Master class @AIC-SMUTBI – The Art of Creating a Pitch Deck with Ms Swati Murarka.
Ms Swati is an Investment Professional at Inventus Capital Partners India focusing on Early-stage, tech-oriented start-ups. Inventus has been around for more than a decade and does pre-Series A /Series A investments. Some of the familiar names from the Inventus India family are PolicyBazaar, RedBus, HealthifyMe, LBB, Pixxel, to name a few. Post her MBA, Ms Swati has worked with Barclays (HK), RBS (London and Mumbai) and RBL Bank (Bangalore) as a Financial Markets professional. She has also been part of the core team at an Ed-Tech start-up bringing it to an EBITDA positive stage. She is currently working on helping start-ups find scale and is very hands-on with her portfolio. She loves to meet founders who are tech first, capital efficient and non-conventional.
The session began with the most important question – “Are you ready to raise VC money?” followed by a set of key parameters such as a minimum viable team, a minimum viable product, early traction/PMF etc. to measure if a startup is ready to raise investments as well as pointers for when startups should not raise funds.
Ms Swati explained the process of fund raise, what Investors look for, and how and where to find Investors. She also elaborated on the structure of a pitch deck, valuations and common mistakes during a pitch meeting.
Following are the common mistakes during a pitch meeting:
1. Unjustifiable numbers
2. Inadequate research on the Investors
3. Downplay your competition
4. Adopt a defensive stance
5. Get caught in unimportant minutiae
6. Unfriendly overly aggressive
7. Claim to know something you don’t
8. Not letting other team members speak
The session concluded with a round of question and answers with the speaker and 11 startup founders.
