Bringing Brake-less Solutions For New Founders Velocity brings fast, flexible and non-dilutive source of capital for founders
By Shrabona Ghosh •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
A friendship from college soon blossomed into a business partnership. "Me and my co-founders met at IIT-Bombay and also worked together at my previous startup TaskBob. Post TaskBob, I went on to work with SAIF as a venture capital (VC) investor. My time at SAIF made me realize VC money is not always the ideal form of capital for founders. It leads to founder dilution which can be extremely expensive in the long run. I strongly felt the need for a fast, flexible and non-dilutive source of capital for new-age founders. That's what led to the genesis of Velocity," said Abhiroop Medhekar, CEO and co-founder of Velocity.
"We firmly believe that it should not be so difficult for a healthy online business to get funded. Digital-first businesses will create substantial value in India in the coming years. However, the financing alternatives available to such businesses today are grossly insufficient. We want to build the future of business financing to empower thousands of new-age businesses in India," he added.
So far, the company has raised a total of $30 million across its Seed and Series A funding. "Both our rounds were led by Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures, a New York-based VC fund that has historically backed leading fintech's across the globe. In addition to equity, we also have debt partnerships with some of India's largest NBFCs that further add to our capital base," said Medhekar, adding that the company has made more than 250 investments across 175 companies till date.
The market for revenue-based financing has around three-four players at this point. As e-commerce continues to grow rapidly, there is a massive demand for scalable and flexible working capital financing options. "With so many companies getting funded, attracting top talent is a key challenge that we constantly keep solving for. We have been fortunate to be able to build a high quality core team so far. The opportunity to work on futuristic problems combined with our work culture has held us in a good stead so far. There is a lot of change in the market and the best way to invent the future is to let customer satisfaction be your guiding light," said Medhekar.
Talking about the growth strategy, he said, "We have set our sight high and aim to deploy over INR 1,000 crore towards 1,000-plus e-commerce businesses. We are also launching multiple new products that make the day to day lives for e-commerce entrepreneurs simpler. Our recent product Velocity Insights, which makes it easier for founder's to monitor the pulse of their business on Whatsapp, is a step in this direction."
