Tushar Kansar- A Harvard alumni mentoring entrepreneurs in India

Beginning of Tushar’s career and it helped him execute the present journey

His career began when he got campus placement from Engineering College at Indo Rama Synthetics, a big poly-staple fibre manufacturing company at Nagpur. But soon he realised that he wanted to be either in IT or Finance. Hence he prepared hard for MBA Entrance examinations and got through MBA in Finance at the University of Delhi.

This lead him securing a campus placement in M&A division of SBI Capital but post his MBA, he started a venture of his own and co-founded an Education company called KITES which trained high school students in IIT entrance examinations. The company grew to 800 students and 3 centres in North Delhi and he got a very good exit when he sold it to Narayana Institute in 2006.

For the last decade, he has been in leadership role, driving business with large companies and as an entrepreneur. At Deloitte, he executed Private Equity assignments/ Valuations & Financial Advisory. At Brand Capital, he was part of the team investing across companies. At MTS India, as head of Debt division, he handled all round financial goals as CFO of DLI.

All these roles played by Tushar have deeply helped him in executing his present professional journey.

His startup journey

Tushar founded a startup Indus B2C Global in 2013 which was into B2B consumer space. The product was Human Hair extensions which are sought after by mostly women of African origin. It was during his time with this startup that he realized the gaps between what startups actually need and what companies are offering to help them.

He later quit full-time Management of this startup and became a financial investor. That’s when he launched Kansaltancy Ventures, he works with a team that assists startups and growth stage companies with equity fundraising, debt, mergers and acquisitions and mentoring. They also help in getting business for the companies which they handhold.

How Tushar is mentoring startups

A large part of Tushar’s work at Kansaltancy Ventures is doing webinars and helping founders and team members of aspiring startups, reach their goals. Today, he has made a lot of progress in creating an ecosystem in this field.

He is a Mentor and Judge at Entrepreneurship cells of IIT-Mumbai, IIT-Delhi, IIT-Chennai, IIT-Kharagpur, IIT ISM-Dhanbad & other such marquee Institutions. He has expertise of Financial & Business advisory, Fund raising & creation of docs/ collaterals for VC Funding.

He is a Venture Advisor with Loyal VC, the INSEAD-led Canadian VC Fund, having a core portfolio of over 160 investments in more than 35 countries. He also partnered with GSD Venture Studios, a Silicon-valley based Venture Builder.

Over the years, he has arranged Funding for startups & growth-stage companies in diverse sectors like, EdTech, FinTech, Consumer B2C, B2B & D2C, AgriTech, Disruptive and DeepTech as well as non-Tech sectors.

His expert opinion is often sought by leading business news channels and publications like CNN-News18, VCTV, Business World, Business & Economy, Qrius and Digital Market Asia. He has even come on 150+ talks, clips of which are on his YouTube.

What does Kansaltancy Ventures offer?

Kansaltancy Ventures is an investment management and advisory firm into Equity fund raising, fund raising for VC Funds, Debt and Mergers & Acquisitions. It has years of experience Growth Companies to prepare for the unknown while meeting their needs.

The services they offer include:

• Funding: Equity & Structured Debt Planning & Pitching to Investors
• Mergers & Acquisitions
• Pitch Deck Preparations & Presentations
• Business Plans & Project Plans Preparations
• Start Ups & Growth Strategies & Planning
• Go-To Market & Digital Marketing Strategies
• Financial Strategic Planning & Analysis
• Strategic Planning & Execution Advisory
• Business Valuations Advisory

As an independent Growth delivery firm, they can access many different Funding Options so that the customer can get the right Funding and services.

Tushar’s advice to youngsters and how they can avoid similar issues

On asked about advice for youngsters following a similar path, Tushar gave the below mantras:

• Focus on skilling yourself – reskilling, up-skilling and staying relevant to developing trends in your work area all the time
• Interact with good human being who are also specialists in their fields. Attend webinars on specialisation topics, go meet people and develop mentors in your field
• Don’t run after degrees and certificates
• Focus on a field and master it completely. Develop core competence
• Don’t run after money, let it come after you
• No ambition is small – each person is unique and is God’s own creation

Factors to keep in mind once a founder starts fund-raising

According to Tushar, The foremost factor for a founder, or a teammate who are looking for equity funding is to have an internet presence/ a Google presence. Anybody who searches your name or your company's name on Google, the first 10 and 20 results should give the person a good idea about what you do, why you do and what is your passion. For that, you need to write a lot, blog a lot - you can write a blog on medium.com or you can have your videos on youtube.com or you can have some speaking engagements. Some websites can cover your work area and profile. The second part is that you need to establish good relationships with select investors, and the founders of the investee companies of these investors.

You should go to events, and nowadays the events are being held online. So you can go to these events, ask questions, and then add the investor, on LinkedIn. When you add an investor on LinkedIn, you send them a personalized invite, so that they understand where you are coming from.

Once you are in touch with these investors, you can ask them about their investment thesis, and in most of the cases, the investment thesis is given on the website of the investors. The best way of approaching these investors is through the founders of their investee companies.

Hurdles that keep people away from starting an entrepreneurial career

Entrepreneurship is not taught in our schools. The school focuses on technical aspects, on geography, on the sciences and arts and commerce but ignores the critical aspects of entrepreneurship, which is money planning financial planning, which is accounting, which is human relationships, working in teams, being the leader, being a manager.

All these aspects are very sadly ignored in our educational ecosystem. Hence, the journey for an entrepreneur becomes very steep.

Tishar thinks that it is very difficult to start companies, it's rather painful. One of his friend had a good phrase for doing a startup- ‘It's like eating grass and staring into the abysses. If you are wired to do it, then only do it. Not that not otherwise. So think of it this way. If you need inspiring words, don't do it. Firstly, being an entrepreneur has been overly glorified in movies and TV shows, but for the most part running a company is difficult. Most of us are not ready for it, or are more interested on the idea of being an entrepreneur rather than actually be willing to put in the work to become one

One thing entrepreneurs should understand is the meaning of being an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur is someone who has chosen to do what he wants with his life. When you are doing what you want with your life. That is the greatest joy that you can have. But slowly, you forget that you are doing what you want, you start working for someone else's expectations. That's not the way. The meaning of being an entrepreneur is that you are doing what you want to do and you should continue to do that all your life. Success is not only in terms of money, success must also be looked at in terms of finding full expression of who you are, your capabilities and your competence.

How there is great hope for the future

Our educational ecosystem is yet to get equipped to make students take up entrepreneurship and instilling in them the necessary skills and experience to take these challenges head on. By 2025, the Indian startup ecosystem is set to witness three-fold growth in valuation and a substantial rise in the number of Unicorns, which currently stands at 59, according to a report by early-stage venture capital fund 3one4 Capital.

The number of startups will jump to 100,000 in 2025 from about 55,000 currently, the report said. They will attract investment of a whopping $100 billion between 2021 and 2025, employ 3.25 million people and become the second-largest ecosystem in the world after the United States, it said, adding that India will be home to over 150 Unicorns.

His social media links are at Linktree - https://linktr.ee/tusharkansal  and Corporate website is www.Kansaltancy.com,  youtube- https://latoken.com/vctv/investor/1040 & Kansaltancy.com

He is reachable on his LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/tusharkansal/ or email tk@kansaltancy.com