the pandemic is spreading, people take the X-ray and they were able to predict that whether these guys are infected or not at what stage they are and in what categories to be put in. And that's how this entire thing they collaborated with the municipal corporations and took things forward. So I look at those kind of companies also. I see that how multiple stakeholders come into place, build a low cost solution, but an awesome one to take things forward. So that's about it. Perfect. That sounds great. Thank you so much for the insights, Vinit. Abhinav, we are getting questions again and again and I believe that are being rooted to you. So somebody has asked about valuations. I was about to ask you the another question around valuation. So he's like, how to know what the valuation of a startup should be? Which is a difficult question, I know. Yeah. But before answering that, I, you know, Vinit's example of Cure.ai reminded me one another startup which I have recently come across. So they are solving a very, very nice and genuine problem. So in most of the cases seen in India, health insurance coverage is pretty less. When people go to hospital, I think less than 5% people have this health insurance coverage. So this company is doing a patient financing. So it's a fintech for hospital bills. So when a customer gets discharged and they don't have enough finances, they try to arrange the financing for that person so that he can get discharged using a fintech technology. Now this is a genuine problem and if somebody's solving fintech plus health tech combination, it's a wonderful solution, much needed. So if people come across with such kind of concept, it will really help because India lags far behind in infrastructure as well as in the economy. But thanks to ATM and other technologies, most of the fintech companies have grown so much that they can impact other sectors as well very easily. The combination of, you know, cross sector categories is a definitely good space if somebody wants to enter a new space. Coming to this question of valuations, so as I told you, right, a valuation primarily depends on traction or revenue, no matter what the business is. So whenever a founder is going out, they really need to see that do they have number of users because all businesses do not have a revenue model on day one. If you take case of Instagram or even Clubhouse, if you see Clubhouse, it's a four billion dollar company, but what's the revenue stream today? They're still defining the valuation, they're defining the revenue streams. In the US, they have made Clubhouse rooms an option to make the session paid. So people have to pay in order to attend the session. So they're still defining this thing, but the as Vinith has said, the community building, the user growth has been fabulous, that has been driving their valuation still now. On the other hand, a normal company, maybe it's an e-com company or service company, if they have a service defined and a revenue stream, that is the basis for the company's valuation. As Dr Bhatia very rightly shown you and given you an example that if a company is having the one lakh a month or you know, which translates to 12 lakh a year kind of revenue, then on an average it differs from sector to sector. It's very simple, a PE ratio for an sector differs in equity market also. PE ratio for an IT company is very different from a steel company, right? Similarly, it happens here, but on a benchmark you can assume 10x to 12x is the top most number that you can ask on an annual revenue. So suppose your startup is doing 2 lakh rupees a month revenue or it has closed 24 lakh over past one year, then you can safely assume that you can ask somewhere close to 4 to 5 crore top as your valuation. So in order to reach to a decent valuation, because angel fund, you should remember that you should not be diluting more than in the range of 15 to 20 percent is the right spot to dilute in the first round and rather than valuation you should know that how much money we need for 12 to 18 months runway. It's not about the valuation, it's actually about your requirement for 12 to 18 months. There have been multiple cases people asked too much money because they assume the valuation is high and if they have to dilute 15 percent why don't we ask a higher amount. But that should not be the case. You reduce the round ask yourself first how much money you genuinely need. Do not count expenses like I will be drawing a higher salary or fancy office investors do not like especially at angel level they want maximum money to go into business into building product building team. Put your money and resources in the right place, sit on your you know excel workout dilutely properly on your numbers and the sweet spot is if you are touching you know annually 1 cr approximately minimum 60 lakh to 1 cr annual revenue then you can command a valuation of in the range of 10 to 15 cr 18 cr and then you can go for a good round of 2 to 3 crore. That should be the sweet spot because the larger the round you open longer time it takes founders really need to understand an angel fund round raising time period is nowhere less than three to four months. So you really need to have your you know backup ready that in case you need money in your bank account in the month of December you have to begin the activity in the month of June because sometime the money will land in the month of September or October or December or maybe in transit you don't know. So have your runway ready because your business cannot stop at the same time you have to make an effort and keep a multiplier of 10 x to 15 x of an annual revenue that's that's the best because most of the investors will agree that you have done some work and they will definitely negotiate numbers with you but they know that you have you are realistic and you know why you need money and how much money you need. It will give them more confidence in you trust me. Am i right Dr. Saurabh when entrepreneurs come with you know realistic numbers we feel good about it. You are absolutely right. Moving on Avinav in fact people print tech and the medical bill why is that if you go and pay in this in one of the casinos there are print tech website so