Author: indiabizforsale

“You can succeed the best and the quickest by helping others to succeed”

We are excited to share with you that Indiabiz is increasingly becoming the preferred hub of progressive business owners in India as well as established businesses from abroad, to enable meaningful partnerships with Indian SMEs. The following recent success stories on the platform are our highlights for this month as a power-packed dose of inspiration for business owners:

1. UK-based dermatology company has identified a supply and distribution partner in India for its innovative skin products range. This distribution partner is one of the top 10 Pharma companies in the country and is strengthening its products portfolio through strategic licensing partnerships such as these. At present, the parties are engaged in the final level of discussions for the partnership to come through.

2. Digital Media Agency based in Mumbai, which is owned by a larger global media company, was looking to grow in specific niche projects. Through Indiabiz, the company has identified an vendor in Ahmedabad with special focus on Salesforce, delivering custom projects. As the beginning of a long-term strategic partnership, the parties have entered into an agreement, starting with a vendor-supplier relationship.

3. Mumbai-based kitchen appliances company joined hands with an established contract manufacturer in Bangalore through Indiabiz. With a view to distribute its wide range of products through this partnership, the first engagement contract value has emerged in 7 figures.

Thus, while M&A and fund-raise continue to be the dominant transactions on the platform, partnerships such as the above are appealing to business owners as well and have seen numerous successes recently. It all started a few years back when our management team identified the pressing need to make strategic business relationships a cornerstone of the platform activities. This need soon translated into an opportunity – the co-founders recognized that with over 40,000+ reach, the network effect of Indiabiz is bound to be enormous with an obvious multiplier-effect. Therefore, businesses in India and globally can quickly discover the right partners to grow their business by accessing the platform as a one-stop destination.

With a view to become a comprehensive transaction partner for business owners, we are now spinning more and more successes in diverse strategic relationship formats such as licensing, distribution, dealership, joint ventures, investment partnerships, business development, co-branding, vendor agreements and service partnerships.

Make the most of this opportunity by discovering the right partnership for your business on Indiabiz. Stay tuned to us for more such inspirational success stories!

What makes corporate professionals take the plunge into investing in startups & SMEs? What happens behind the scenes in the making of a first-time investor? And what is it, that keeps them coming back to the vibrant world of technology investments?

In this article, we will answer these questions and more… We are in conversation with Narsingh Chaudhary, who is currently based in Singapore, shouldering mission-critical responsibilities as the Senior Vice President and Head of Strategy & Business Excellence at a leading global electronics manufacturing and distribution firm. Incidentally, his first investment in personal capacity was facilitated by Indiabizforsale.com, through our flagship deal-discovery event – Business Buyer’s Club – in Ahmedabad. And since then, there has been no looking back…

In his own words, “entrepreneurial spirit & living the ownership culture” are what drive Narsingh to make a difference to the business world everyday.  His stellar career spans over two decades with extensive global experience as a Segment CEO, Global Sales Head, & Senior Project Management professional of different industrial projects. Through his contribution, he has  added palpable strength & value to organizations, propelling them towards the maximum realization of business growth potential & increased market share.

As he recounts to us his journey of becoming an active investor in startups, he takes us back a couple of years earlier when he first decided to scout business opportunities in personal capacity. As a seasoned strategy and growth professional with a keen eye for corporate growth investments, this was home territory for Narsingh. Like any other investor, his primary objectives were simple – maximize returns, minimize and distribute risks, and create a pool of viable investment options for continuous engagement. However, this was not all. For him, to partner with an entrepreneur who shares his philosophy and vision, and to invest in a business where he could bring much more than money to the table, was of equal importance. “It never appealed to me to bring mere capital to a business. I wanted to pool in my personal experience, knowledge, and network strength to truly catapult a business to the next level,” he adds. In fact, right from the beginning, he demonstrated a distinctive clarity in following his own preferences. As an innovation enthusiast, technology businesses took precedence. It was also important for him to stay in geographical proximity to his investee. This meant that India and Singapore emerged as the countries of his choice.

