What Sort of Technology Brings in Venture Capital for Your Startups? What today's investors seek from a technical perspective to further your business?

As entrepreneurs today, the key aspect undoubtedly been technology harnessing to create smart models to mitigate societal issues whilst wooing leading investors at the same time to invest equity such that your business takes off in the way it should. Now, with technology being the key focus area, Entrepreneur India interacted with Manish Singhal who is Founding Partner at Pi Ventures to throw light on the sort of technical models which today are being analysed and evaluated (for funding and mentoring).

Solving real-world problems through technology

"We have kept the theme around three main pillars – AI, IoT and Blockchain," states Manish Singhal to Entrepreneur India.

Singhal states that it is the intelligence derived from data, which could be used as pillars to create models to solve real-world problems. With this being said, the predominant question at this juncture is the sectors which could face maximum technology disruption (healtcare tech).

In this regard, healthcare certainly qualifies as one of the potential areas slated to witness technical disruption.

"For health care tech, one of the other criteria we like to see is the 10x factor – meaning are they doing something (using AI) that gives a 10x better solution than the current state of the art?," adds Singhal.

He also adds that in case there is a healthcare startup which aims at hitting the market with incremental innovation, then there would be no point as it takes significant time to build traction whilst facing stiff competition from similar innovations in the market.

Hence, if you are a healthcare entrepreneur, the key is to have firm focus on the [present as well as near future and to look beyond of the incremental innovations. You either adapt with changing times or perish.

Developing technology-driven business models

With technology evaluation one, the next step would be to develop business models such that the planned technology harness is kept in perfect synchronization even when planning future enhancements.

"For an entrepreneur, getting into the market is like solving a problem. They need to figure out the product market fit and in the process discover their business models. We work closely with them in this journey in solving the problem together wherever possible," informs Singhal conveying his mentorship intentions.

Refining approach to funding – for startups

If you are a startup owner desirous of approaching venture capitalists, then it should do no harm to validate your idea with the technology you aim to harness in real world conditions.

"We also love to see things in action – so product demos/ live installations are something we look forward to," signs-off Singhal.

Essentially, your startups could get the funding it deserves only when you demonstrate that your offering has what it takes to sail over at least 10 market competitors. Additionally, if yours is the only product in the market, then the 10X factor would potentially come in handy when there are at least 10 market competitors in the near future.