It’s been a “crazy” funding winter, and it doesn’t seem to be ending, according to boAt co-founder Aman Gupta.
The Shark Tank-fame investor played on the famous Game of Thrones dialogue to describe the funding scenario that has rocked the startup ecosystem in the past 12 months. “There, they say ‘Winter is coming’. I would extend it and say ‘Winter is not going’,” he told NDTV Profit.
Gupta, an active angel investor, had said earlier that there was free money available, but now investors have realised that they cannot keep funding loss-making startups as they were doing earlier. “They cannot fund non-sustainable businesses. Free money is not available and so, winter is here. Good companies are still getting funded.”
While it wasn’t easy raising funds for boAt, given that there were few startups in the wearable spaces, due diligence today has increased multifold, Gupta said. “There were a lot of compliance issues, which were being ignored by investors. Apart from IQ (intelligence quotient) and EQ (emotional quotient), founders will be measured on GQ (governance quotient).”
boAt, which has grown to have its own manufacturing facility and a top line of about Rs 4,000 crore, has backers in marquee investors such as telecom major Qualcomm Inc., Warburg Pincus LLC, Fireside Ventures and InnoVen Capital. All these backers are in the green on their investment, Gupta said.