He began the sourcing process by tapping into his network of peers and fellow investment professionals, reaching out to his contacts at globally renowned VC firms, and scanning various cutting edge sectoral innovations. Then, a year later, he met Bhavin Bhagat, co-founder at Indiabizforsale.com. At that point, Indiabizforsale’s Business Buyer’s Club (BBC) had already left its mark in Mumbai, while in Ahmedabad, prestigious partnerships for the event with FICCI and GCCI had materialized. Intrigued by the concept, he flew to India and attended BBC Ahmedabad. It is here that he met Ruchit Surati, founder of the technology business Locanix, which also happens to be Narsingh’s first investee startup.

Locanix is an innovative SaaS solutions tech-business using GPS location information ranging from corporate fleet management to consumer vehicle solutions, with core focus on safety, security and operational efficiency. Their solutions include smart tracking with analysis and insights, intelligent management of fleets, fuel monitoring and optimization, and tracking temperature in individual cargo holds to ensure safe transportation of perishable goods.

After top-line review and initial discussions for a period of about 6-7 months, Narsingh was able to narrow down his options into 2-3 businesses. Apart from Locanix, there was also an SME from apparel design segment that made it to the top. In the end, Locanix emerged as the clear winner. Narsingh shares with us the top three criteria that he uses to evaluate business opportunities at the foundational level-

1. How sincere and passionate are the entrepreneurs?
2. How do their vision and mission align with their ground realities in terms of financial health and operational efficiencies?
3. How favourable are the market conditions for the business to thrive and gain market share?

Locanix seemed to tick all his checkboxes, and thus, deal discussions commenced. Narsingh states candidly, “No entrepreneur will lay it all out in the open on day one. It takes time to traverse the curve together, develop shared trust and respect, and reach a point of mutual transparency.” Indeed, with Locanix, this path was covered in reasonable time, and soon due diligence and valuation discussions made way into final deal structuring.

Recently, in August 2018, the deal was closed successfully. Looking back, Narsingh commends Indiabizforsale.com highly for the team’s support and presence throughout, and for his expertise in enabling meaningful deal discussions. He also shares his desire to be in this space for the long haul. “Investing in just one startup doesn’t satisfy my appetite. By tying up with the right companies, creating a diversified and complementary portfolio, and staying tuned with breakthrough technology, I believe I can add a lot of value to the aspiring frontrunners in innovation today, and be a part of carving out a better tomorrow.”

Liked this article? Stay tuned to us for more such exclusive posts!

“Doing the right thing is not the problem.
        Knowing what the right thing is – that’s the challenge.” 
 -Lyndon B Johnson

Over the years, we have closed several deals and worked closely with thousands of business owners, buyers and investors. During this period, we have observed that several best practices are applied by successful business owners who not only get the maximum inquiries, but also close deals faster. Here, we curate these best practices and share them with you. As you will soon discover – most of them are simple to understand and easy to implement. Let’s get started!

We have divided the best practices into two stages. The first stage is before the interest is generated from the investors for your business and second stage is for after the business has generated interest from investors and companies. Both stages are equally important for a successful deal for any business.

A few keywords used in this article:

Buy-side means prospective buyers/acquirers, investors or their representatives
EBITDA means Earnings before Interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation
Due diligence means an investigation of a business or person prior to signing a contract

Best Practices – Preparation Stage:  At this stage, you are just about to go or have already gone live on indiabizforsale with your business opportunity. You are filling in the relevant information, and encapsulating your business details in the opportunity. How can you create a powerful opportunity that gets attention of the right buy-side prospects? How do you get them to land on your opportunity  among the thousands others?

1. Give a Detailed Description: Remember – the more the information in the page, the more powerful will be the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) of the page in  google ranking. However, it is not enough to just write more. A good description has two major components – 1) right keywords to enable maximum SEO landings 2) right information that paints a clear picture of the business opportunity and gets a buyer/investor interested.

Example: If you own a pharma business, your keywords could be – ‘pharma manufacturing’. ‘manufacturing and distribution’ ‘GMP certified’, ‘ISO certification’, ‘pharma business in Ahmedabad’ (or any other location), ‘profitable pharma business’, etc.

