Starting a business? You have a great idea, you have the will and you know you will. Ever thought of the capital or funding required fulfilling your dream? Launching any business requires capital investment, whether the start-up is any type of MSME or large enterprise. Funding makes your business initiatives with a strong base and helps to expand and grow further. Finding funds for a start-up business can be sometimes challenging and tiresome task. However, to make it simple for you, we have compiled a few important financing techniques that shall help you in finding finance.
1. Self-Finance your Start-up Business
Self-financing or personal investment is the best way of financing used by several business start-ups. Even when you take a loan or ask a venture capitalist or government entity to provide funding for your start-up, they still have this question; how much capital you shall be investing in your start-up? Investing your own savings is the best option for first-time entrepreneurs. In the later stages of business, you can easily opt for business loans and lenders shall not have a reason to deny it, as they will consider the stability of business, as it will be low-risk factor for them.
2. Look out for Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is a concept of collecting funds from multiple investors via social networking sites and web-based platforms for majorly business purposes. Online Crowdfunding web portals raise funds for various other purposes like social causes, charities, ideas, disaster relief, events, etc. This concept or idea helps in raising funds for start-ups or first-time business owners and also promotes social and cultural causes. India’s leading Crowdfunding platforms include Kickstarter, Ketto, Catapooolt, FuelADream, Fundable, Indiegogo, Milaap, Wishberry, etc.
3. Knowledge Mining
Plan to leverage analytics technologies such as knowledge mining and graphing based on cognitive services such as natural language processing, text analytics, image recognition and so on. Such services are available from different cloud vendors. Leverage these tools to understand patterns in customer and employee behavior and sentiment, as well as product adoption and usage. -Vineet Arora, WinWire Technologies
4. Data Collection And Analysis Systems
Startups must test new business models and/or technology efficacy. Data collection, analysis and measurement systems are critical for building evidence and demonstrating that your business or technology provides value and can scale. Investors are more demanding of this evidence than ever before, so define your assumptions up front, identify how you will test them and then invest in the data technology. – Steven Gustafson, Noonum, Inc.
5. Cloud Computing
I would recommend a startup invest in cloud computing right away, because doing so will improve business agility and flexibility. Making use of innovative technology is important. With cloud computing, your staff can work from any location where there’s access to the internet, both in the field or at home. You could even reduce costs while giving employees a more flexible work environment. – Szilvia Horvath, ELO Digital Office Corporation
6. Data Security
Technology is simply an accelerator and enabler. The payload of any digital business is its data. I would invest in keeping that data secure at the appropriate level—whether that’s by removing, obfuscating, tokenizing, anonymizing and/or encrypting it—and in looking after its value. Technology can help you make your data understood across your business through such methods as dictionaries and quality monitoring, to name just two. – Simone Steel, Nationwide Building Society
7. A CISO
The best thing for a startup to invest in is a chief information security officer, not just tech alone. It is very rare to see a startup invest in developing a security-focused culture at the outset. There’s always this odd assumption by leaders that they can come back to it later. With more and more customers becoming wary of adopting new solutions due to security concerns, alleviating those concerns up front is essential. – Endre Walls, Customers Bancorp
8. A Smart Communication Platform
Adopt a smart communication platform. Investing in tech-agnostic chat platforms is crucial. They allow everyone on the team to communicate and collaborate seamlessly, at all times. The idea behind this is clear: enabling better teamwork through having fewer emails going back and forth between team members and keeping all communication within all departments within one platform. – Sergiu Matei, Index Soft Limited
9. Workflow Automation
Budget-constrained startups have to be very discerning about what to invest in. Investing in workflow automation processes is a good option. Seek to automate as much as possible so you can focus on your core offering as opposed to operational tasks. Anything that automates repetitive and redundant work and keeps you focused on your core mission will have a positive impact on your business. – Alejandro Laplana, Shokworks
10. Collaboration Software
Startups should invest in collaboration software with project or backlog management, instant messaging, whiteboarding and more. Communication is crucial for businesses of all sizes, especially in today’s hybrid environment. Today’s digital business cannot keep pace with the competition without an effective collaboration ecosystem. This allows them to keep all the balls in the air while providing transparency across the team as it grows. – Irvin Bishop, Black & Veatch
11. A CRM
An agile customer relationship management platform with associated targets is critical for all stages of a startup. It’s needed to manage customer segmentation, customer success lifecycle development and customer feedback, among other things. All of these should influence the direction of the products and services being offered by the startup. – Bhavna Sethi, Wave BL
12. A Project Management Platform
In my experience, investing in the best possible tools at the very beginning can be a key step in avoiding future disasters. The one I would recommend is a state-of-the-art project manager, which will allow you to preview each employee’s workload, foresee and tackle issues on the spot, and in general, improve productivity and prevent work burnout. A project management platform is a must for any technological company. – Rui Stoffel Fernandes, BusUp
13. Transcription Software
Documenting processes and making important information accessible to all are critical to a startup’s ability to scale and, ultimately, survive. AI-powered meeting transcription software is affordable (to a limited extent, it’s available for free), and it gives you an easy way to enable asynchronous work and knowledge-sharing. Best of all, you don’t have to take notes during calls. – Gergo Vari, Lensa, Inc.
