<div>Sanjay Swamy is a start-up veteran. His friends say that his out-of-box thinking has led him to scale up operations of several businesses. In 2006, when he was the CEO of mCheck, Swamy worked with telecom and banking regulators to help build regulations for mobile commerce. Perhaps, he was perhaps the first to scale up this industry. In 2015, Twitter acquired Bengaluru-based mobile marketing and analytics company ZipDial. And the deal enabled Swamy to entirely focus on start-ups. His investment arm called Angel Prime is a $10 million fund which incubates technology companies and youngsters with ideas that can benefit the mobile Indian. They have invested in 8 companies so far. Speaking to <strong><em>BW | Businessworld's</em> Vishal Krishna</strong>, Swamy says the company will close at least six deals per year. Excerpts from the interview:<br><br><strong>Finally, Sebi has come out with listing norms. At least, it would be easier for entrepreneurs to list in their own country?</strong></div><div>It is a welcome move. Having a friendly vehicle is very important for investors. There are solid start-ups in India and now with the norms being put out, it's only going to increase investment in India. The numbers are here to stay, just take a look at the smartphone penetration and the number of opportunities that it has presented to build technology that can change lives.<br> </div><div>China was like this in 2007 and they have seen a massive ramp up of start-ups since. But it is still early days because we need to look at the nuts and bolts of the listing norms.<br> </div><div><strong>What interests you in ideas today?</strong></div><div>Today people learn from the past mistakes. There are young entrepreneurs who are willing to fail and are ready to work with new ideas. It is interesting to note that Indian companies are now started by boys and girls who are between 21 and 29 years of age. There are older people who are also becoming start-up founders. The last five years has seen Indian entrepreneurs become bolder because of the penetration of smart phones and the sheer population size presents several business opportunities. </div><div><br>I have noticed older people join start-ups because they want to back the idea and cash in on the growth upon an ideas success. Where do we come in? We come in at a very early stage as a fund and provide value whenever needed. What we will not do is to make decisions on behalf of entrepreneurs. But one must remember that we spend months evaluating ideas and we are not a fund that invests in a company because we want to be everywhere. We are focused on technology. By that I mean financial technology, payments, security, education technology and internet of things. The ideas we back we hand hold them.</div><div><br><strong>How do you evaluate an entrepreneur?</strong></div><div>First he should know why he wants money. Then he should know who he is taking money from. We are disappointed at times because we close only 1 in 10 engagements that we make. Some deals do not close because the founders have not evaluated the market that they want to serve. It is sometimes compelling to back the opportunity alone. Before raising a fund an entrepreneur should also validate the idea. The idea should have gone through certain iterations. This makes it easier for a fund to invest in.<br> </div><div><strong>We have a lot of success with start-ups serving business to business companies. Is there a particular reason for the same?</strong></div><div>Yes the consumer game requires velocity which is why we notice that companies that succeed have such high valuations. In the B2B industry we have seen successful start-ups because there are clients adopting a technology. It may also be because this business does not require scale. It needs paying customers. But the BBC business requires a large understanding of the customers and consumption behaviour. A start-up in either case must understand their target market.<br><br>We want to back ideas that will not be copied easily. Today capital is no longer a differentiator. Four or five years ago you could raise money and people would talk about you. Today all funds are looking at fundamentals and unit economics is the key. Also in a start-up more things go wrong than good. The competition today is in acquiring teams that can ramp up an idea. I would say that there are challenges to find a company that can disrupt the market with the least capital. That said I get 1000s of ideas in my mail box. It would be interesting to see what business models will succeed. But we are looking at technology and how it can be scaled for enterprises to win more consumers to clients.</div>
