New Seed Funds: Right time, Right Place, Right Model

On Monday (Dec 19), I attended the soft launch of Mentor Partners, a unique technology-focused seed fund, in Bangalore. The firm plans to initially invest $1 million each in 10 product-focused companies in the IT and telecom space: around $500,000 as seed investment or “bridge loan” and the remaining as part of the first round investment along with other Venture Capital firms.

With two partners on the ground in Bangalore (Ravi Narayan who earlier co-founded Nextone Communications in the US and V.Prabhakar, a co-founder of Bangalore-based software testing services firm RelQ), Mentor Partners will help its investee companies get access to top companies in India, the US and other markets via its about 35 other members in its network. The network includes those who are either operating managers (like Vish Narayanan, Head of Telecom Operations at General Motors in Chicago) or “been there, done that” entrepreneurs (like Rosen Sharma who has founded several start-ups like Solidcore, VxTreme, Ensim, Stratum8 and Green Border).

While the number of entrepreneurs with good products ideas is growing rapidly in Bangalore and other cities, the bane of genuine early-stage investments in recent years has been lack of ability and willingness on the part of VCs to provide seed capital (a typical VC firm cannot invest less than $3 million) and more importantly, play a hands-on role in growing start-ups.

Mentor Partners plans to raise its corpus from high-net worth individuals and Silicon Valley venture firms. (Several Sand Hill Road firms have recently made similar investments into local VC firms in China. There are several reasons why it makes sense for Silicon Valley firms to make such indirect investments-despite the issues it create with respect to “double carry fees” for their own investors. For instance, they don’t have to prematurely invest in setting up a full-time team and office in these developing markets. Plus, they get proprietary deal flow for making follow-on investments.)

A key source of strength for Mentor Partners is that there are enough follow-on investors (including some two dozen Silicon Valley VC firms and strategic investors either already on the ground or very keen to invest in India) who can invest $3 million or more into their portfolio companies – when they are ready for it. Plus, as B.D.Goel, a member of the Mentor Partners network, points out, “success” for such a seed fund would be in validating the business models of their investee companies and helping them access name-brand investors as part of the first round. Mentor Partners will then rely on the follow on investors to take its investee companies to the next level, rather than having to hand-hold companies all the way to an exit. For entrepreneurs too, this is much better than having a larger fund invest $1-3 million when their products are still being built and then, just when they seem to be getting their marketing act together, start pushing towards a premature exit.

Mentor Partners’ model-including its relatively small fund size and its unique partner network-is a welcome addition to the Startup-VC ecosystem in India. What’s even better is that there are more similar seed funds that are either up and running or being raised. While Bangalore has seen the launch of the $3 million Erasmic Incubation Fund, Mumbai-based angel investor Mahesh Murthy has teamed up with Pravin Gandhi (a co-founder of Infinity Venture) to raise a $10 million fund to be called, well, “Seed Fund”.

Here’s hoping that these seed funds-which are filling an increasingly obvious and large gap in the eco-system-will close their funds quickly and invest in creating some very exciting technology companies out of India in 2006.

Arun Natarajan is the Founder of Venture Intelligence India, which tracks venture capital activity in India and Indian-founded companies worldwide. View sample issues of Venture Intelligence India newsletters and reports.