Feroz Sanaulla - Venture capitalist and seed investor
Money man
Helping start-ups to make the leap from ideas to execution is something that Feroz Sanaulla is passionate about. As a former regional director of Intel Capital, Feroz Sanaulla has already had a hand in guiding regional start-ups, a role he continues to play as an independent venture capitalist and seed investor.
With seats on the boards of several local companies, and contacts here and in the US, Sanaulla says his aim with the start-ups he advises is to help them to become commercially viable and find funding.
There are more sources of funding appearing in the region and entrepreneurs with fresh ideas and disruptive business plans should be able to access them, he says, but his role is deeper than that, providing holistic guidance in areas such as finance, organisational management, establishing leadership and teams, and appointing a board that can help the company grow.
“A lot of businesses create a plan to explain what they are trying to provide, but a lot fail right after that. They assume that a product will be liked automatically, they assume that money will just appear, and they assume that the revenues are going to happen according to a very top-down methodology. I do more bottom-up assessment for them, and help them to understand how do you really, step-by-step, get that first dollar, then two dollars, three dollars and beyond.”
(ITP Images)
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