Indian cloud giant Quadra, a leading channel partner of companies like Microsoft, Oracle and more & one of the fastest growing cloud player, has planned to explore fortunes in the Angel investments sector. Prashanth S, CEO of the company shares their expansion plans with SMEpost.com
“We are what we are today, because of our success as entrepreneurs. It is our way of giving back, not just in terms of financial assistance, but also sharing our experiences, skills and leveraging our networks to nurture fledgling startups and help them to realize their vision. Also, working with startups helps us to support innovative ideas that could be game changers in the future”, Quadra CEO Prashanth S says.
He also says that although there is a great deal of risk and uncertainty, the returns for successful ventures is typically several multiples of the original investment, and can compensate for the high failure rates.
Quadra would be looking at investments in areas where they have significant domain knowledge, and these would mean startups in analytics, marketing, big data, cloud, healthcare and any domain where technology is a key enabler.
Actual mentoring
On the post-investment support, Prashanth says that in today’s market, funds are not an issue for a good idea. However, the right mentoring and guidance is more critical.
“If someone invests purely from a financial perspective, then the objective would be to get the maximum returns in the shortest period of time, and this might not be necessarily in the best long term interests. We’re not saying that financial returns are unimportant – it’s just that there needs to be a careful balance of fiscal interests with the founding vision, growth and scale potential. So the actual ‘angel’ work begins post investment, by ensuring that you function as a good sounding board, mentor and source of advice. It is important to be present, but not in an intrusive fashion. Mentoring is not about imposing your ideas on the mentee, but in enabling them to realize their own potential”, he says.
Differentiating factor
On the differentiating factor Prashanth feels that since Quadra invests only in specific domains, the company brings deep expertise, networks and contacts which can be invaluable to startups, even more than fiscal assistance.
“Our approach is to be more of a mentor and guide and not necessarily to stifle a founder’s working style. The idea is to complement where necessary, and not to impose our ideas and thoughts”, says Prashanth concluding that Quadra is prepared to be in it for a time frame between 2 and 5 years.
It should not be a mere copy/improvement of an existing model. Size of problem they are trying to solve or market potential they are trying to address, scalability of the business model and visible, accomplished action beyond PPTs and projections are some of the key aspects Quadra gets thrilled about.