2. Display Positive Content: The description that you write for your business should be written in a positive light to attract the interest of onlookers. Now, this does not mean that you need to write things that are not true. However, it is perfectly possible to be honest and real and still keep the content positive.

Example: If you are selling a garments business that is yet to break-even, but you believe that the business has future potential, you can write – ‘an established garments business with high profit potential based in Mumbai.’

3. Stick to the facts: False information, for e.g. old pictures of your business, pictures of another business, false data (e.g. profit making vs loss-making), hiding the real reasons for selling the business, etc. may attract some initial interest but would never lead to ultimate deal success.Share the facts upfront; it may generate low interest but those few who show interest might be more solid leads that are more likely to convert into a successful deal.

4. Communicate Better with High Quality Images: Put up high resolution images (preferably professionally taken photographs of your office, factory, plant etc.) & pictures without revealing the identity of your business or of yourself. As they say, “a picture says a thousand words” – by using real and good images, you can generate spontaneous interest for your business opportunity.

5. Be Realistic While Quoting a Price: Did you know? Unrealistic valuation is one of the top reasons for deals not emerging on the plate. Your asking price must be comparable to the benchmarks in your industry (i.e. other companies of your size), must reflect the past 3 years of your business performance, and must factor in growth potential of the business over the next 3-5 years. Remember, that while buyers/investors put money in a business for future, they evaluate the business based on its performance in recent past and present, i.e. the current year and last 3-5 years.

6. Be prepared: Before getting acquired or funding, businesses go through several diligences by the other side. Such as A) Business Diligence B) Financial C) Technology D) Human Resource(team) E) Legal/compliance/IP. As a business owner, one should be prepared with the paperwork such as a business plan (growth 3-5 years), financial modelling, long term client contracts, financial statements for previous years, bank statements of the current year, key employee contracts, valuation report, etc. You should invest into getting your business prepared for the possibility of best outcome quickly for your business. The money spent on the same will save you a lot of headache, time and frustration, and improve your chances of closing a deal by manifold.

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Best Practices – Inquiry Stage: At this stage you have already started to receive inquiries from buy-side, but are yet to come across suitable buyers or yet to get any visibility of a deal emerging on the plate. How can you fast track your journey? How can you keep the right buyers engaged and let go of the ones that don’t match your objectives?

1. Respond Promptly: Once your business opportunity receives an inquiry, respond in a timely and professional manner. First impression counts: When you reply in timely and professional manner, the good impression is also created for your management style stroke your business opportunity.  For some reason, if you had been travelling or had an emergency at home and could not respond on time, reply as soon as possible and begin with a note of apology to show that you are serious.

2. Manage Communication Carefully – Before you share too much, learn as much as possible about the prospective buyer / investor who is interested in your business opportunity. Who are they? Where are they located? What role are they playing currently? Why are they interested? What resources do they have at hand (i.e. funds, team, technology, skillset etc.) to buy / invest in your business? Whether it is a consultant or a direct buyer / investor, learning more about them is critical to decide when to share and how much.

Things to remember when contacting buy-side:

Phone Calls- we recommend that you call from the mobile/landline that is not usually used by or associated with your company.

Confidentiality- do not reveal your / your business’s identity immediately – be comfortable with the other side first.

In-person Meetings- select a neutral place for the meeting that allows you to have discussions in private- especially, if the buyer / investor is also from your area or region. Coffee shops / restaurants / hotels are mutually convenient locations for the first meeting.

3. Share Top-line Information First: Asset information, Financial Summary (i.e Sales revenue, Profit before or after tax, EBITDA, debt / liabilities etc) are generally safe to share initially for the buy-side to evaluate if your business matches their preferences or not.

4. Make the Most of Technology: Use the messaging interface at Indiabizforsale.com, email communication, secured google drive/dropbox, etc. to share documents. Having a documented trail of all communication exchange can help in any unforeseen circumstances.

5. Stay Positive and Hopeful: Finding a right investor/acquirer requires patience – it is like running a marathon. Since it is often time-consuming, stay positive in your communication on the platform and off the platform and try to remain hopeful in general.

