Financial Avenues for Start-Ups

Abstract

Many start-ups and unicorns having headquarters in Bangalore city of India has topped the charts in the world with the highest number of start-ups and unicorns. Bangalore is known as Start-up and Unicorn capital of India belonging to various sectors of the industry. However, for entrepreneurs or founder of a company to succeed with the business idea and accelerate in their businesses, there is a huge requirement and demand to raise the capital for various activities like conceptualization, hiring team, marketing, finance and accounting and administrative works. Therefore, this paper is a desk research with an aim to identify financial avenues for emerging start-ups and unicorns. This paper also guides for future entrepreneurs on the existing financial funding sources in Karnataka who has a plan, a proposal or a vision to transform their concepts or ideas and begin their dream company one day. By reviewing numerous literatures, the paper summarizes insights for options on acquiring the financial capital for a company from self-funding, friends/family, start-ups incubators, venture capital firms, angel investors, etc. The paper also describes the Government of Karnataka support to start-ups in various sectors such as Semiconductor venture fund, KITVEN fund, Bio venture fund, AVGC venture fund, IDEA2POC grant. Start-ups are formed in different sectors such as FinTech, EdTech, Enterprise Tech, E-commerce, agriculture and many. The investment for a start-up corresponds to the level of its operational activities: Ideation, Validation, Early Traction and Scaling. The paper also estimates the strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Challenges for start-up funding in Karnataka, India.