Funding rounds which took months close in 1-2 weeks now: Locus’ Rastogi

When Nishith Rastogi, founder & CEO at Locus, went to the market to raise funding for his venture some six, seven years back, the drill, although not very difficult, certainly wasn’t easy. His distinct pitch did garner investor interest and the prior advent of the likes of Flipkart had sort of accorded some credibility to the Indian startup ecosystem. But it was nowhere like the present times when companies are easily getting funded at high valuations and there is no dearth of capital to back varied ideas. “Today, somewhere on the lower end also, like a seed round could be a million dollars. At that point, a million dollar seed round was practically unheard of. What has really really changed for the founders and especially a seed stage founder is the speed of closure. If it took us 1-3 months back then, today even as a new founder, it is possible to close a round in 1-2 weeks,” says Rastogi.

The founder says the startup ecosystem in India has matured and terms like startup or equity are no more esoteric. “Shark Tank is a mainstream television thing. And that’s really great. Now we are seeing a lot of additional capital. Will occasional bad ideas get funded? Sure. Will occasionally things be pricey? Sure, but what this is making sure is that there is great capital available for good ideas for execution and that on a sustained basis always produces most value,” says Rastogi.