Ask HN (India): If you are not from IIT/IIM how do you achieve credibility?

1 point·Chirag··3 comments

While meeting investors in India a lot of time our business plan faces the same questions, as none of the founders/co-founders are from the IIT or IIM. Its hard for us to get funding inspite of a good idea.

Any suggestions?

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Some suggestions:

1. Bootstrap until you are profitable. More than anything else, investors look for a viable and lucrative venture. If you can show them an active revenue model, they won't care about much else.

2. Try other options like seed investment, angel investment etc. Some Ycombinator-like venture programs based in India were mentioned here sometime back. Ref: http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2010/02/18/bringing-y-co... and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=56153

3. Join a local startup meet like proto.in

"While meeting investors in India a lot of time our business plan faces the same questions, as none of the founders/co-founders are from the IIT or IIM."

I suspect a genuine investor could care less where you studied, but, assuming you are facing skepticism only because you didn't get an MBA from one of the IIMs, may I suggest that if your investors specifically care if you are from IIT or IIM (vs the intrinsic business/tech merit of your idea) you are talking to the wrong people - probably old fogies with money with no idea of how either business or tech works.

I don't think succesful seed funds like YCombinator (just taking an example) obsess over their applicants having attended elite schools. Why should these guys?

I second nreece's suggestion. Get an active revenue model first. All else follows.

Thanks for the great feedback.

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