T-Hub ready to launch early stage fund

The sector agnostic fund will support startup in early stage, Phase 1 of the fund to roll out soon

Hyderabad: In an initiative that will help startups, Telangana-based startup ecosystem enabler T-Hub will soon launch a fund that will invest in early stage companies. This will be sector agnostic fund, according to Ravi Narayan, chief executive officer, T-Hub. Into its sixth year now, T-Hub has so far provided over 1,100 national and international startups access to better technology, talent, mentors, customers, corporations, investors and government agencies. Now, it is creating a fund to support the startups in the early stage.

“The fund plan has come quite a distance. We are getting ready to announce the Phase 1 of the fund in a few weeks. The fund corpus and other details will be out soon,” said Narayan about the support from Telangana Government. “The Telangana IT Minister has come through with his commitment to help us with funding from the Government side,” he said.

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According to Narayan, it will invest in seed and early stage companies. In funding parlance, a company is said to be in a seed stage once the idea has surpassed the concept stage. An early stage, as the name indicates, precedes the rapid growth phase. This stage is characterised by activities such as research, development, marketing research and product business development.

At these phases, entrepreneurs approach investors including friends, family and angel investors to find financial support for their concept or product. “Startups need capital in their early days. It may not be a large sum and can range from Rs 25 lakh to Rs 50 lakh. But this support will completely transform the future of that particular startup. That should be gotten basically through the local ecosystem. Investors believe in the capabilities of founders more than in anything else,” he explained about the importance of seed and early stage investing.

“We cannot be picking any specific sectors for funding. We will be sector agnostic to begin with but I anticipate that in the next few years there will be sector-focused funds also coming up as part of the T-Hub family of funds,” Narayan said. T-Hub, as part of its efforts to build an investment and funding ecosystem, is building a funding desk at T-Hub that will work to help curated startups apply for grants and pitch with selected investors for funding. T-Hub has also set up a Soonicorn (soon-to be-unicorn) Club, an initiative to recognise and support players that have potential to emerge unicorns from the local ecosystem and help them achieve their business objectives, he said.

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