that's that concept has been probably designed. So very well said Avinav so it's easier for any startup founder to value their company based on the multiplier effect that's the first you know first instance that you can value a company and you can at least make a little decision around that rest you should leave it to the professionals let them make the decision there. So Saurabh we have a question for you you were talking about the instruments that are available in the market for fund raising so we have got a question from Sachin that how to decide the instruments for raising the funds and what are the different degree of risk involved in every instrument. So mostly I've seen majority of founders going for equity dilution CPS or the safe notes CPS stands for compulsorily convertible preference shares and they are they're the same thing as safe notes in India slightly different in the silicon valley in california but in India safe notes are more or less similar as a ccps so that instrument is slightly different in the sense that without finalizing the valuation you can take money and then promise a certain discount at the next event which is either a second round of raising money or maybe a period of three years or four years which can be mutually agreed upon and by that time the company will have some definitive traction some definitive revenue and a more plausible and feasible kind of valuation so the early investor can get a discounted equity at that rate while the investor which is who is investing three years later will get the current market valuation so this way what happens is that it is a fair game for both the founder as well as for the early stage investor otherwise I have seen companies who have diluted 30 percent equity for like 50 lakh rupees and then eventually they get into trouble because they lose the 51 percent control of the company pretty quick and then there are various types of issues that that come up so as far as instrument is concerned if your valuation is not very clear or your traction is very low do not go for equity dilution in the early stages and as Abhinav mentioned there are a lot of businesses which cannot or do not have a very early revenue earning model so for these companies it is really difficult valuation so for them CCS is definitely the way to go and one more thing I would like to say about valuation as it was mentioned in the question there is a multiplier effect definitely we in various industries we use slightly different multipliers and apart from there are various mathematical methods also like discounted flow and all that discounted cash flow but what you should keep in mind is the more is the potential for your product or company to explode on the technology scene and suddenly rise to top the higher valuation you can command the more your company is oriented towards logistics supply or manufacturing and selling the lesser is the multiplier effect for your company so that's just a harsh reality but that's the way the market currently is balanced in continuation to that there is somebody who's asking for angel funds what are the prerequisites of the startup isn't pre-revenue stage I know that's it's it's quite difficult for anybody to raise at least during this time wherein people have started started you know believing in the companies who are already generating revenue and not at the ideation stage what's your view on that sort of when it comes to angel funding and that to pre-revenue stage so if it is all right but then there should be a few things one pre-revenue is okay but is your product ready or not if your product is not ready then we go one one step further down is your MVP or a mock-up or something like that ready or not third thing and there should be things just supporting this then because if you don't even have a product which is live and I and I do have companies like that especially in medical device area where they have the idea of a device but they have not been able to manufacture it yet so in such scenarios what things I look for is do you have a intellectual property in your name do you have a patent do you have a copyright on your software for any such similar thing which is going to be just going to kind of hold you good and somebody some big company with money muscle will not throw you out of the market or just require you very quickly if you don't have a patent another thing I look for in such cases is a letter of intent so let's say you have a very very early product very very early MVP and it's not even been launched but somebody like let's say an Airtel or a reliance or any such equally huge company in your area has already given you a letter of intent of engaging you for x number of product pieces or downloads or whatever which is promising you something like let's say two crores or three crores of revenue over a period of next two years then such a letter of intent also holds you in good stead so it is important that if you don't have a product then have some IP have some letters of intent show that you are getting traction from corporates and that will help you but the best thing is to have a product and have some kind of traction that is that is typically the area of engines otherwise you are actually in the seed or precede area and that is an area where you actually dilute much more equity for lesser amount of money so not good so prefer to go on this step letter on the top is product and traction if no traction have at least the product if no product have at least the MVP if no MVP have at least the intellectual property in your name and some corporate letters of intention I hope that answers the question I hope so too Swati we have answered your question here and meanwhile because we are talking about funding funding is all revolved around angel investors venture capital valuations and that's how things are done however we really want to understand that how startups are built so we have already talked about community building now we'll be talking about digital presence so Vinit I have a question for you yeah yeah so how imperative do you think that you know digital presence of a startup is necessary or is important so the fact is if I really want to verify how genuine you are