Startup >
Angel Investors >
Sunil K Goyal
Sunil K Goyal
CEO, YourNest Angel Fund
Gurgaon
About Me
I founded YourNest in late 2011 with Sanjay Pandey and Girish Shivani when we realised that collectively we had skills required in building start-ups to success. YourNest is envisioned as an early stage venture fund that could provide entrepreneurs both capital and hand-holding enabling them to scale up their business ventures.
Investment Strategy
As a fund we have always believed that innovation and deployment of technology is possible in any sector, and hence are sector independent when it comes to investing in start-ups. However, we do look for companies or ideas where technology can be leveraged to scale-up the business to serve global markets.
Portfolio Companies
Some of the companies that we have invested in are –
1. Proof of Performance (PoP)
PoP offers insights to decision makers based on Video Analytics from real world videos. It has successfully demonstrated use case for Outdoor media planning and monitoring. It provides a robust tamper-proof data with accountability and advanced analytics as a “neutral 3rd party service provider” for the advertising & media industry.
2. MyCity4Kids.com
Mycity4kids is a portal for kids and local kids-related services. Parents can visit the site to search for information, look for recommendations and pay, thereby completing the entire process online. The exhaustiveness of the listings, the ability to search on the basis of locality, the child’s age, reviews and ratings, makes it a must-have tool for all parents in every city. It offers strong relationships and account management solution for businesses.
3. Bookmycab.com
Bookmycab.com offers local travel – point to point, airport transfer and railway station transfer using metered taxi through its 24 hour taxi helpline, website or email. It is the only service provider to offer convenience of tele-booking of Black & Yellow Taxis and Cool Cabs in Mumbai. It acquired sole 5-year license for Mumbai City with rights to Advertise. Bookmycab launched service in technical partnership with Dutch company.
My Criteria for Investing in Startups
At YourNest we have an established framework and an evaluation matrix for selecting the prospects that we invest in. Team remains a primary parameter, supported business model, market size and geographical appeal. At an early stage the start-up team must demonstrate hand-on approach to execution. Their individual initiative, creativity, and experimental nature are primary elements we look for in the team.
Attributes I Look for in an Entrepreneur
Entrepreneur takes calculated risks, listens to the needs & translates them into mega opportunities, leverages the scare resources & constraints, gets charged with motivators such as power, money, serving the society, and may be ego, has the leadership traits such as conviction, ownership, charisma, and above all has the ability to execute well. We at YourNest actually look for these attributes prior to investing, and may be we will have some super heroes/girls in our portfolio that have all of these in them.
Common Mistakes Startups Make
For an entrepreneur, his start-up and concept are very close to his heart, a reason that generally makes them go the extra mile while working to establish the business. But in the same excitement some aspects that are overlooked such as loosely agreed terms between founders, not attracting great talent, opening too many fronts, letting the cash burn-out faster than desired, not raising sufficient funds that leads to consulting assignments, and above all missing out on quality of execution (excellence is the only mantra for a start-up to bag a repeat order from a customer).
Most Popular Types of Businesses in India at the Moment
At this moment, deepening internet penetration through tablets and smart/ non-smart devices is the big thing... A large percentage of Indians will leapfrog into the connected world without ever sitting in front of a PC... That opens immense opportunities for entrepreneurs who want to address the needs and requirements of the "bottom of the pyramid". These could be in the areas of healthcare, education, entertainment, financial inclusion, or pure access to information hitherto fragmented or not available. The connected world is also leading to enormous data on each individual and a customer, data analytic continues to be popular. We expect opportunities to emerge around adhaar project for the start-ups to leverage.
To give you an example, till recent time there was no platform that could aid parents in identifying various service providers in their local areas for things like tuition or extra-curricular for kids. When the team of MyCity4Kids identified this gap, they immediately went about building an online ecosystem to connect parents and service providers, becoming the first venture globally to offer such a solution.
Thoughts on First Angel, Follow-on Investments and Offerings to an Angel Investor
YourNest would like to be the first institutional investor in a start-up. We are always open to co-investors or other angel or accelerators as partners in the start-up. Our USP is our operational skills of hand-holding a start-up to build initial team, and nurture the business model. Be open to offer a board seat as it is required for protection of investor rights as well as strategic guidance.
A start-up must be open to share equity with co-founders as well as the Angel Investors who can add significant value to your business venture besides funds. You must validate if the angel fund has the capability to invest in the subsequent rounds, whatever be the business plan, and you will need financial support beyond your projection. At YourNest we keep 2-3x of funds allocated for each start-up to keep participating in its growth.