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Kushal Bhagia, CEO, FirstCheque on Early Stage Investing and building moat as founders
Description
As per a recent article by Economic Times - “Early stage investing is at an all-time high in post-pandemic India with the country averaging one seed round a day this year.”
As of Sept, so far over 240+ companies have secured their first funding in 2021 v/s 302 companies in 2020, and 257 in 2019, and with a few more months remaining, this number is expected to cross last year’s benchmark.
In today’s episode we’ve brought Kushal Bagia, CEO of FirstCheque, to talk about the current scenario of early-stage funding in India.
So far with their first fund, they’ve done over 100+ deals, and some of the well know portfolio companies are Giva, Kaagaz, Able Jobs, and Mailmodo among others.
During the episode, Kushal talks about the influx in pre-seed investing post the pandemic, how they’ve created a moat for themselves and much more.
Notes -
01:19 - Background prior to FirstCheque
03:00 - Various domains where they’ve invested
05:35 - Performance of the companies from Fund-I
07:48 - Change in valuations in early-stage funding
13:18 - Top performing portfolio companies
16:50 - FirstCheque’s edge in early-stage investing
25:49 - Value addition by FirstCheque to founders