Happy Days for Startups Ahead Date:   Wednesday , July 02, 2014 Karnataka Information Technology Venture Capital Funds (KITVEN), a Rs.9 crore venture capital fund, is a State & Central Government financial institution in Karnataka investing in emerging companies with a long-term investment approach Starting new enterprise irrespective of the size is a huge target for the starters to achieve. Once an entrepreneur with a convincing business plan obtains money from investors, he or she begins developing the product in a similarly bigoted fashion. For instance, in any start-up ecosystem - be it in raising funds, introduce a product or assembling a team - has always been a haphazard plan of action. Raising funds in recent days has become much easy in the start-up ecosystem due to increasing participation of angel investors in the recent times. In the past two years, we see lot of changes happening especially with large number of incubation centers which are typically driven by the government based organizations or by the individual efforts. On the other hand, MSME (Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises) have also come up with several schemes to take up the start-up ecosystem to a higher level by giving subsidies or collateral free loans or reimbursement for the IP filing and others. Plunge head before investing We at KITVEN are investing in small staged companies which can boost their growth prospects and from there they can take a good amount for further growth. Our existing KARVEN fund invests in the area of green energy, manufacturing, automobiles, aerospace, patent pendings and filings falling under SME sector. Though we invest in pure venture capital funds, we strive to look into certain key factors before investing. Some of the factors that really interest us to make investments are promoters, management capability, integrity, honesty and their past-experiences as to who is bringing what on the table and how they complement each other. The next point grabbing features are the market they are trying to address and the pain point they are trying to solve, be it locally or globally. However, the uniqueness of the product or solutions, the strategies to tap market, gross profit margins, and customer acquisition plans also holds a key position among the list we check for. Upcoming Funds from KITVEN We are one of the few regional funds started way back in 1998-1999 to help start ups. Done more than 28 investments and expecting for couple of more investments shortly, we have recently launched KARVEN fund (Karnataka Venture Capital Fund), a regional fund only for investments in Karnataka for non IT and non BT companies which will invest anywhere between Rs.10 lacks to Rs.1 crore in each start-up. KARSEMVEN fund (Karnataka Semiconductor Venture Capital Fund) for the state of Karnataka will be launched shortly to boost the emerging semiconductor sector with a larger campus of nearly Rs. 100 crores. Delve Deep into a Specific Area The efforts in growing into profitable business will go for a toss if there is no well set goal with proper financial management coupled with clear approach. Rather than trying to address multiple industries with multiple products or services, a start-up should focus majorly on delving deep into one specific area. This will help them grow and indicate a green signal for the investors to invest in.