what exactly are you doing where do I go and check it out it's the digital presence which we say so frankly speaking if you are a D2C startup which is direct to customers obviously your users will be on up on your platform which will be there on in the digital space and the direct impact is being done when we are talking about the B2B space at least a basic what we call presence online with what exactly are you doing what is the problem you are solving and what is the solution you are offering all right so it is a very much given that without you being present digitally you do not exist all right having said that there are few startups you know who are doing some great work but frankly speaking most people don't know about it because they are into very deep tech or some hardcore problem solving which they are doing and at times we realize that that these startups were based out of a city in our country only after they have been acquired by a very larger conglomerate whether internationally or even domestically so frankly speaking yeah that's the story you have to be there because it makes you approachable and accessible very to put it very root you know bluntly that you have to be accessible and approachable and that's how you start building your digital presence that's it so there is no real mantra when it comes to digital presence if people could opt for social media marketing or you know the search engine optimization that they opt for and there are different methods of presenting themselves digitally so Hina the fact is you know in in my podcast be impactful we talk about four KYC to build your BS which is know your company know your customer know your competitor and know your community BS is business strategy or brand strategy and if you mess it up it becomes the slang BS so in know your customer we say you exactly have to know who your customer is what is the problem you are solving and where exactly are your customer roaming around so if you have your customers you know specifically manufacturing units or clusters you don't have to digitally optimize your thing on seo and sems on the social media presence because the fact is those guys are not roaming around out there I mean doing an Instagram ad and not solve your purpose because your customers are not there so depending on where exactly your audience is where exactly your customers are whom do you want to present your entire story to you have to accordingly devise your digital strategy it is there is no what you call one size fits all story perfect that's exactly what I wanted to understand so the starter founders who are here would be able to understand that how important it is to build your community how important it is to have a digital presence how important it is to have right valuations at place so Abhinav my next question goes to you because we have got a question from JD asking we have seen many startup founders having great product or IP but they lack execution capability so in this situation how does angel investor would evaluate a business see to be honest if you see from investors perspective right they are not going to play the game it's the founder who have to execute and play the game ultimately so investors usually bring money but in such cases founders really need to look towards an investor who brings some sector knowledge or expertise also so if you see closely a couple of fintech startups get you know support from Kunalsha or some sector experts or you know and CEO of an existing fintech company because these people understand your product and technology better they don't only bring money but they bring some technological know-how and team expertise also but these investors are very rare most of the investors invest within intent of return they're looking for the growth of the company they expect founders to know what's in their business right because a founder is the person who has been thinking he have come across a problem work out work out a solution and he knows the actual customers it is to him to grow it in case founders feel that they are facing some problem in execution it's better to approach an accelerator or incubator first than the angel investor because you really are the person who have to grow it when you have an advisor mentor or have or get associated with an incubator or accelerator that is the place you get your product defined really well you understand the execution parameters the common pitfalls of the sector so it's better to spend some time with these programs rather than running for funding because most of the incubators offer some basic financial support also that gives you a runway for three to six months to stabilize your product and then one should go to the investors and approach the investors with relevant background and if you and one more good strategy here can be just see the peers in your industry go to their past fundraising activities and you'll always find couple of angel investors are investing repeatedly in the same sector try to approach those investors first don't approach every investor they might not be you know very helpful for you but the investors who have like keen interest in a particular sector approach them share your problems with them and perhaps they can help you out with execution part as well as a mentor along with the funding part as well. Thank you thank you so much Abhinav and I believe Jairi he was able to answer your question there sort of another question for you so we have got a question in regard to because you were talking about intellectual property and patents so Sachin is asking does non-owning of IP or patent for innovative technology make any impact on the valuation of the startup? Yeah definitely if you do not own the IP of any particular technology that you're owning that you're using then it becomes a risk so how do you mitigate risk is one you have a license from that company or person who owns the patent or copyright and you have written permissions or a written contract so there has to be some kind of risk mitigation and the second part is if somebody is owning a patent and it's an individual person investors always look at it as high risk because today the idea is not really established in the market