Glorax Capital told how to find an investor in its startup

Under the current conditions, foreign money in the Russian investment sector is not enough to finance. In such conditions, domestic entrepreneurs concentrated on raising funds from state or private Russian investment funds. One of these funds is the Glorax Capital private equity fund (operating within the Glorax Group), founded by Andrey Birzhin several years ago for investments in various projects.

Active, but not the only development

In the structures of Birzhin, who, while still a student at the Moscow State University, started his own business in the field of construction, an important part is precisely the development. Glorax Development, a member of the Group, was established in 2014 and is currently developing dynamically. The portfolio of projects is more than 1 million square meters. Among the regions of the company's presence are St. Petersburg, Moscow and Moscow region.

In the market of the northern capital, for two years of active activity, the development company of Andrey Birzhin took 7 projects into operation, including a large-scale project for the development of alluvial territories on Vasilievsky Island. This fall, two projects were announced within the redevelopment of industrial zones in St. Petersburg - a multifunctional complex and a residential comfort class complex on Ligovsky Avenue of the city. The total planned volume of investments for them is declared at the level of 8.9 billion rubles. In late November, the company received permission to build a residential complex in the suburbs. It is assumed that the volume of investment for the project will be 2.5 billion rubles. Meanwhile, Glorax Group and Andrei Birzhin himself are focused on the development of various business lines. "I'm interested in other markets that are not related to real estate," the businessman said.

Diversification as a business model

Today, many entrepreneurs and business owners are striving to increase the directions and points of business growth, that is, to diversify it. The group of companies Glorax Group initially, at the stage of creation, aimed at several priority vectors of development. According to Andrei Birzhin, Glorax acquires the shares of companies located in the zone of interest of the Group, invests in them, and manages the process, for which an appropriate infrastructure is created and a professional team works. The Glorax Group's strategy is to unite people and ideas from different industries. The company seeks to create opportunities for the exchange of various methods and ideas.

Markets are selected based on the outlined priorities and on the basis of the analysis of each particular project. "We study any segment before investing in it," Andrei Birzhin explains. In the list of existing priorities, in addition to development - energy, infrastructure projects, the hotel sector, information technology. When choosing an object for investment, both current businesses and start-ups are considered.

In the summer of 2016 the company announced plans to launch a regional network of available fitness clubs. "The democratic format is interesting from the standpoint of investment attractiveness, and from the point of view of social significance," Andrei Birzhin explained the choice of niche. Glorax Group's concept is the availability of high-quality sports services for a mass audience, including people with middle and lower middle income. Within the next 5 years, the company Birzhina plans to send 3 billion rubles for the launch of this direction.

In the zone of perspective interests of the company is also the field of medicine and private education. However, from some directions, on the contrary, with the passage of time they refuse. So it was, for example, with road assets. When implementing projects Glorax Group invests its own funds and in some cases attracts partners on the principle of co-investment.

Features of Russian investment funds

Any investment fund is inherently a buyer who carefully chooses the object of purchase. Each fund itself chooses directions and objects for investments, while the opinion of analysts is often taken into account, but the main decision remains for the fund's managing company. Naturally, here there are differences from the western model of investment, on the other hand, attracting investments from public or private Russian funds is an acceptable option even for those start-ups that are oriented to the global market.

Either way, despite some difficulties, such as bureaucratization of processes or difficulties with options, there is a large list of benefits, the first of which is saving. In fact, even at the stage of sowing, you can save from $ 5,000 to $ 20,000 just because you do not need to prepare the relevant documentation. In the following stages this amount only grows.

In addition, working on the Russian market, the fund can take back all back-office operations, accounting, legal support, patenting of trademarks. This is not an obligation, nevertheless, it is always easier to negotiate with Russian investors.

Great importance (in some cases - the determining one) is played by the human factor. According to Birzhin, the greatest value in any project is a professional and creative team. The experience of many investors shows that the human resource is a key component of most business initiatives.

How to start an investor

Working on the Russian market, one must proceed from the existing conditions, focus on a specific audience and build on the legal features. What should be an attractive startup?

Often one of the main criteria for the project is its importance to the general public. If the project can benefit, measured not only by money, it immediately adds a few points in favor of the startup.

Experts advise teams of start-ups to provide the investor with as much visual material as possible so that they can "play" with him, changing the factors of revenue, risk, demand, etc. It also makes sense to carefully approach the choice of the investor himself, not to send out proposals to all in a row, but, on the contrary, to collect a pool of profile funds dealing with the topic of the start-up.

Before applying to the investor, it is necessary to formulate an investment proposal competently. Ideal is the preparation of a full description and a brief summary (about 4 pages) illustrating the essence of the project. The proposed text should be an advertising material, which highlights the main provisions of the business, the description of services, plans, risk factors, etc.

For example, in the group of companies that Andrei Birzhin created, projects that allow creating new products, services and opportunities are especially appreciated. So, within the framework of the Infotech direction, IT-startups in the sphere of cloud technologies, consumer services and mobile applications are considered. These are the trends of today's and tomorrow's. IT-market develops qualitatively, more and more innovative and useful applications and technologies are created. This is an interesting and promising area, and everything indicates that it will remain so.

Glorax considers projects that meet the declared interests of the company. And both Russian and foreign start-ups can be considered. "The meaning of our activity is to search and develop projects in various spheres around the world," the head of the Glorax Group explains.

As a resume

Direct investment fund Glorax Capital primarily works in priority areas of Glorax Group. Meanwhile, Andrei Birzhin can consider other areas of business around the world for financing.