Fundraising tools for Indian founders: what you need at each step

Start with the job, not the tool

A raise is a short list of jobs done in order: get your material ready, find the right people, write to them, keep track, share documents, and close. At every step you can start with what you already have: a spreadsheet, your own email and a shared folder. A paid tool earns its place when it saves you real time on a step you repeat often, or shows you something you could not see by hand.

This guide goes step by step. For each one: what the tool must do, a free way to do it, and what ShunyaSe has for it, including which parts are free on Starter, our free plan, and which need Pro or Max. Plans and limits change, so check plans and prices for the current numbers.

Step 1: Get ready

What the tool must do: hold your company facts once, and keep every document on the same numbers, so the deck, the one pager and the model never disagree.

Free way: a deck in Google Slides, a one-page summary in a doc, and a monthly model and a cap table in Google Sheets. List every shareholder, share class and option pool in the cap table, and put a date on the model. Our pitch deck guide covers what the deck needs.

In ShunyaSe:

• Startup profile. The facts every other module reads. On every plan.
• Pitch deck analyzer. Upload a PDF and get a readiness score with slide-by-slide feedback. Starter includes a deck review; Pro and Max include more each year.
• One Pager. A designed one-page company summary, as PDF or Word. The draft from your own words downloads free on every plan. The AI-written version uses AI credits, and paid plans include many more of them.
• Readiness. A score from your deck, traction, team and financials is on every plan. The full score, with what to fix, is on Pro and Max.
• Valuation, cap table and financial projections. Calculators on Pro and Max.
• AI-built financial model and AI-written business plan. Max only.
• Resource library. Starter can browse a free selection of deck templates, web templates and investor lists, and download a few. Templates for a business plan, financial projection, cap table, valuation and data room are on paid plans.

Step 2: Find who to ask

What the tool must do: filter by your stage, sector and cheque size, tell you how many fit before you spend an evening on it, and show how to reach each one.

Free way: start with our public pages for investors in India and startup grants, the official portals of schemes you may qualify for, and the websites of programmes in your sector. Keep a shortlist in a sheet: name, firm, why them, how to reach them. Our accelerators and incubators guide explains how to choose a programme.

In ShunyaSe:

• Investors Hub. Search and filters run across the whole directory on every plan, and show how many investors fit. Starter opens a fixed set of investors in full, with their contact details, plus a few full reveals outside that set. Pro and Max open many more full profiles a year, and see every investor and programme we add on the day it is added.
• AI Matching. Ranks investors and grants against your profile, by section. Starter sees a few matches in each section with the rest blurred, and can start a limited number of fresh runs a day. Pro and Max see every match in each section.
• Grants. The public grant pages are open to anyone. Inside the product, Starter sees a set of grants in full and the rest by name, authority and amount. Pro and Max see every grant, with who can apply and where.
• Programmes. Starter sees a few accelerators, incubators and pilot programmes in full. Pro and Max see all of them.

Step 3: Reach out

What the tool must do: send a personal email to one investor at a time from your own address, plan the follow-ups, send them in the same thread, and stop the moment someone replies.

Free way: your own Gmail or work email, the templates in our cold email guide, and a calendar reminder for each follow-up. Send on weekdays in working hours, a few at a time, and write each first line yourself.

In ShunyaSe: Outreach runs investor email campaigns from your own mailbox. Each first email is drafted for that investor and checked before it goes: a name in the greeting, a reason specific to them, no figure that is not in your own facts, your signature, no filler. Follow-ups go as replies in the same thread, up to three emails per investor, and a reply stops the sequence. On Starter, connecting your mailbox starts a short free trial. Pro and Max include a yearly allowance counted in investors, and every follow-up to an investor you have already written to is included.

Step 4: Track

What the tool must do: one row or card per investor, with the stage, the date of the last contact, the next step with a date, and short notes. It should make it obvious who is waiting on you.

Free way: a Google Sheet with one row per investor and a stage column with a fixed set of values, such as Researching, Contacted, In conversation, Diligence, Term sheet and Closed. Sort it by next-step date every morning.

In ShunyaSe: the CRM board, which starts with those six stages as its columns, is on every plan; Starter's board holds fewer cards. Outreach logs every email and reply on the investor's card, and moves the card forward when they reply. Reminders, meetings and export are on Max.

Step 5: Share documents

What the tool must do: share by link rather than attachment, let you turn a link off, and tell you when a link is opened.

Free way: a shared folder with view-only links. Keep two sets: a light one for first calls (deck and one pager) and a full data room for diligence. Name files plainly: company, document, month.

In ShunyaSe: Sharing and the Data room. Filing documents in the data room is free on every plan; it is a share link that counts toward your plan. The first time a new browser opens one of your links, you get an alert, and a summary arrives every Monday. Starter includes a share link; Pro and Max include more each year, and add document analyses. An Outreach campaign can carry one deck link with a separate token for each investor, so you can see which investor opened it without making a link per investor.

Step 6: Close

Term sheets, due diligence, shareholder agreements and the filings that follow are legal work, and this guide does not cover them. Bring in a lawyer who has worked on startup rounds, and your CA, before you sign anything. The cap table and documents you kept in order through the earlier steps are where they will start.

What to pay for, and when

Start free, and stay free for as long as the free way works. These are the signs that a paid tool would save you time:

• You are writing to more investors than you can keep track of in a sheet without missing a follow-up.
• You need contact details, or full grant and programme details, beyond the free set.
• You want the valuation, cap table and projection calculators, or the full readiness score with what to fix.
• You share documents with several investors at once and need to know who opened what.

If none of these is true yet, a sheet, your inbox and a shared folder are enough. When one is, compare what each plan includes before you pay for anything.