How Early Stage CRM Startup Xeno Learnt To Build A Win-Win Relationship With Angel Investors

In spite of many challenges, including a lack of resources, fierce competition, waves of change and the ultimate difficulty in winning consumer trust, India’s startup ecosystem continues to disrupt industry incumbents with innovative solutions. Last year alone, the ecosystem saw the launch of 1,436 startups and a subsequent rise in angel funding that backs early stage companies. 

Angel investors across India have been pretty active for some time now. The fast-growing pool includes well-known startup founders, celebrities and others, thus revealing a widespread interest in startup funding and quality deal flow. This is not surprising, though, as entrepreneur-investors on the Shark Tank India series proffered investment capital to promising startups and did it on-camera, making it a part of our everyday conversation. 

Asked about the significance of angel investment and mentorship, especially from ‘active’ entrepreneurs, Dhruvil Sanghvi, CEO of LogiNext, said, “During my first couple of years in this company, many great entrepreneurs and founders – people like Girish (Mathrubootham) from Freshworks, Aneesh (Reddy) from Capillary and a few others from the US, the UAE and more – opened up and mentored us. They have been extremely valuable to our journey. They invested in a lot of companies and helped other founders pro bono.” 

Headquartered in New Jersey, LogiNext offers end to end enterprise SaaS solutions for logistics management.

In the past three years, Sanghvi invested in more than 30 early stage startups, mostly SaaS companies. However, these companies and their founders benefited more as his ready availability and hands-on mentoring helped them resolve the issues they would have hesitated to share with other funders. 

“Typically, most founders do not want to involve their biggest investors in a lot of issues that arise on a daily basis at the operating level,” the LogiNext CEO said.

But before reaching that stage, startup founders have to deal with tougher things, from finding the right investor who will nurture and scale their ventures to building good investor-promoter relationships and working towards a common goal to ensure expected returns. 

To help founders with effective decision-making regarding angel funding and building a win-win relationship with angel investors, Sanghvi recently hosted a chat with the founder-CEO of a portfolio company. Watch his interaction with Pranav Ahuja, cofounder and CEO of the AI-powered CRM Xeno, as they delved into how Xeno scaled with Sanghvi’s mentorship and guidance and similar help from other entrepreneur-investors on its cap table.

During the chat, Ahuja stressed the importance of a clear goal while raising funds and advised brands to focus on their core vision. 

“The moment you have investors on the cap table, your job is to deliver a return on that investment. And they are typically looking at a 50-100x return on top of the investment they have made. It means we have to scale our company at least 100x from where we are now. And that is something we have committed to our investors,” said Ahuja.

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