Madurai :
Angel investing, the catalyst, which turns an entrepreneur’s idea into reality, is catching up in Madurai, with the city getting its first angel investor, C R Venkatesh, CEO of Dotcom Infoway who recently joined Indian Angel Network (IAN), one of the biggest angel investors’ network in South Asia.
Angel investors invest money – mostly on ownership stake – on workable business ideas and help small-time entrepreneurs scale up their ventures. The Madurai region had hitherto missed the attention of the IAN and this development has raised hopes of many entrepreneurs in the city, particularly in the context of the Union budget stressing on the importance of entrepreneurship and start-ups.
“Ideas are everywhere and many times it is too late for these ideas to be realized into reality, because of lack of funds and I want to help entrepreneurs realize their dreams,” said Venkatesh, who is also the co-founder of Magzter Inc.
“There are at least five people from this region who have shown interest to take up angel investing. There were seminars on angel investing in the city recently which motivated several persons. Soon, more would get involved in it,” said Ashwin R Desai, managing director of A and T Network Systems. There are a lot of business ideas emerging from this part of the region, but only a fraction of them are turning their dreams into reality and the rest do not successfully enter into business mainly due to the absence of financial help, experts say. For instance, two students from Madurai who were among five from across India to be selected by an IT firm based on the potential of their business model could not launch their business due to lack of financial help.
Rajesh Kanna, an M Tech student of Pandian Saraswathi Yadava College of Engineering had developed a website portal called ‘Food Web’. The website was based on the fact that there is a large quantity of food going waste while there are many people going to bed hungry. This food should be used to feed the hungry, particularly children. The concept was selected but the need for funding prevented him from launching the site.
“Soon students like them from southern Tamil Nadu would be benefitted from the angel investors. We are planning to start a localized form of IAN for southern region. The investors would have to invest Rs 5 lakh in two years compared to members of Indian Angel Network, who would invest a minimum of Rs 25 lakh or more each every year,” said R Sivarajah, the founder-director of NativeLead Foundation which nurtures entrepreneurs from southern Tamil Nadu.
“Big Angel funding is usually of around Rs 30 lakh, but most of the young start-ups and ideas of students in this region require smaller amounts ranging from Rs 3 to 20 lakh to take them to the next stage. Efforts are being taken up to bring in a lot of small-scale angel investors who are connected to Madurai in some way,” P Archana, head, programmes and relationships, NativeLead Foundation said.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Madurai / TNN / August 02nd, 2014