We are first and foremost a full-service start-up consultancy. All solutions that are backend/in-house for a regular company, are provided by us

“Yes, while we provide services and solutions to early stage start-ups, as Treelife has evolved, so has its client base. Treelife mostly aims to work for mature entities that have moved beyond the proof of concept and have started generating revenues. Our aim is to work with such start-ups till the time they raise their Series C or D funding. After that point, start-ups work with Treelife on a more consultative role as they usually have to move more functions in-house,” points out Agarwal.

“Apart from this, Treelife approaches its service delivery with the aim of providing effective solutions that cut out both the ‘extra’ advice (which, though being conceptually sound, may not be essential at the time) which is a by-product of clubbing services or making the service delivery seem unnecessarily elaborate, and ‘incompetent’ advice which is a result of not paying sufficient attention to the unique challenges a start-up faces,” adds Mitra.

Treelife also works with investors, funds, incubators and accelerators. For many such incubators and accelerators, Treelife has been able to position its offering as a set of service standards that should be abided by as a necessary system of checks and balances for the incubatees and applicants to such kinds of entities.

Says Geetansh Bamania, founder, Rentomojo: “Treelife does not count competitors, primarily because of its own characterisation of the service that it provides. Treelife approaches the provision of its services without assessing the work being done by legal, accounting or regulatory and policy firms operating in the start-up space. Additionally, with Treelife operating as a dedicated start-up-ecosystem enabler, the belief of no-need-to-define-competition, persists.”

Treelife does face challenges but more from specific services like Vakilsearch, an online platform for any business, or indiafilings.com. “These platforms, though functional in their service delivery, cater to a standardised set of services. There isn’t too much of room for accounting for the dynamic requirements start-ups may need to have or benefit from. Moreover, a point of competition (if at all) arises from the seemingly straightforward services offered, though in reality, jumping the hoops within such online platforms may lead to more confusion for the ill-initiated,” says Agarwal who feels “India itself is undergoing policy level changes in the healthcare sector space.