Friday, March 29

IIT-Madras Launches a Startup to Assist other Startups in Early-Age Funding

The Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-Madras) has come up with a startup established with a motive to help other startups in early-stage to inflate their success through Machine Learning and Data Sciences tools and techniques. The institute has named the startup as YNOS Venture Engine CC Private Limited.

The founder of the venture is Prof Thillai Rajan who belongs to the department of management studies and has been researching the Indian venture capital industry nearly for a decade. The professor has a stupendous awareness of funding issues at start-ups and therefore he decided to come forth with such a venture.

The words of Prof Thillai Rajan in this regard were, Information and decision making analytics are not easily accessible for early-stage entrepreneurs. Sell-side intermediation is virtually nil for early-stage start-ups. YNOS uses research insights and technology to provide information and intermediation services for early-stage entrepreneurs. Using advanced marker analytics tools, our platform provides estimates of valuation and also identify appropriate investors for the start-up.”

The company’s initial capital has been raised by a Chennai-based market research & analysis firm – IIT-M’s incubation cell & Venture Intelligence. The YNOS team comprises of faculty, students and alumni of IIT Madras.

According to the founder, only a limited number of startups (6-7%) are able to raise their first round of initial capital from external sources that to at a very low amount. The number further improves in the second and third rounds of funding. Through this statement, he wants to convey that the first round of external funding is very deprecatory for the startups and thus they are left with an option of internal funding or bootstrapping the venture, but this may not be favourable in the growth of the company. Therefore, at a point, external funding becomes a necessity.

Thillai thus wants to lend a helping hand to the upcoming startups and improve funding for the new entrepreneurs in the early stage. The procedure will include, identifying investors providing a competitive landscape for startups, hands-on understanding of fundraising and valuation estimates. The combined offerings and the technology platform intends to take into consideration the specific needs of early-stage companies.

Arun Natarajan, Founder of Venture Intelligence and an investor in YNOS commented, “Start-ups that approach professional investors for the first time tend to be underprepared on various fronts. This tends to cause a lot of delay in fundraising – if not completely derail it. By aiming to provide actionable information on this front, YNOS is poised to play an important role in making Early Stage funding process in the country more efficient.

This new venture seems to be supportive and in favour of the upcoming startups, and assist them in expanding their business operations smoothly without funding issues.