Favcy 1st Cheque

All of this changed when on seeing the mayhem around me, my colleague commented - ’this looks like fun’. And my perspective changed. It's fun indeed - the mystery before opening each new brown box - Oh, we don’t know what’s in which box, the packers forgot their marker pen 😝. 

Finding fun in angel investing is our 1stCheque investor - Rhea Karia, a young female professional who believes that you can do anything you want to but you need to take the first step for it. Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny, Khushdeep Sethi captures Rhea’s journey in this week’s Angel Bytes.

As a festive bonus, we have a guest writer this week. Kiran Karthik, Category Head at Udaan, writes about his reasons behind the 20+ angel investments he has made over the last one year 😯. In his first of a three article series - Finding a Purpose, Kiran questions his and everyone else’s reasons for angel investing.

Last, but not the least, we talk about QCommerce in our Short Take section. Have you heard the term? Honestly, I had not. For those not fast enough like myself, scroll down.

Do share your feedback on this effort. You can mail us at insider@1stcheque.com

 Dear Reader, let me take you back in time. In the 1850s, five stock brokers gathered together under a Banyan tree in front of the Mumbai Town Hall and that was the start of the Bombay Stock Exchange. From that to being able to trade stocks at the click of a button - we have certainly come a long way. All thanks to the internet and the new age tech platforms (special mention - Zerodha) that have revolutionised stock trading and equity investments in India.

Nithin Kamath is a very respected name in the ecosystem - both for what he has built and for his ethics while running a stock broking business (who doesn't love the ’nudge’ feature in the Zerodha app). Pranavharan brings to you this week an in-depth landscape analysis of the online brokering space in India and the role of Zerodha so far and going ahead, in his article - Investments are subject to app glitches. If you invest in stocks, do give it a read.

Simultaneously, we are also talking about the 'parallel economy' that has always existed, but is booming now and going cashless. Read more about this in our Short Take section.

While Nithin, in his tweet above, is talking about valuations for brokerage firms, I’d say, all startup valuations are equally intriguing. Khushdeep is decoding the science of early stage startup valuations in our Angel Bytes section this week.

Dear Reader,if you’ve not been living under a rock, by now you must be aware of the fact that Freshworks rang the bell at Nasdaq a day before and I am sure you all are aware of the full life journey of the founder and the company by now because by 4pm on Thursday (and through most part of Friday) every alternate post on my LinkedIn timeline was talking about the same. So in FOMO, I am gonna cover this story as well. With a twist of course. 

What intrigued me most was the following article - the listing has resulted in over 500 crorepatis (jaw drop) - way more than what KBC has made (read crorepatis) in its 21 years of airing. While I have a vested interest in this piece of information (after all I am building an angel network 😉, you get the hint…right?), its genuinely mind blowing that out of the 4300 employees, a whooping 76% hold shares in the company (say whaaat?) and 70/500 are under the age of 30. 😯 

Dear Reader, this was supposed to be my most creatively inspired editor’s note - or so I had anticipated. I write this note sitting 7000ft above sea level in the beautiful hill station of Barlowganj. The expectation was that I would be writing this article sitting in my room’s balcony, overlooking the beautiful mountains and the pastel winter skyline (who wouldn’t be inspired by that now). However, the reality is I am sitting at my desk, inside the hotel room, it's dark already outside so sadly no view to inspire my creativity. Well, such is life - the expectations seldom match reality.

During a conversation earlier today with my colleague, I realised that the same holds true for our business plans. When you start off your expectation is all will be hunky dorey and smooth. Somewhere down the line it turns out that the roads up the hill have sharp hairpin turns and some blind spots as well. We bring to you the story of one such startup this week in our Short Take section where Pranavharan talks about BimaPe and how they are shutting down even after investments from the likes of Y Combinator. That’s of course not the whole picture, scroll down for the full story.

This is my current view 👆

What else do we have?

New section alert! 📣

In our Founder’s Desk section this week, Lochan Narayanan, a FavcyVB portfolio startup founder talks about 'professional development bundles' that are available via platforms like OfExperiences for individuals experiencing unique career challenges.

In our Angel Bytes section this week, Khushdeep brings excerpts from her conversation with Samarth Choudhry. Samarth is a GenZ investor who angel invests on behalf of his family office. Read his perspective on why GenZ is bullish about startups as an asset class and how he convinced his family to diversify their investments beyond FDs.