This Gurugram-based startup helps entrepreneurs master the art of pitching to investors
Based in Gurugram, Easy to Pitch helps entrepreneurs to prepare for funding and conceptualise pitch deck, getting a financial valuation and projections ready, and founder grooming, among others.
A successful pitch to investors to raise funding and demo days have become integral aspects of starting up and entrepreneurship.
In 2016, Priyanka Madnani was also struggling to make powerful pitches for her first startup, Cheapest and Nearest, a platform that offers over 2,500 services by vendors in Delhi-NCR.
However, Priyanka realised that she was not alone. She says, “There are a lot of founders facing similar issues. Communicating their ideas continued to be a challenge, despite numerous acceleration programmes and support in the ecosystem.”
In 2017, this need became the foundation for .
The journey
Priyanka became as involved as she could in the startup ecosystem – and started volunteering at Headstart, India’s oldest and largest startup ecosystem development organisation.
“I understood why investors were rejecting founders even when they had good business models with cash flows,” she recalls.
After speaking with many mentors, incubators and accelerator programmes, and investors, Priyanka noted one common thing – the absence of experts to “groom founders for pitching”.
She says most domain experts can share industry knowledge and little about grooming to entrepreneurs.
What started as a freelancing consultancy service in 2017 soon evolved into a private limited company, registered in October 2019. Mentors from companies like Blume Ventures were impressed with her portfolio of having managed nearly 150 startups and encouraged her to take the entrepreneurial route.
Based in Gurugram with a team of 22, Easy To Pitch has helped more than 350 startups, in 21 Indian cities with one-on-one engagement online.
Operating on a B2B model, its services include reviewing or preparing a startup’s pitch deck and investment deck from scratch, getting the financial valuation and projections ready, preparing for Demo Day for an accelerator and incubator programme, and founder grooming.
“If they need to rework, we tell them that they still need to take more time because it is better not to get rejected and to go with a perfect model,” she adds.
Having reviewed over 3,000 decks, the charges begin at Rs 8,000 and goes up to Rs 30,000 for around 12 days of working closely with the core team. While the price is determined by which stage the startup is in, student entrepreneurs can avail services at a starting price of Rs 5,000. Easy To Pitch has secured more than 200 partnerships in the ecosystem.
Team Easy to Pitch
COVID-19 and the road ahead
Priyanka claims the startup has not been affected much by COVID-19 as its services were always provided virtually was seamless.
Since she was single-handedly performing most of the work as a freelancer, the entrepreneur says there were only ‘fortunate challenges’ like increasing the demand for services. She plans on onboarding 20 more employees in the near future.
“With many founders seeking our help and not enough members on the team, hiring became a challenge but we are stabilising now,” she adds. The entrepreneur is also getting used to delegating work and not handling all the tasks on her own.
Bootstrapped with Rs 2 to Rs 3 lakh while transitioning to a private company last year, the startup has a sustainable business model and is on track to achieve Rs 1 crore in revenue in March 2021.
Moving ahead, the startup plans to launch a founder's dashboard automated tools designed by leveraging AI to create pitch deck and business plans.
Additionally, Priyanka is looking for investment after the tool’s prototype is released in the next few months. It also hopes to cater to entrepreneurs from Tier II and III cities in the future.
Edited by Rekha Balakrishnan
