While meeting investors in India a lot of time our business plan faces the same questions, as none of the founders/co-founders are from the IIT or IIM. Its hard for us to get funding inspite of a good idea.<p>Any suggestions?
Some suggestions:<p>1. Bootstrap until you are profitable. More than anything else, investors look for a viable and lucrative venture. If you can show them an active revenue model, they won't care about much else.<p>2. Try other options like seed investment, angel investment etc. Some Ycombinator-like venture programs based in India were mentioned here sometime back. Ref: <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2010/02/18/bringing-y-combinators-incubator-model-to-india/" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2010/02/18/bringing-y-co...</a> and <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=56153" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=56153</a><p>3. Join a local startup meet like proto.in
"While meeting investors in India a lot of time our business plan faces the same questions, as none of the founders/co-founders are from the IIT or IIM."<p>I suspect a genuine investor could care less where you studied, but, assuming you are facing skepticism <i>only because</i> you didn't get an MBA from one of the IIMs, may I suggest that if your investors specifically care if you are from IIT or IIM (vs the intrinsic business/tech merit of your idea) you are talking to the wrong people - probably old fogies with money with no idea of how either business or tech works.<p>I don't think succesful seed funds like YCombinator (just taking an example) obsess over their applicants having attended elite schools. Why should these guys?<p>I second nreece's suggestion. Get an active revenue model first. All else follows.