SSK Capital is a private investment fund driven by Ecommerce investments. Unlike VC’s or an Angel fund, SSK capital is smaller and invests in early-stage startups looking for Digital Expertise and Capital to scale not start. Sahaan Suman K is the Director of SSK Capital an E-Commerce driven investment fund with current investments in 5 companies. With his expertise in business and entrepreneurship, he is the CEO of a boutique digital agency ‘Bubble Network’ set up in London and Bangalore.
Sahaan Suman K- Biography
| Name | Sahaan Suman K |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Indian |
| Education | Warwick Business School, London |
| Profession | Investor & Entrepreneur |
| Position | CEO of SSK Capital & Director of Bubble Network |
| Sector | Digital Agency/ Investment Fund |
Sahaan Suman K- About
Sahaan Suman K- Job Responsibilities Over Time
Sahaan Suman K- Investment Journey
Sahaan Suman K- Investing in Startup
Sahaan Suman K- Investment Mantra
Sahaan Suman K- Few Signs to Trust a Founding Team
Sahaan Suman K- Aid to Startups
Sahaan Suman K- Learning Hacks
Sahaan Suman K- Right Time To Invest in A Startup
Sahaan Suman K- Pitch Deck
Sahaan Suman K- Validating Startup Idea
Sahaan Suman K- Best Way To Divide Equity Among Founders
Sahaan Suman K- Early Movers vs Late Movers
Sahaan Suman K- Retaining Equity While Negotiation
Sahaan Suman K- 3 Private companies To Invest in
Sahaan Suman K- Indian Startup Ecosystem
Sahaan Suman K- Tools
Sahaan Suman K- About
Sahaan is a 24- year old entrepreneur and is the Director of SSK Capital an E-Commerce driven investment fund with current investments in 5 companies. He started his first actual venture at the age of 18, though he failed multiple times testing small business ideas with little or no money during college. Learning cheaply from his own early days, he made his own mark with a boutique digital agency ‘Bubble Network’ set up in London and Bangalore, which today has serviced over 250 brands including names like Flipkart, CoWrks, Oberoi and Olive Group!
With the expertise, Sahaan gathered from there and his Alma Mater, Warwick Business school in England, he started SSK CAPITAL an investment fund on Ecommerce as he saw the fruits of being in that space and also where his expertise lied. Sahaan’s journey has been difficult and exciting as he built the entire company with no initial capital to a team of 20 completely bootstrapped from his college dorm at Warwick when he started.
Avantika Bhardwaj
These are three qualities Sahaan have always associated to the most: Ambition, Persistence and Discipline. In time, he also learnt that these traits only got stronger and became the core of my belief system today. In today’s world there are ‘Dreamers’ and ‘Doers’, he has always been a part of the latter, as they say “If opportunities don’t come knocking, build your own door.”
Sahaan Suman K- Job Responsibilities Over Time
Structure is Key. Sahaan has always been an entrepreneur first and investor second, at this age he has yet so much to learn however the fact that he started early gave him a head start to learn faster and think smarter. Running a business is very different from running an investment fund as your working not only with employees but also other entrepreneurs who are partners, each partnership works differently and makes it critical to clearly etch out your role in each company and not interfere in day to day operations as the entrepreneur running it knows what they are doing.
His value add has always been his own network and digital expertise, time and again via his agency Sahaan has scaled multiple Startups from 0 to 6 figures within 6 months, learning from that, Sahaan and his team know where to add value and where to not interfere.
A quick run-through of his conventional day would be waking up at 7 am followed by meditation and grace, post which he plans all his calls and meetings for the day, so he knows how much time he has to divide that across the businesses that need his attention. He has an internal team called at 10:30 and 11:00 to delegate and monitor work post which he jumps in with the activities of the day.
Sahaan loves what he does even though it’s long hours, multiple deadlines, stressful days, and many times firefighting. He takes Power naps very often along with short breaks to either read or simply relax, which helps him recharge and increase productivity.
Sahaan Suman K- Investment Journey
While running his digital agency Bubble Network, he focused on only working with Ecom & B to B clients. After working with over 250 of them, he and his team got really strong with Performance ads and data tools which helped them to scale sales online really fast. That is when Sahaan started investing in companies and stayed actively involved with them as using these skillsets helped him reap the direct benefits of their expertise.
However, coming from a lineage of business families, he believes that business comes to him naturally as he grew up in an environment where Sahaan saw this around himself every day.
Sahaan Suman K- Investing in Startup
SSK Capital is a private investment fund driven by Ecommerce investments. Unlike VC’s or an Angel fund, SSK capital is smaller and invests in early-stage startups looking for Digital Expertise and Capital to scale not start. They invest in more product-driven startups rather than services and a critical check box for them is that the product must be scalable online as their expertise lies there.
SSK Capital tends not to make irrational optimistic forecasts by hoping the startups turn profitable a few years later, they rather invest and work on businesses with lean financial models where these startups are already profitable operationally, however, need assistance to scale. These startups have running operational costs that are minimal and are directly proportional to growth, ensuring the burn rate is low and helps them spend more money on Ads, PR, and Production making it easier to scale.
Sahaan Suman K- Investment Mantra
There are certain KPI’s they look at before investing, a few primary pointers would be:
- Who is the entrepreneur and what has their track record been?
- Vision alignment between the entrepreneur and us.
- Do they need money to start or scale?
