Rahul Chowdhury is the Managing Partner at N+1 Capital, India’s first revenue based debt fund. He brings 18+ years of intensive entrepreneurial and operating experience. He is a two-time founder, having founded and sold DenuoSource, a Chicago-based data analytics firm, in 2011. He later founded Reboot, India's first refurbished IT asset lifecycle management firm.
How does revenue-based-financing (RBF) work?
N+1 will provide startups access to capital, at a premium, without taking any equity share or collateral from the company. Further, it collects a percentage of the borrowing entity’s monthly revenues to pay the capital back, and gives steady returns to its limited partners on a quarterly basis. Unlike venture debt firms, N+1 isn’t dependent on future fund-raise of the startup, but will invest on the basis of its revenue outlook.
Episode Notes:
1. What motivated Rahul to pursue a career as a venture capitalist? (3:38)
2. The impact of Rahul's operator journey on his venture capital journey (6:02)
3. With whom does Rahul do business? (12:50)
4. Key characteristics of successful entrepreneurs (15:41)
5. Rahul’s decision making process (23:10)
6. How important are metrics and numbers in investment decision making? (35:40)
7. How does Rahul view black swan events and their impact on predicting the trajectory of startups seeking revenue-based financing? (38:18)
8. Evaluating businesses of varying sizes with respect to revenue based financing (45:31)
9. How significant is TAM to a revenue-based-financing investor? (55:20)
10. Challenges of revenue based financing in India (58:38)
11. Why VCs like to collaborate with a revenue-based-financing firm? (1:04:20)
12. What were the LPs' concerns about a revenue-based-financing firm? (1:09:51)
13. Personality-Fund-Fit for a fund manager (1:15:35)
14. Things about India that continue to surprise Rahul (1:21:28)
. . .
Social Links:
N+1 Capital on Twitter: https://twitter.com/np1capital
Podcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thedesi_vc
Akash Bhat on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bhatvakash
Podcast on Instagram: https://instagram.com/thedesivc
Akash Bhat on Instagram: https://instagram.com/bhatvakash
