Vikaram Upadhyay,
Board Member, Indian Angel Network
Indian Angel Network has been looking into the education industry or the last seven years. The potential of this industry seems to have been underestimated, because the size of the industry is really big, and there is tremendous scope for growth.
Right now the major investors are addressing just 20 percent of the total market, which is based in bigger cities. But the tier 2 and 3 towns and the rural areas are completely untapped.
There are lot of challenges in investing in smaller towns and rural areas, but the returns on good investments can be manifold. So we are trying to work out Social Impact Investment plan to ensure that investments can take place in the bottom of the pyramid in a relatively risk free way.
While funding education start-ups, we first of all take into account the expertise of the team that is heading the start-up. Are they capable enough? Then we take into account the scalability factor. Is the business capable of growing?
The third parameter focuses on the issue of processes. There should be innovation in the processes rather in the products alone. There is no point in bringing innovation to the products if the processes can’t be replicated in different parts of the country. The bottom line is that we take a very comprehensive view of the organisation before deploying our investments.