- What is the current burn rate?
- Are they profitable and what are the margins in that industry?
- How huge is the market potential, competitors and are there any opportunities for a blue ocean in that space?
- Can the business be scaled online?
- Will our expertise and network add in a significant value to the brand allowing it to grow?
- ROI Period and equity ratio
He does not invest in any business and does not understand irrespective of the profitability as he loves being personally involved and match the passion of the entrepreneur.
Sahaan Suman K- Few Signs to Trust a Founding Team
Education is the least of their concern. Sahaan believes anyone who can start and showcase a positive track record is great. They tend to look at numbers and facts, profitability, and vision alignment between him and the founder is critical. Post that, they also look at the synergy they bring together, if one plus one is three when they work together that’s a win-win for both.
Sahaan Suman K- Aid to Startups
Sahaan does not consider himself to be a mentor, he never can, as he believes there is no end to learning, as a peer entrepreneur he only helps or assists others in any way he could. Primarily, he has helped many entrepreneurs start their journey and also help them avoid making the mistakes he made when he started.
Sahaan also consults startups on their digital strategy allowing them to understand what to look at while scaling online and what markers to look out for while doing so. He is also humbled to have been invited as a keynote speaker at multiple schools, and platforms such as AIESEC India and the Youth Forum.
Sahaan Suman K- Learning Hacks
As they say an idiot with a plan can beat a genius without one. With time they all get complacent and tend to just wing their day to day activities. Post a certain period this is not possible; it becomes critical to have a routine and plan your activities to ensure higher productivity.
Sahaan Suman K- Right Time To Invest in A Startup
Sahaan is a strong believer in starting small and raising funds only to scale a company and not to start. Funds, many a time, give the entrepreneur a deluded or a faux sense of progress and with that mindset, many loopholes get left uncapped and lead to problems in the long run which can only be solved with more funds and the loop continues crippling the company.
Varad Kitey
Sahaan Suman K- Pitch Deck
Every investor looks at two primary aspects. Firstly, they want to know who you are, what is your track record, your passion and hunger towards the business, and also how invested you are in what you are doing. Remember Investors invest in the entrepreneur more than just the business. Secondly, they want to know raw, real, and true facts of the company, how much has been invested, are you currently profitable, if not what is your burn rate and near-future forecasts.
Fundamental things a pitch should contain:
- What is the problem your business is solving
- Product/Service offering – A quick brief on the company
- Vision of the company
- A little about the founders
- Past Track Record
- Market Size
- Current sales & projected sales
- Profitability & Burn rate
- Contingency plan
- Current Equity break up and what do you want from the investor.
Sweta
Sahaan Suman K- Validating Startup Idea
Take any successful entrepreneur, Steve Jobs, Jack Ma, Mark Cuban, we will see a majority of them start very small and test the market-product fit. Only once they see, learn, adapt, and finesse the product they would start scaling the brand and pulling in investment. If one wants to build a clothing empire start by selling one T-shirt not build a showroom.
Spend less and get the business to an operational breakeven so market validation alone will bring in the investors, money and so on.
Sahaan Suman K- Best Way To Divide Equity Among Founders
This depends from business to business however he looks at three aspects while looking at equity break up:
- Funds one brings in
- Value (Network or Technical expertise)
- Active involvement in the business
Sahaan Suman K- Early Movers vs Late Movers
Sahaan believes if positioned strategically this can actually be a pro rather than a con. “Late Mover Advantage” can be a way of looking at the early movers and learning from their mistakes and hurdles and launch a product filling in these gaps.
On a strategic note, one can add multiple value propositions to stay ahead, for instance, if Apple and Samsung launch a smart watch first, brands like Fossil and Titan can understand the market gap and take advantage of it, maybe add feature consumers wanted, sell it a different price point, make adaptations to product design based on consumer reactions and so on.
Sahaan Suman K- Retaining Equity While Negotiation
Primary mistake early stage entrepreneurs make is give out too much equity too early in the business as during these nascent stages the growth potential may be high however company valuation is still low due to smaller turnovers. During these stages’ investors would ask for a larger chunk of equity to hedge their risk.
If it is the right time and a founder wants to raise funds look at hybrid deals such as either debt + equity or royalty + equity, so this helps hold on to more equity while negotiating.
Sahaan Suman K- 3 Private companies To Invest in
Sahaan Suman K comes from a tech and digital background, looking at the market today and how this space is growing rapidly all three of his investments would be in this space.
- Fiverr(Global Freelancer Platform)
- Masterclass(EdTech platform)
- Urban Clap (Services on Call)
Sahaan Suman K- Indian Startup Ecosystem
In regard to Indian Entrepreneurs, due to the cultural and demographic stigma, people many times tend to build castles in the air. For instance, they get deluded by forecasts and market size to an extent where they lose sight of being rational and realistic with numbers, which eventually cripples the company. As they say, it is best to think like a global firm but work like a startup.
With VCs, they can see great progress in the number of amazing Indian VC funds coming up along with supporting accelerators and incubators, so they only sees an upside to the startup ecosystem if this growth continues.
PV Vyshnavi
Sahaan Suman K- Tools
Sahaan uses Google Calendar to set meetings and calls, Calendly to schedule my calls, Trello to monitor the company’s activities, Monday.com as a productivity tool and daily task manager. These tools really help bring in a sense of clarity and direction when there are many brands and many tasks which need attention.
