How To Be A Startup Investor

Startup investing is not easy and requires you to have tons of risk capital and the desire to mentor entrepreneurs

- Clifford Alvares

When the family office of the Mansukhanis invested in a completely new logistics company, Wow Express, it was with the idea to become a part of the building blocks of an earlystage company in the fast developing logistics segment. With the e-retail market growing rapidly and likely to climb to $100 billion by 2020, companies that provide logistics in moving merchandise to end-users are rapidly scaling up, and growing fast. The Mansukhanis through their family trust invested Rs 3 crore in April 2015 supporting the trio of Jayesh Kamat, Mazhar Faruqi and Sandeep Padoshi, who had left their jobs and put some of their own money to embark on an entrepreneurial journey. Now, there is no looking back. Recently, WowExpress raised another round of funding from some in-vestors. The Mansukhanis invested a further Rs 3.6 crore in the recent round. Says Ayesha Mansukhani: “We clearly invested in a good team and saw the potential of the business to scale up rapidly with the use of technology and apps. The business is growing 100 per cent every quarter.”

It’s not uncommon for many high-net worth individuals and family businesses to see investing in startups as a way of mentoring new and budding entrepreneurs. They are also looking at utilising some high-risk money for higher returns. Says Ayesha: “At the end of the day, investing in startups is high risk. You need a lot of patience to see a company through.”