Business Plans

Abhay Kumar Bittu

 Introduction
• Focus your thinking
• Establish realistic strategy
• Financing and other support
• Reaction by others
 Definition
• Document that can convince the reader that
the business can produce enough revenue to
make a satisfactory profit and therefore
attractive as an investment opportunity
 Many reasons to build one
• BP should sell the writer/reader on the
business:
– Writer: so that you can go out and do it,
– Reader: to invest in it
• Confidence of knowing the issues
• Improve chances of success
 Many Purposes in real life
• Bank Financing
• Strategic alliances
• Large contracts
• Key employees
• Mergers and acquisitions
• Mgt team motivation
• Ours here : Investment by VC or Angels
 Principles of BP
• No right way: plans can differ
• Be creative but set a limit
• Concise and focused
• Captures energy and personality of business
leader
• Include negatives and issues
• Spend some time on it
 Sections of Business Plan
• Cover Page: contact name and info
• Table of contents
• Executive summary
• The company: past, present and future
• The market
• The Product/service
 Sections of Business Plan - continued
• Sales and Promotion
• Financial projections
– Profit and loss
– Balance sheet
– Cash flow
 Other sections: technology based
• Management team: people who fund other
people value management skills above “ideas”
• Risk factors: shows that you know what could
go wrong and plan to avert it
• Marketing plan: if this is “innovative” how are
you going to get people to use it
 Packaging the Plan
• It is a ”living” document
• No right/wrong way: the need of reader is
essential
• What are the challenges/ questions that can
be raised by reader: answer these.
 Packaging the Plan
• Include supporting materials
• Don’t make unsupported statements
• Designate an outside reviewer/ reader that
can critique plan
 Sites with sample plans
• www.businessplans.org/businessplans.html
• www.bplans.com/sp/businessplans.cfm
• www.businessplanarchive.org/