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‘Start-up guide for funding’ to resolve financial woes of founders, entrepreneurs

Dash Venture Labs offers an in-depth information about startup cycle and types of funding available, including governments grants and similar offerings from other financial institutions

Dash Venture Labs has launched a “Start-up guide for Funding”, which aims to empower founders with the various funding avenues available in today’s changing business ecosystem.

The objective is to understand the stages of startup cycle and types of funding available, including governments grants and similar offerings from other financial institutions.

The guide, which is developed in collaboration with Ascent Partners, has been primarily divided into three key sections: 1) Why do startups require funding? 2) Stages of funding, and 3) Types of funding for each stage.

Each section is designed to provide a deeper understanding of the subject, especially for the founders and entrepreneurs to understand the reasons and stages of funding.

Furthermore, liquidity does not seem to be a problem for founders today, but they should understand the importance of each round of funding and modern structures designed around each capital raising activity. More importantly, how these will impact their shareholding structure and future fund-raising activity.

Shailesh Dash, Founder of Dash Venture Labs, said: “Startups have become an important engine for growth across the region, hence, we wanted to launch a guide for them to understand the funding ecosystem. More importantly, the objective is to describe the various avenues available across the region and how they can capitalize on them to fund their ideas or scale their existing business ventures.”

First section of the guide focuses on the importance for founders to understand the reason for raising funds from various avenues available in the market today.

Second section of the guide, which emphasizes on the stages of funding within the startup ecosystem. Given that there are multiple sources of funding available, it is important for that the source of funding typically matches the stages of operations of the startups.

Third section of the guide is the most important for the founders as it outlines the types of funding available across the ecosystem. It is important for the founder to understand the relevance of each funding avenues and its impact of shareholding pattern.

Moreover, it is also highlighting the challenges in raising funds from different avenues and expectations from each of the stakeholder. In this section, we have also shown the comparison table for the types of funding based on size, availability and time frame.

Dash said the launch of this guide is particularly important at a time when valuation and business models of startups have come under the scanner on the back of changing investment landscape.

“Hence, it will be imperative for startup founders to evaluate their businesses and accordingly plan out its funding requirement over the next 12 to 18 months, which could be challenging for raising funds. Having said that, the regional startups continue to attract interest from both regional and international investors, which should encourage founders with sound and scalable business models to tap this opportunity. It will also be essential for founders to select the right investor partners that will not only bridge the funding requirements but also add value in terms of building partnerships and launching into new markets,” he said.

Total value of investments in startups in MENA reached $1.73 billion, reflecting a year-on-year growth of 67.6 per cent. In terms of total deals, the first half of of 2022 reported 354 transactions compared to 294 in the same period of last year.

Dash Venture Lab’s ‘Start-up guide for Funding' can be downloaded from https://ascentpartners.ae/start-up-guide and https://sdcee.ae/funding-guide-for-startup