but tomorrow when it gets established by your hard work and the number of users and an amount of money associated with it becomes very big then a single patent owner may actually twist your arm to give him a bigger chunk of money so usually the better idea is either you buy the patent by the copyright if you cannot afford it then mitigate the risk by having proper license to do so it definitely affects your your valuation. Perfect thank you so much for the insights on that and back to you again Abhinav because we are getting so many questions around startups fundraising and because Saurav and Abhinav you both have been into this segment for a long long time these questions goes for you so if the product is non-innovative but still it believes that the market needs it so would that be taken as a startup? Definitely yes you really do not need to think too much see I agree with Dr Bhatia but you know we need to understand a couple of things a sector like health tech which takes a lot of time in developing a new product have some you know real value for IP but if you see most of these startups do not have an IP kind of a thing in India getting an IP in the first place you know if you apply for an IP it takes you know 18 months to 24 months at times get your patent ready so that's applying for patent does not assure that you get it in the first place second is even in case you get it I'll give you a very simple example suppose a company gets the patent you know for drone flights you know in say for 500 meter it doesn't mean that the only come which will be able to do drone deliveries across India it can never happen e-commerce it cannot be copyrighted so an idea cannot be copyrighted if you have developed a product and the process know how you can definitely copy it it will give you an added advantage but in a market like India it the competitive advantage is not that much for all these sectors for sectors like health tech is it's definitely yes but for other sectors it's it's there but it's not that much that it will be a game changer for you so if you're working on a product which has a scalability factor which is a technology angle and your market know how insights are there you just go full-on into it and the growth of the business is the real driver if you see closely e-commerce when it started amazon has the e-commerce snap deal had had it flip card had it it's the execution that matters a lot not only because even having an ip will not give you all the good runway that you have needed so ip having an ip is good but spending too much time for a sector which is a non r&d driven because all businesses are not r&d driven businesses right so do not worry too much focus on the business back to the business traction numbers will help you a lot focus on multiplying your business that is the key number i don't know how much you would agree on this abhinav but even if the product is non innovative and but you still think that there is a lot of market which is left behind by your competitor and there is competitive advantage of yours in entering that particular ecosystem i believe still the portion could come up with a startup and start running to businesses because we have seen in previously also that there were certain companies as you rightly said the e-commerce one then we have the fleet management companies there are so many companies coming up with fleet management now nowadays and still being acceptable by the people so anything that you want to agree with yeah so i've asked lots of questions from abhinav and sort of and vineet i feel that you must be feeling that why i'm not poking questions to you again so this one comes for you so we are talking about pandemic again and again so what do you think what kind of a paradigm shift has you know pandemic came with so in terms of time in terms of you know work from home what do you think would be you know the the real curve that we will be able to see in the next six months so hina pandemic has actually bring what about the paradigm shift a lot of companies you know who used to insist that come to office and work all right although people were working on their own devices and they had their BYOD policy the fact is there were a lot of restrictions which were put into place but when pandemic came into account people started working from home all right they got some free time but that that was what you call taken by some other aspects so the future of work is very interesting there are going to be remote and distributed teams which are out here to stay thirdly on what you call it's like now talent is available globally so if you are able if you have a specific niche or you have a specific expertise and you want to collaborate and work with you know the industry stalwarts I don't think until and unless you have to be physically present in a manufacturing setup or a retail environment where your product is actually being sold to the end customers if you don't have that constraint you can work from anywhere and hybrid work spaces are here to stay there is nothing stopping to say that hybrid workspaces are not here to stay it's out here to stay now everybody will have to start building their own portfolio to figure out that how things are going to you know change in the future I would agree with that Vineet however I'm a vocaholic and I believe that you know while I'm at home it's really difficult to manage things altogether but there are people who are like happy about staying at home and working on their wishes so that is also you know initially people were very happy that you know we are working from home now they have realized I need a work time and I need a home time so the barrier has actually come down but you will have to create your own independent barrier symptoms of when you're working and when you are not working because it is very difficult to what you call stay away from screen as we are you know constantly connected in the digital space so let's see how this thing spans out through that so my question goes to you also in regards with the same so what kind of a paradigm shift is there during pandemic according to you so let's see what was the origin of everybody going to the office so before industrialization