Capital Solutions / Growth Capital
Capital that funds the business doing more of what it already does.
Growth capital is the most common requirement and the most commonly mishandled. The business is working — orders exist, customers pay, the model holds — and the only thing missing is money moving earlier in the cycle than it currently does. That should be an easy case to make, and it usually isn't, because the requirement gets presented as a need rather than as a cycle a provider can see and price.
What this looks like from the inside
Working capital
The order book is there. The cash to service it isn't.
Expansion
Capacity, geography or product line has to grow ahead of the cash flow that will fund it.
Startup funding
An early-stage business with a defined use of funds and a credible path to servicing them.
The business model is proven or provable; the constraint is that operations need funding ahead of the cash flow they will eventually generate. The work here is showing a capital provider that the growth is real and the repayment follows it.
What a capital provider is actually weighing
Nobody is assessing how much you need. They are assessing whether they can be repaid, from what, and what happens if they are not.
The assessment
The four things that decide this.
Standard commercial practice, not any specific lender's policy — but a requirement that answers these before it is asked has already separated itself from most files.
The cash conversion cycle
How long money is tied up between paying for inputs and being paid by customers — and whether the facility size actually matches that gap.
Revenue quality
Whether receivables are concentrated in a few buyers, how reliably they pay, and what happens if the largest one slows down.
Banking conduct
How existing accounts have been run: limit utilisation, returns, overdrawn days. This is read closely and is rarely something a business has thought about presenting.
Promoter position
What the promoters have put in, what they have taken out, and whether the two tell a consistent story.
How VEDAM structures it
What happens before anyone sees your file.
- 01
Size the facility against the actual working-capital cycle rather than the number the business first asks for — too large reads as unplanned, too small guarantees a return visit.
- 02
Separate what is genuinely a permanent funding need from what is a timing gap, because the two call for different instruments.
- 03
Build the repayment case out of the business's own cash flow pattern, not out of projections that assume the problem is already solved.
- 04
Get the banking conduct explained before it is discovered, including anything that looks bad out of context.
When we’ll tell you it isn’t ready
An early no is worth more than a slow one. In this family, these are the signals that the requirement needs work before it goes anywhere:
- The amount changes each time it is discussed, which signals the underlying cycle has not been worked out.
- Receivables are heavily concentrated and no one has addressed what happens if one buyer delays.
- Existing limits are running fully utilised every month with no explanation prepared.
Questions
Growth Capital — common questions
How much working capital should a business ask for?
The defensible number comes from the cash conversion cycle — how long money is tied up between paying suppliers and being paid by customers — multiplied by the run rate that cycle has to support. Asking for a round figure that does not reconcile to that cycle invites scrutiny of everything else in the file.
Can an early-stage business raise growth capital in India?
It depends far more on whether the use of funds and the servicing path are specific than on the age of the business. An early-stage requirement with a defined use of funds and a credible repayment or exit route is assessable; a general request for growth funding usually is not.
Other capital families
Not quite your situation?
Project & Structured Finance
Capital tied to a specific asset, project or purpose-built structure.
Read thisRefinancing & Promoter Capital
Capital that fixes the shape of what is already on the balance sheet.
Read thisStrategic & Complex Situations
Capital for a transaction — or a situation a conventional process has already refused.
Read thisRight capital. Right structure. Right outcome.
Bring us a growth capital requirement.
You'll get a direct read on whether it's ready to be structured — and if it isn't, what would have to change first.