At a glance, T9L looks just like any other startup incubator or accelerator programme.

Headquartered in Singapore with a development office in New Delhi, the company selects startups from India and Southeast Asia and support them in both execution and strategy.

But there are some factors that set it apart from other similar programmes: Its approach to help startups use their runway more effectively.

In an interview with e27, T9L Founder and CEO Fahad Moti Khan explains the three factors that determine success for a startup: Market, execution, and team.

“There is this urban legend that more than 90 per cent of funded startups failed. What we realised is that most of these failures happen in these three areas. Either they’re not entering the market at the right time, or they’re unable to execute properly,” he says.

Dubbing itself as a venture-as-a-service (“VaaS”) company, T9L helps startups grow by expanding their runway.

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While a typical startup might spend approximately 70 per cent of their seed fund to take the product to market, with the help of T9L team, they can cut down the number to around 40 per cent –leaving the remaining fund to be invested in growth experiment, team-building, business model pivots, and fundraising.

This will be achieved through the following steps: Selecting the startups through a rigorous process, using pre-developed components to create and deploy product ideas, and introducing the startups to a network of partners to help them scale up.

This has been proven to work, as the company’s success stories included Docquity, which is currently known as the largest doctors’ network in Southeast Asia with around 100,000 doctors on board, and UOLO, which already secured over one million downloads.

By April 2019, T9L has 30 startups from 20 different verticals in its portfolio. They have a cumulative valuation of US$280 million with more than US$10 million in asset value.

From a startup to a startup studio

 

Despite its success, T9L has been flying mostly under the radar.

Khan points out that once at an event, an investor told them that despite looking to invest in T9L’s portfolio companies, he had never even heard of the startup studio itself.

“Our philosophy is that let your work speaks for you,” he says.

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T9L itself began its journey as a startup that builds various tech solutions for other businesses. At some point, when the companies that they had been working with raised funding from notable VC firms, T9L began to consider pivoting their business.

“Instead of just doing it as a service, why don’t we start taking stakes at these companies?” Khan says.

The change seemed to work as COO and Co-Founder Nitin Awasthi notes that investors that are working with them feel “more comfortable” when they know that T9L is supporting the product.

“They know that no matter what happens, the technology is secured,” he stresses.

T9L self-financed its operations for the first few years, but once they have started to raise external funding, the company learned that they can push for greater result by bringing in more startups.

It is currently raising for a Series A funding round, with the goal to further expand its business through talent and startup acquisition. The company is also looking forward to further investing in deep tech implementation.

Within the next five years, it aims to grow its portfolio to more than 120 companies.

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Image Credit: T9L

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