everybody who was doing some kind of trade was a tradesman they used to have their office or the shop or the foundry in front and used to live behind that but when industrialization came up then it became mandatory that okay there's a single place where there are conveyor belts and assembly lines and all that so that you go there and monitor people or you go there and work yourself now and that kind of work culture just carried on even when the IT enabled jobs came up which had the potential to you know work from home and all so now that barrier that kind of mindset has been shattered that you definitely need to come to the office to be productive now you can end be somewhere else and be productive so having said that this is also true that working from home is not easy with kids and home routine being conducted all the time so there comes a situation when probably a small office home office so whole concept with you used to be there you will probably need a dedicated room in the at home or probably close to your home where you can go and work if you have to work in in a hybrid or a permanent remote manner then that probably will be required and probably you will see companies just like they used to allow the telephone allowance and internet allowance earlier now probably companies will start doling out the SOHO allowance where you can have a separate room you can rent out a small studio apartment near your house and work from there so companies will still find it cheaper to do it of course as Vinit said that if you are constrained by some logistics like you have to be physically present like doctors have to be mostly physically present to perform surgeries or perform procedures or if you have to sell something which is like clothing or something which physically sells mostly and if you have that kind of a showroom then yes too bad but if it is possible for you to do a hybrid I think companies are going to encourage it because the corporate work spaces are terribly expensive and also come along with a lot of baggage so having realized that companies can now actually you know have more savings because of the pandemic now I believe there are certain companies who have actually minted money because they were able to save rentals and having said that we have a question here work from whom will have the real estate business because there would be less rentals what's your point on that sort of why would like okay if you are saying from the perspective of co-working spaces I believe commercial maybe what he what Rithik is asking is about that like the corporate spaces there will be lesser and lesser rented if this thing goes on because quite a lot of local economies like in Bangalore Gurgaon, Pune they are based heavily on IT companies and there are SCZs where IT companies are given tax breaks and all so that kind of real estate may take a hit but what I always see is that in real estate it is quite easy to repurpose any particular property so if you have already built it and it is not being taken up by corporate ITs to use it the real estate can be repurposed and converted into something else because most of them are actually empty spaces on the entire floors so it's easier to repurpose them so I don't really think they will take a hit but yeah some kind of rework may be required perfect when it you wanted to add something here yeah so Hina I want to add two things Aalok Kejriwal who is one of the well-known entrepreneurs in India wrote on his LinkedIn post stating that games to win is now 100% remote so their team members have an option post pandemic either if they want to come and work from office they can work from office if they want to work from their home they can work from their home or if they want to work from native or anywhere they can simply you know do their work as long as they are available during the work hours and things are not getting stopped so this is something which we will see how things will span out in future with respect to commercial spaces and office spaces so I started my community building career with this company called 91 springboard which is one of the largest for working spaces around in India and when I joined them we figured out that the fact is a lot of people were working remote a lot of small teams who were renting out offices in the commercial space were not able to sustain it and they started moving to a co-working space model so with pandemic you know impacting it and once we are there on the recovery looks like the co-working space business is going to grow because everywhere we need that one to one human connection and that is found at these spaces and it after a while we really you know cannot look at screen 24 hours in a day and then say that you know we are there it's it's holistic development to state that's it that sounds great thank you so much Vinit so Abhidav sorry sorry we want to say something I just wanted to add that it's also about acceptability of such things earlier if somebody was working from home they used to be a little shy of accepting that I work from home and if a company had a co-working space and did not have a dedicated space they used to be like a little defensive about it that maybe we can't afford a proper corporate office that's why we are in you know working out of an apartment or something like that but with this thing happening it has now changed the mindset completely that wherever you are working from it is it is okay nobody is going to judge you just because you are working from home or working from a smaller co-working space true that's I believe last year was the type when everybody was worried about the whistle of the cooker of you know coming from behind the kind of noises the kids playing around that was a problem but this year everybody was accepting everything and every everybody was acceptable of these things that because we are at home this is something that we really have to deal with so we started enjoying work from home this year so Abhinav I have a question for you that's not a question I just want you to know that because we have to end the session we were supposed to do it for 45 minutes however we have already exceeded the time so Abhinav I just need you to note down