Friday, July 20, 2007

Loan for Startups

As our startup has reached a critical phase, it is getting difficult for me to manage time juggling between Job and the startup. As far as Job is concerned, it is as usual. For my coming venture, Our current focus is to arrange for finance. We are looking at two options:

  • Bank/FI loans
  • Small Loans from Friends/Any Interested Investor
So we are searching for Financial Institutions which can extend loans for our startup. Not surprisingly, the response has not been good. We shortlisted 4 Banks who we believed could be of help. Most of them are from Public sector and as per the Government's SSI charter, it is a priority sector. We first went to a large private sector bank which is advertising SMEs as one of its focus areas. We were told that the loan is only for SMEs which are one year old. Bad...... Then we went to a public sector bank which is setup to finance small sector industries. We met a senior manager there and were pleasantly surprised. He was a professional manager. Though he was very outspoken but was articulate and provided us with lot of informations we needed to apply for the loan. So now we are working on the business report and Expected Cost of the Project (ECOP) to submit.

We have yet to meet the other two banks and hope to get surprised there.

In one of my posts I will explain how to calculate ECOP.

Cheers
Abhishek

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Abhishek,

I can understand the pain of raising funds from banks. I feel that banks do not lend money to businesses who need cash to grow their business (mostly).

I will advise you to speak to the Directorate of Industries (C&I Department)in your state. Having a good contact there can get you some good links for loans and other sources of funding and assistance.

Regards
Abhishek

Abhishek said...

Thanks Abhishek.I will try this option as well.

Abhishek said...

Thanks Anonymous for your comments. I will try out Widgetmate.

Abhishek