Nexus Venure Partners are partners in the truest sense for entrepreneurs

This is what the portfolio companies of VC fund Nexus Venture Partners had to say last night in the first VC organized event at Bangalore .Komli Media, Magicrooms.in, Netmagic, Dimdim, Aryaka and Eka Software Solutions,ventures led by entrepreneurs Amar Goel, Niranjan Gupta, Sharad Sanghi, DD Ganguly, Mangesh Dalvi and Manav Garg had one point in common, the endorsement of the positive impact created on their ventures by the coming on board of Nexus Venture Partners.

Coming directly from the entrepreneurs, the role of a VC was made crystal clear to an audience of more than 200 (most of which comprised of entrepreneurs looking at raising funds)

What I liked about this get together is the fact that Nexus took out the time and called all the entrepreneurs in one forum who wanted to reach out to them. This definitely is a positive step in the Indian entrepreneurial landscape.

One could not miss Sandeep Singhal giving ears to every entrepreneur who wished to speak to him. We can only hope there will be more interactions of similar nature.

Now coming to the panel discussion, let me enumerate some of the key takeaways

1. Don’t agree to the buy back clause at all which VCs will push down your throat, its not a debt you are raising but its equity raise and VC should be a partner not a lender, this was quite categorically put forth by Netmagic founder, Sharad Sanghi who has successfully raised 3 rounds of venture investments
2. Choose a VC carefully, think of bad days (which an entrepreneur invariably has to go through) which VC will be your partner in the bad days and will stick by you rather then be after your neck. This point was quite lucidly made by DD Ganguly, founder, Dimdim
3. On a lighter note, Amar Goel from Komli Media said, “You can divorce your wife but you cannot divorce your VC, so go for a VC who understands your business, prefereably has been an entrepreneur himself and knows what it takes to run a venture”
4. Getting the right valuation is both an art and science so do your homework, study the PE multiples in your category, do the analysis first and then you will be confident on the negotiation table said Manav Garg from Eka Software.

Insightful and interesting session but what was good about this event was the initiation by a VC fund to directly reach out to entrepreneurs themselves and engage in a dialogue.

View from the sidelines

Shradha Sharma