MasterClass @IoTNext: Preparing for M&A/Exit

The blog by Benjamin Joffe @HAX What every hardware start-up founder should know about exits covered some relevant materials on the importance of M&As for startups.

“Investors live by exits, but many founders keep dreaming of unicornization and avoid the “E-word” until it’s too late. Yet, in 2016, 97 percent of exits were M&As. And most happened before Series B…”

Globally hundreds of IoT M&As have happened but India today comprise just a handful of them. We have reason to believe that the 1250+ IoT startups in India are globally competitive and there could be a lot more M&As potential if we package and ensure visibility to global corporates. 

We have put together a Masterclass: Preparing for a M&A/Exit (Day 1) and a Panel: Scaling up and Preparing for an Exit (Day 2)

The Masterclass is focused on giving you an understanding of the process of M&A, the Due Diligence accounting and legalities involved to make a startup more appealing to the prospective buyer. The courtship may go for a year or more before a prospective buyer acquires. Besides a detailed Dos and Dont's from Legal and Accounting perspective by experts from E&Y and PwC, we have brought together veterans of M&A and Scale-up experts to answer these 15 Questions.

1. Mindset of an Acquirer- peculiarities in the emerging markets
2. Financial Acquirer vs corporate / strategic Acquirer - different objectives and execution processes
3. Exit vs fund raise - differences in approaches
4. Acquisition process highlights (preparation, buyer search and marketing process, buyer engagement and initial offer / termsheet, DD, docs, approvals and closing)
5. Do's dont's and pitfalls in an M&A process
6. From Acquirer's perspective: Why and when does it happen? What are the internal processes a corporate goes through?
7. How do you as a startup prepare yourself to be an appealing candidate for the Acquirer? How to position yourself as a candidate?
8. How much traction is important?
9. How do you get your house in order?
10. How do Corporates/Potential Acquirer find you?
11. Who should you be talking to?
12. What’s the right price for the Acquisition?
13. What happens during the M&A Process? What happens Post M&A? What are the typical handcuffs/Bonuses that gets put into place?
14. Why do so many M&As fail?
15. How do you safeguard yourself when the integration fails post M&A?

The specialists and experts taking the Masterclass are:

• Ashwin Gokhale Founder and Managing Director at Palanca Capital, ex M&A EY 
• Sudhir Kadam Exit strategy Advisor, FYDA Startup Alchemists Venture Capital & Private Equity Menlo Park, CA, USA 
• Sheetal Garg - Director at EY India’s Transaction Diligence practice 
• Amith Raj - Partner at PwC India 
• Arnab Chatterjee - Managing Director at Three Comma Financial Consultancy, Ex M&A Head of Standard Chartered, Dubai, UAE

Look forward to seeing you all at the Masterclass. Please do Register!