Liked this post? Stay tuned to us for more such tips and tools.

Recently, our management team took a fresh look at the pricing plans that we offered to our users. Among the many changes that have been incorporated, an important one is this – we have introduced an all-new Standard Plan that is completely free for our Sellers.

What drove us to go for this intriguing piece of change in our pricing?

For a while now, we have been pondering over how we can improve the network effect of our platform by increasing the percentage of users who are ‘active’ – i.e. those who access their account at least once in a month. In the past, we have tried email reminders, calling up users personally, and even putting a few accounts on hold if they were inactive for too long. However, while there have been incremental improvements, we have not seen anything exponential or exceptional.

After several team discussions, two solutions emerged. Firstly, all Standard and Premium sellers now have to activate their account every 30 days with a single click. If this is not done, our system will automatically put such accounts on hold, so that anyone interested in the listing is not disappointed when their messages don’t bring any reply.

Secondly, we introduced a brand new free pricing plan – the Standard Plan. A Standard Plan for Sellers will have an account that is valid for 6 months (subject to one-click activation every 30 days), receive up to 5 matching recommendations on listing approval, receive unlimited buyer / investor interests, see contact details of interested parties if shared by them.

What are we hoping to achieve with this?

Three things – Engagement, Returning Users and Multiplier Effect

Since we want our users to get the best out of our platform, we believe that it is extremely important that we consciously make decisions that promote active user behavior. It is not enough that a user has taken a paid subscription with us – if he does not keep coming back, he is not benefiting from it. Further, when someone is interested in his listing and sends an interest, there is no response as he is inactive. This demotivates the interested party, creates a chain of unfulfilled inquiries and weakens the network effect we are trying so hard to generate. We believe that with over 35,000 user-base, we can trigger a massive network strength that can increase the possibility of a deal discovery manifold – only if we can encourage our users to be more active.

While it is too early to comment on the results, we believe that this will be a major step towards unleashing platform engagement and bringing together a wider pool of available opportunities for better deal discovery and matchmaking.

      “Go Global – Opportunities Abound When You Walk the Extra Mile”

While running an established and thriving IT SME business in New Delhi, Niraj* received a lucrative opportunity to head an exciting project in Canada. At the same time, thousands of miles away, Larry* and Carol*, two IT consulting professionals from the U.S. were looking to relocate to India by acquiring an attractive IT venture with a strong first line management team. As of now, the two parties who met through indiabizforsale.com a few months back, are already in the process of closing a mutually agreeable deal. 

In the last few years, interest of foreign buyers have soared in Indian businesses. Earlier this year, Facebook made its first Indian acquisition – the mobile analytics company Little Eye Labs. Retail giant Walmart acquired Flipkart amidst unputdownable buzz. And just recently in June this year, Bangalore-based mobile app development company Sourcebits was taken over by US-based Globo.

However, it’s not just India’s mega-popular tech startups. Our homegrown breed of SMEs have also grabbed the eyeballs of international investors looking for acquisition opportunities in India. Ahmedabad based Nirmit Parikh, for example, secured a profitable exit from his SME a few years ago from an international buyer. Founded by Nirmit, CruxLight – which creates short summaries of online articles – was acquired by US-based ed-tech company Kno, which in turn was acquired by Intel just 6 months later.¹  In another and more recent example, Bangalore-based SME Colimetrics was acquired earlier this year by US-based ActMobile.

What motivation do international buyers have in buying out Indian SMEs? In this article, we share their top 3 motivations with you by illustrating through case studies from our platform, as well as with other relevant examples from the industry.

Motivation #1: Acqui-hire India’s Indigenous Technology and Talent

If you thought that acquisition is only a game of the giants, consider the fascinating journey of an US-based IT consulting professionals Larry and Carol who found their dream venture through Indiabizforsale.com. Both of them being specialized in IT consulting with strong industry experience, they first reached out to indiabizforsale.com sharing their passion for the booming IT sector, and their desire to relocate to India upon zeroing in on an attractive business opportunity in this domain.