a message that you would really like to give the startups okay I think I have given the message in the beginning itself that you know guys just work on your technology and traction don't go before the product it will become a tough journey for you and you will end up diluting a lot of equity and it will be very hard path to raise funds and just focus on the growth part of it and raise only if as much as you need don't raise in excess because you will ultimately dilute yourself and you have to answer thousand questions why you need extra money because investors can quickly see how much money you actually need for survival for 12 to 18 months because they've been doing this thing you know on a daily basis so they can see it so that's the only giveaway and please do not worry you know feel free entrepreneurship is an experience you know do not test yourself do not put question marks on yourself be open to suggestions and feedback because at times I've seen when somebody tries to give you and you know advice which you are not accept you know you're not open to take and you feel shattered you feel that people are not believing in you it's not like that it's like because people have the experienced entrepreneurs or founders or investors have done it multiple times they're trying to help you out most of the people I've seen in startup ecosystem and touch would are helping each other there's nobody who's trying to pull you down and fortunately people like Vinit, Dr Bhatia, Hina all of us are there to help startups is it not our all motive that we want them to help we want you to achieve your dreams we are the catalyst in your journey and if you're trying to tell you something it's just for your good and we want you to be success because your win is everybody's win it's win for Vinit it's win for Dr Bhatia it's win for Hina right so that's the only thing and I wish you all the best in case you have any doubts and queries please try to reach to your peers an entrepreneurship journey is a very lonely journey to be honest if you're working alone in a closed room with a team of three to four people it's a very lonely journey when you have doubts there are tough times you need to have a support system have good friends around you where you can talk openly do not worry about failures negative feedback it's all part and parcel of life you will be asked questions people will doubt you but you have to keep trust and faith in yourself and have an open discussion open hearted discussion with somebody don't hold it in sight because it will ultimately you know create a lot of anxiety and other things situation to founders which is not good in long run it's a long run don't read Dr Bhatia is very very rightly said ET your story shows a very very rosy picture they do not show you how hard it is to build a company it's a great journey it's a year's commitment for years not even that's for much so that's that's all I want to say that's true thank you so much Abhinav that was a real great message Dr Saurav what is your point of view here and what kind of a message you would like to give to our founders here the message I want to give is that you should know the questions that if somebody does not have an innovative product then then also should they think of startup or not so my message is around that that if you don't have an innovative product it's alright but your approach can be innovative you can use technology and have a greater possibility of exploding onto the market scene and that is what differentiates you from others even if your product is not innovative so use technology to your benefit there are there are so many things to be done and a lot of people especially reading the books from Harari say that because of automation people are going to lose their jobs and all but automation actually creates more jobs because people are freed up for doing things which require greater mental ability so go ahead use technology and use an innovative approach if not an innovative product and that will put you in the eyes of investors your traction will increase because of that and you will have a more standardized offering in the market so that is what I want to say plus yeah one more thing which is educate yourself on the startup in startup rules, regulations, laws otherwise a lot of a lot of entrepreneurs come to us who are not aware of majority of things no harm in coming and learning from people like Abhinavina or Vinith but make an effort yourself also to first educate yourself before deciding on that how much money I want to raise and this is going to be the holy grail thank you great thank you Saurabh how about you Vinith what sort of a message would you like to share collaborate and grow so build an ecosystem around your product offering and frankly speaking all of us don't have every answer but somebody will have the answers to the challenge which we are facing so just reach out and there is always collaboration and growth that's it all the best in your startup journey thank you so much when they are done that cannot say no to it so that's there every entrepreneur who has once failed is offering you failure as a service that's what we have been doing since a long time and I believe that's how we grew in our expect and how we increase our expertise and we are helping you out we are there so I will leave you with Sagoon on this note and thank you so much to my dear panelists that you have imparted so much of knowledge and experience of yours to our startup founders that was great talking to you and I believe startup founders would have learned a lot from this particular session over to you Sagoon yes thank you Nina and thank you for having us today it was a great session and for everybody groups organize these kind of events every single week almost every week so do connect with us and yeah thank you for the great session perfect thank you so much everyone thank you Hina for moderating it so well thank you Abhinav thank you Dr Saurab and thank you we need to thank and yes thanks to our dear audience for the amazing set of questions so yeah thank you guys for attending it thanks Anupam thank you everyone thanks take care bye bye thanks guys chalo bye thank you everyone thank you