Mindful Musings

Last week's Budget 2023 had many amendments that are still brewing with tense conversations. One such change is the taxes on startup capital raised. While in 2019 startups excluded from the angel tax exhaled a sigh of relief, the dreaded levy on capital receipts is now reinstated.   What is an angel tax and why was it imposed in the first place?  In simple terms angel tax refers to the tax levied on the amount of funding obtained by businesses from angel investors. It was mainly introduced in India to avoid tax evasion via the guise of angel investments. The whole agenda of bringing this act was to prevent money laundering, the conversion of black money into white by round-tripping, etc. What is round tripping and how does it come into play with the angel tax?  Round-tripping refers to the act of routing funds via an overseas system in order to make it appear as a legitimate transaction when it is actually just a domestic transaction.  Let's take a simple exampl...

Let's talk about the Berkus valuation method for startups  We see a wide variety of methods in evaluating a startup, but one of the best simple, and easiest rule of thumb for pre-revenue startup valuation is the Berkus method. The Berkus method is a systematic process used for assessing a startup's viability in its early stages. It was named after its inventor Dave Berkus, a well-known Californian angel investor, and is said to be a popular tool in the startup world for determining if a company will succeed. It's common knowledge that nine out of ten new enterprises fail. Uber, Airbnb, Slack, and other unicorn companies only make up 1% of all startups. For first-time founders, the success rate is 18%. These cold stats are not to discourage any entrepreneurs but in fact, encourage them to work harder and smarter. The lack of revenue data and the fact that even if the product is on the market, it is nearly always an MVP are some of the biggest difficulties for an early-stage ...

Attended Global Soccer Conclave 3.0 - the third edition on 3rd Sept at Navi Mumbai.   #Football   #mahakumbh   Thank you, GSC for organizing this very successful conclave. Our Dartle team came all the way from Kerala to attend this conference and I must say it has been a great success in all possible respects. Special thanks to Sonali Gupta of gobeyondsports sports, Nihal Pradeep, and Swathy Krishnan for making this possible. After a long two years of not-so-much interaction, the buzz in the room was fantastic and it was exactly what we wanted to get people talking and networking again. The sessions had a perfect balance between being informative and spreading awareness on how tech is the new way to move the game forward. I cannot thank all the speakers enough for their time, for the very helpful and thought-provoking sessions. This conclave provided us with the privilege of connecting and hearing the viewpoints of eminent professionals from the football w...

  Time Management - How to overcome the constant battle with your clock? 1. Try to accomplish more with less. 2. Invest your time to think about how you can be organized. 3. Try to save every minute which ultimately adds up and creates a meaningful impact on how many things you can get done. 4. Experience with various techniques until you find the system that works best for you. 5. Try not to do several things at once: then you end up doing nothing well. 6. Embrace the art of delegation Now let's focus on making the best use of your time :) The time management matrix - helps you to decide whether a task should be carried out, delegated, or dropped.

Yesterday I went to  Kavanoor, a town in Malappuram district, to watch a baby league football match conducted by AFDM (association for football development Malappuram). I was really impressed to see how the kids who were of the under-12 age group, played football extraordinarily well. I could see that all the players were having fun, they were competitive and performance-oriented and it was evident that this was just the beginning of what these young talents were capable of. In the meantime during the match, I was sitting near a parent of one of the players who was cheering for his kid and I casually said to him "your kid is a good player sir " to that he responded, yeah I know he is one hell of a player and he never backs down from a fight, in fact, they all carry that fire within them and always give their best which is exactly what you are seeing now. Guidance and critical support agents are the two most important factors in developing a supporting future for these young ...

Whenever I come across something interesting while reading a book, I immediately save it in my google notes. Felt like sharing one of the notes. Let’s get started! Be the new rich. The difference between relative and absolute income. Among dietitians and nutritionists, there is some debate over the value of a calorie. Is a calorie a calorie, much like a rose is a rose? Is fat loss as simple as expending more calories than you consume, or is the source of those calories important? Based on work with top athletes, I know the answer to be the latter. What about income? Is a dollar is a dollar is a dollar? The New Rich don’t think so. Let’s look at this like a fifth-grade math problem. Two hardworking chaps are headed toward each other. Chap A moving at 80 hours per week and Chap B moving at 10 hours per week. They both make $50,000 per year. Who will be richer when they pass in the middle of the night? If you said B, you would be correct, and this is the difference between absolute and re...

Working in a startup is always like a roller coaster ( both thrilling and adventurous). We have heard that all startups go through a bumpy road before reaching success and each story is different but seems like the pattern is somewhat the same. 1. Before startup 2. Initial Enthusiasm 3. Reality sets in 4. Experimenting and pivoting 5. Product-market fit My journey begins from the third stage where reality sets in. This was the phase where it somehow became inevitable to enter the "Trough of sorrow". I was going through a lot of mixed emotions as I was not getting the expected results, and then the Covid19 impact, financial crisis, and so on. Then came the stage of experimenting and pivoting. This is where it hit us, that the idea we were working on is not what we actually planned on while starting the project and this marked the deepest cut in our startup curve. Like any other startup, it was difficult to surpass this stage with any colors but, we had our hope and faith to ke...