Dear Investors,
It has been a just over a month since I stepped away from the corporate sector to concentrate on angel investing full time. Having researched the economy closely for over the years, I realised that this is perhaps the best time to initiate this step, with economic indicators in India being strong and an increasing larger number of people taking on the challenge of entrepreneurship. I take this opportunity to introduce my venture “YourNest” – an angel investment fund ‘in the making’ and seek your blessings and advise.
YourNest Capital Advisors Private Limited was incorporated in April 2011 and plans to launch an Angel Fund soon. In the last 5 weeks, we have met and been advised by over 20 veterans in the PE/VC circle, and many market participants such as trustees, lawyers, PR firms, auditors, tax advisors, administrators, wealth managers, outsourcing cum technology partners etc. It became immediately evident that they believe this is the right time to float an Angel fund. The Eco-System of Venture Capitalists is hungry for the super angels to build a high quality pipeline of businesses and entrepreneurs for them to invest in and build on. Indian entrepreneurs are jumping into numerous scalable businesses – many on the back of the Indian telecom networks. YourNest is all set to build on this opportunity for its customers – the high net worth individual investors.
A flood of high quality business proposals that we are receiving daily – without as yet having established a formal structure – strongly supports the need gap. The memberships at The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), Indian Angel Network (IAN) and the Mumbai Angels has certainly been a major reason for us to have access to these brilliant opportunities.
The first of anything gives a great sense of achievement and so has it been with us. YourNest has been able to close its first investment as a lead with Mumbai Angels in a missed call service platform – ZipDial. A visit to www.zipdial.com will show how Lead generation for your products can become much more effective. Happy to share that ZipDial has achieved its 100 million zipdials already.
Another great opportunity has come in the shape of Inventys. YourNest leads the investment in this Singapore based patented Software Company. This has been fully subscribed by the IAN. As a lead, I am happy to have first connected with the entrepreneur, completed first-cut diligence, signed term sheet, prepared investment case, and lead the subscription from over 25 investors. Inventys will improve productivity of enterprises operating with large number of application in their shared services centre, BPOs, and front offices by 30% to 80% for the repetitive activities on a desktop. The due diligence process is currently on and an all clear will result in closure of the investment in another 6 weeks with final due diligence, documentation, and structuring.
There is more. We have made passive investments in ‘Appleofmyi’ (a retail chain for kids up to 6 years in age… now going online), ‘Mobiquest’ (a mobile loyalty program), ‘Jigsee’ (a mobile video streaming client application), and ‘Hotelogix’ (a cloud based ERP for lodges and hotels). We are certainly seeing a shower of excellent opportunities.
YourNest business model of focusing on mentoring, leadership development for the entrepreneur is coming out to be the distinct need-gap. At an early stage, an entrepreneur is truly lonely at the top. He needs constant guidance and access to a wider network for business development / counselling. YourNest is preparing itself to effectively fulfill this need.
I value your inputs and look forward to your wishes, ideas, and suggestions. YourNest is in its infancy, and can make strong progress with your support. I will be happy to share our progress and update you of developments and opportunities if you so desire. I will want you to help us in building insights into your industry, seek your opinion, and help in developing the investee companies.
YourNest is operating out of Gurgaon, India.
Sunil K. Goyal
02/05/2011