WATCH: Through the Eyes of the Investor - behind IdeaSpring Capital’s long-term bet on B2B tech startup Lavelle Networks

How does an investor make an investment decision? What guides this decision? What prompts them to rally behind an idea, an entrepreneur, and a certain product with their support, and more importantly, with their money? And once they do, why do they choose to stay the course? All of this and more answered in YourStory's brand new video series, ‘Through the Eyes of the Investor’.

More often than not, an investor-entrepreneur relationship turns out to be of paramount importance when it comes to the ultimate success of a company. If the idea/product is where it all begins, the backing of an investor is what determines the future course of action. Intrigued by how these dynamics actually pan out in the everyday realm, we decided to go behind the scenes and understand the narrative from an investor’s point of view.

In the first edition of ‘Through the Eyes of the Investor’, we turn the spotlight on Naganand Doraswamy, Founder and Managing Director of Ideaspring Capital, as he takes us through tech startups that are ideating and innovating for a better world. 

Watch the first episode of Through the Eyes of the Investor, hosted by IdeaSpring Capital’s Naganand Doraswamy. In this episode, Doraswamy reveals why IdeaSpring bet big on Bangalore-based enterprise tech startup Lavelle Networks.

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Building for a better world

“We invest in startups that are developing new products and technology for a better world. I am here to let you in on why I invest in them,” says Doraswamy, introducing the first startup of the series – Lavelle Networks.

An SDN (software-defined networking) management platform, Bengaluru- based Lavelle Networks was founded in 2015 by Shyamal Kumar and Karthik Madhava, later joined by Vishal Khare, with an aim of solving the biggest challenges to enterprises - connecting over the WAN.

Lavelle Networks builds enterprise networking platforms, which embrace SDN, create powerful high-performance software functions, and enable high-speed, scalable and safe consumption of cloud computing.

In 2017, the company caught Ideaspring Capital’s eye, and together they wanted to build a market force to be reckoned with.

“We aim to deliver the best enterprise network experience for every user, on every device, for any application, on any cloud. We believe that by doing this we will enable every customer to take their business to every location on the planet they wish to because we will be there to ensure their networks are always accelerated, secured and simplified,” Founder and CEO Shyamal Kumar says.

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Betting on founders’ passion and vision

With this goal in mind, in April this year, Lavelle Networks raised $2 million in Series A round led by marquee investors including Ideaspring Capital. Explaining the investment decision at the time, Ideaspring’s Doraswamy had highlighted the tech startup’s “phenomenal growth” over the years, and its aspiration to become one of the “premier SD-WAN company” in the near future. 

Doraswamy, in an exclusive interaction with YourStory, further explains the reasons fuelling their continued engagement with the SD-WAN solution startup. He talks about Lavelle Networks hyper-scalable architecture, its cloud-based operation, and the competition from global giants. While the startup is competing with several big players across the world, the investor points out that it is “winning against many of them in the Indian market”.

All the factors combined together explain why Ideaspring continues to bet big on this network management platform.

“We, at Ideaspring, decided to invest in Lavelle Networks because we loved the passion and the vision the founders had. And they believed they had to build a large product innovation-based company from India, which aligned very well with Ideaspring’s thesis because that’s what we are set out to do,” Doraswamy explains.

Currently, the SD-WAN market in India is believed to be in a nascent phase. However, given the rapid increase in the number of internet users in the country – almost doubling since 2015 – and India emerging as the second largest online market worldwide, the future of SD-WAN certainly looks bright - a sign that even investors, especially the ones with an in-depth understanding of this field, are picking up.  

In Doraswamy’s own words,

“The fact that we have a deep tech background helped us to appreciate the solution they were bringing to the market better. And this was further validated when we spoke to various industry experts in this field to realise what Lavelle Networks had, was something very unique.”

(Video Producer: Aditya Gowtham; Video Editor: Anand Prasad; Cameraperson: Rukmangada Raja; Text story: Sutrishna Ghosh; Content Editor: Megha Reddy)

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