However, even as search for prospects for them began through our platform listings and other external sources, several kinks remained to be ironed, one of the key questions being – how best could they manage the rigour of buying and managing a company before they fully relocated to India? They joined hands with our team to come up with a creative solution, by planning frequent visits to India during which site-visits and due-diligence discussions were scheduled, while email and telephonic communication took care of the rest. After several in-depth discussions with our deal experts, we realized that the ideal proposition for them would be acqui-hiring an Indian IT business with a stable and capable first line of management and with a clear edge in technology and development. Soon, a New Delhi-based IT firm emerged as one of the top contenders. Incidentally, the owner of this firm is seeking to move abroad, resulting in a win-win opportunity. The deal is now well into progression with a clear road-map for transition ahead.

Acqui-hiring is particularly prominent in the Indian IT landscape which is characterized by cheap yet vast talent pool, technology advancements and established global clientele. For example, in 2017, Google acqui-hired the 4-months old Halli Labs based in Bengaluru as its first strategic acquisition in the country. Bolstering its technology and talent pool, the acquired entity is now a key driver of Google’s Next Billion Users initiative.²

Motivation #2: Plunge into Emerging Sectors in Developing Economies

Did you know? With the recent aggressive growth stint of traditional herbal mega-brands like Patanjali, India’s ayurvedic products market is now more lucrative than ever. When a buyer from the U.S. approached us and heard an account of this fascinating story of a hyper-local traditional brand becoming a leading domestic and global force, she promptly became interested in investing attractive distribution partnership opportunities in Herbal and Ayurvedic segment. Her aim is to market innovative products in the health and beauty domain – first targeting the Indian market and then expanding globally. She is also keen to obtain distributorship rights for other well known herbal brands in the country and then maximize their export potential in global markets.

Another example of an emerging sector in developing economies is the payments sector. While opportunities for payments technology are abundant in developed countries, it is still very nascent in developing economies like India. Seizing this opportunity, Ebix, a leading international supplier based out of U.S. that provides software and e-commerce solutions to global insurance providers, has acquired an Indian SME in payments sector – Itzcash – in 2017 for 80% controlling stake.³

Motivation #3: Maximize Client Base & Market Penetration

One of the recent buyer interests on our platform has been an interesting case of market penetration. India, one of the largest exporter-producer countries in milk, has had surprisingly low technology quotient, particularly in the sourcing, processing and distribution aspects. A prospective buyer from Australia, with over 30 years of experience in dairy technology has approached us seeking distributor partnership opportunities to enable her to invest intellectual and professional capital, technical capability, innovation, and nurture a prospective business from ground zero. Having a dedicated expert team and a capable first line of management is one of the top priorities for a win-win deal to culminate. The commitment demonstrated by international buyers in acquiring ownership & controlling stake in Indian SMEs is an increasingly new trend that is coming of age.

In fact, capturing global clientele also continues to be one of the driving factors behind strategic acquisitions by foreign buyers in Indian SMEs. For example, US-based Ebix has also acquired Healthcare Magic for USD 18.5 mn, one of the most important motivations being the fact that about 80 percent of Healthcare Magic’s revenues accrue from outside India.⁴

Concluding Note

With the recent surge in cross border capital movement in India and the increasing visibility of Indian businesses, we hope that more and more international buyers will let Indian SMEs take the centre-stage. To fuel this trend, more stringent governance practices, better synchronization of domestic standards to global norms and more rapid technology innovation in various sectors will lead the way.

If you liked this post and would like to read more such insightful pieces, stay tuned to our blog. Visit www.indiabizforsale.com to know more about what we do and how we can help you.

 

*Please note that some of the names have been changed in this article to protect confidentiality of the parties involved

¹ Reference: https://www.businesstoday.in/magazine/cover-story/smes-bash-gaming-silicon-valley-bingo-bash/story/209602.html

²Reference: https://inc42.com/features/indian-startup-acquisitions-2017/

³Reference: https://inc42.com/features/indian-startup-acquisitions-2017/

⁴Reference: https://www.businesstoday.in/magazine/cover-story/smes-bash-gaming-silicon-valley-bingo-bash/story/209602.html