First Cheque 2.0- Solving for Indian Founders
In March 2019, we announced First Cheque to the world — a seed fund for India, run by founders and for founders.
Since then, we have significantly expanded our Venture Partner group to more than 15 stellar founders and operators.
- Farooq Adam- Founder, Fynd; Acquired by Reliance
- Harpreet Grover- Founded and Exited CoCubes to Aon Hewitt
- Pawan Gupta- Founded and exited Curofy to Round Glass
- Jyothirmayee JT- Founded Hiveminds, Acquired by Madison World
- Gaurav Bhatnagar- Co-Founder, Travel Boutique Online
- Harsh Mani Tripathi- Founder Pyoopil. Exit to UpGrad. CPO at WIttyFeed
- Sourabh Sharma- SVP at Digibank, Earlier: Product @ Paytm, Founder-Milaap
- Srikrishnan Ganesan- Founded Hotline, Exit to Freshworks
- Ranjith Radhakrishnan- CPO @ Byjus
- Ravijot Chugh- Co-Founder and CPO @ UpGrad
- Ketan Kapoor- Founded and Exited Mettl to Mercer
- Sidu Ponnappa- Head of India and Member of the Board of Go-Jek
- Rohit Taneja- Co-founder of MyPoolin, Exit to Wibmo
- Upasana Taku- Co-Founder, MobiKwik
- Shubh Malhotra- Co-Founder, Mobile Premier League(MPL)
- Gireesh Subramaniam- VP, Product Management at FreshWorks
- Aprameya Radhakrishna- Founder of Vokal and earlier Taxi-For-Sure (Acquired by OLA)
- Vir Kashyap- Founder, Babajob, Exit to Quikr.
Through them, we have already invested in more than 20 startups disrupting sectors like Fin-Tech, Logistics, Space-Tech, D2C brands, SAAS and several more.
Over the past few months, we have talked to, and observed more than 500 Entrepreneurs and carefully listened to the problems they face in the early days of building their companies.
Some of the most common issues that we saw are :
- Finding a Tech/Business Partner
If you look up any successful startup’s origin story — it’s not easy to miss the fact that there is a huge amount of randomness in finding a suitable co-founder/building a team.
Finding people with complementary skills and values is definitely one of the most important things you solve for in the early stages of building a company.
2. Identifying Real Problems
No matter what product you are building, it’s always good to put in some time to understand whether the customer actually wants the product. This can save the team from years of work gone in vain. Most founders don’t realize it but they have a hammer and are looking for a nail.
3. Spotting a Large Market
Even in cases where founders have identified a real problem, in most cases — there aren’t enough people who have the same problem- aka — the market is small — which means the company will never be venture fundable. In fact, the most successful India startups pivoted repeatedly into adjacent categories till they hit upon a large market.
4. Raising Money
Raising money is of course still one of the most tricky phases of a startup’s journey. To understand the challenges founders face here, we asked entrepreneurs on Twitter as to what is their one complaint about investors?
In the responses we received, we noticed that a lot of founders just want feedback. In fact, Feedback is what drives these founders more than the money in the initial stages. Giving prompt feedback to founders is something that we believe every investor can do a better job at.
Given our large network of Venture Partners (See above), all of whom are builders themselves, with their collective expertise spanning all the different aspects of building a large company, we believe we are one of the few venture funds in India that can actually help navigate the “startup maze”.
Helping founders through our powerful Venture Partner Network is one of our core priorities at First Cheque. Our mission is to help founders raise quality capital that can add value beyond the money.
To accelerate this mission, and to help address the problems described above, Here’s what First Cheque is planning to do:-
1. First Cheque Masterclass
We are launching a Series of Events focussed on bringing together early-stage Indian Entrepreneurs, Startup Enthusiasts, and our Venture Partners together in one place. Through these events, we hope to help founders find co-founders & early team members, validate their problem statements, help them identify large markets and help them raise money.
We have previously been organizing Internal Founder Meetups every once in a while to bring our founders together and help tackle the problems they are facing. We felt it made sense to open source all the insights that are shared in our internal meet-ups to the entire Indian Startup Ecosystem.
We just announced the inaugural edition of First Cheque Masterclass with Aprameya Radhakrishna, Founder of Vokal, TaxiForSure(acquired by Ola) & have already crossed more than 125 RSVPs as I write this post.
2. Beyond The First Cheque
We are also launching — “Beyond The First Cheque” — a Publication focusing on Stories of Indian Entrepreneurship, Company Building, Fund-raising, Hustle and a lot more.
Our first post will be out soon, you can subscribe on the link below 👇
Through these initiatives, we want to help Indian Founders mitigate the risks of building a company and increase their probability of success.
At First Cheque, we strongly believe that India will give birth to multiple billion-dollar businesses over the next decade, and we want to play our part in making their journey slightly easier
