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The answer to “how do I attract funds?” lies within the question “what am I funding?”

Most investor pitches are centered around price points, operating efficiency, and tangible asset investment-based growth projections.

But, how low can you price your product? How much more efficient can operations be? Is newly expanded capex infinitely utilizable?

The usual suspects that receive funding have an upper celling, hence capping possible growth before it even began.

In their book Capitalism without Capital, Haskel and Westlake found that Microsoft’s plants and manufacturing assets were worth USD3 Billion, 4% of their total assets and 1% of their market value.

In India if you pitched an investor and mentioned that you would invest only 4% of their investment in plant and machinery the network would fluctuate, and the call would drop.

And yet how do the largest and most valuable organisations of the world continue to raise capital from infancy, without investing on what is usually deemed investable?

The best investors of the world actively look for funding and leveraging aspects of a business with no upper celling of growth.

Foreign concepts such as “demanding more from a customer” are foreign to us Indians even when Maggie’s wheat and spinach noodles retails at 3x the price of other instant noodles.

As a nation we focus on making processes more efficient. A faster production line, more economical raw materials and shortest routes of delivery are all representatives of the same.

On the contrary, value addition to a product driven by research, introspection of why your longest business relationships continue, is where the highest amount of growth and hence the most investable aspects of a business lie.

The most valuable organisations, and therefore economies of the world focus on the intangibles of a business to create limitless value for themselves and their investors.

“Our smartphones will last the longest” – Apple

“Learn from athletes’ shoes and make it available for everyone” – Nike

“The fastest family in the world” – Mercedes These focus areas seem out of place in the industries they operate in and yet make some of the most investable brands in the world.

– Authored by Tarun Chakraborty on behalf of EQUiTOR Value Advisory