Outlook Business Investment Summit | Angel investing - profiting from the start-up surge

3 years ago

Editor N Mahalakshmi in conversation with Ninad Karpe, Partner, 100X.VC, Nandini Mansinghka, Co-promoter & CEO, Mumbai Angels Network and Neha Singh, Co-founder, Tracxn about the latest trends in early-stage investing.

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Transcript

00:00:00 (upbeat music)

00:00:02 (upbeat music)

00:00:32 - Outlook Business Investment Summit 2021

00:00:34 is brought to you by icicadirect.com.

00:00:36 - Welcome ladies and gentlemen

00:00:39 to Outlook Business Investment Summit 2021.

00:00:42 The topic for this session

00:00:43 is profiting from the startup search.

00:00:46 I have with me three very eminent speakers,

00:00:49 Ninad Karpe, partner 100X VC,

00:00:51 an early stage VC firm

00:00:53 which aims to invest in 100 startups every year.

00:00:56 Ninad was the MD and CEO of AppTech till 2016,

00:00:59 is amongst the most enterprising and affable people

00:01:02 you can ever meet in business.

00:01:04 And the best part I like about him

00:01:06 is despite all his accomplishments,

00:01:08 he will always find his feet firmly on the ground.

00:01:12 And I have two lovely ladies,

00:01:14 Nandini Mansinkar, she is the co-promoter

00:01:16 and CEO of Mumbai Angels,

00:01:18 a platform for startups

00:01:19 and early stage venture investments.

00:01:22 She's been a serial entrepreneur

00:01:23 and angel investor since 2010.

00:01:26 Nandini is passionate about democratizing investments

00:01:29 in early stage startups

00:01:30 and making this asset class

00:01:31 a part of every investor's portfolio.

00:01:34 This panel is hopefully a small baby step in that direction.

00:01:38 And then I have Neha Singh,

00:01:39 the co-founder of Traxin, a data analytics firm.

00:01:42 Let's call it the Bloomberg of startups.

00:01:44 It's data, but sophisticated data on startups

00:01:47 and Traxin tracks more than half a million startups

00:01:50 across 250 sectors globally.

00:01:53 Welcome all three of you.

00:01:54 Thank you so much for joining me on this discussion today.

00:01:58 And Nenad, my first question is to you.

00:02:00 We all agree that since the pandemic stuck,

00:02:04 the world has changed in some irreversible ways,

00:02:08 especially because of the digital leap.

00:02:11 And now this has meant both disruption and opportunity.

00:02:16 Please tell us how has the environment changed

00:02:19 for early stage startups in terms of enthusiasm

00:02:22 amongst people to take to entrepreneurship on one hand,

00:02:28 and also to take to angel investing on the other?

00:02:31 - Thanks, Maha.

00:02:32 That's, you know, I'll make it brief

00:02:34 because you've asked me such a loaded question.

00:02:36 Firstly, I hope all of you viewers are safe and well.

00:02:39 So, you know, Maha,

00:02:40 what happened is when it first struck last March,

00:02:43 I think all of us are a little bit of state of shock.

00:02:45 I think there's a pause,

00:02:47 everyone press the pause button from say March

00:02:50 to somewhere around July, August, September,

00:02:52 that timeframe,

00:02:54 startup founders also, and even investors.

00:02:58 But after that, you know, it has come with vengeance now.

00:03:01 You know, from September onwards, it started picking up.

00:03:05 And now we are seeing interest,

00:03:07 which is far, far greater than earlier.

00:03:09 What has changed?

00:03:11 The startup founders have realized

00:03:13 this is their opportunity.

00:03:15 It's unfortunate what is happening for the health issues

00:03:18 around the world, particularly India,

00:03:20 but purely from a business perspective,

00:03:23 digital is mainstream, work from home is mainstream,

00:03:26 consumer behavior has changed,

00:03:28 people are consuming things at home.

00:03:29 I mean, I can go on and on.

00:03:31 Such, you know, huge changes, which are permanent shifts,

00:03:35 which has now thrown huge opportunities for startups.

00:03:38 These are not things which, you know,

00:03:40 legacy companies can quickly adapt to.

00:03:42 They take time, they move slowly.

00:03:44 These guys move fast

00:03:46 and they're sensing a lot of opportunities.

00:03:48 Agritech, EdTech, HealthTech,

00:03:50 you name it, there are opportunities.

00:03:52 So on the startup side,

00:03:54 we are seeing far more PitchDecks

00:03:56 flowing to 100X than before.

00:03:59 And these are people, fortunately,

00:04:01 you know, one of the trends we're seeing is

00:04:03 even from tier two, tier three towns,

00:04:06 now we're seeing a lot.

00:04:07 Earlier we were always seeing from Bangalore, Delhi,

00:04:09 Bombay, Pune, you know, some of these places,

00:04:12 tier two, tier three.

00:04:12 So yes, on the startup side,

00:04:16 we are seeing a lot more PitchDecks coming up.

00:04:18 On the investor side, what has happened probably is,

00:04:21 you know, people have got more investable surplus

00:04:25 because they're at home and they're not kind of invested.

00:04:29 All of them, you know, big and small,

00:04:31 are looking at an alternate asset class to invest.

00:04:34 They all know about property,

00:04:36 they all know about stock market, public markets,

00:04:38 you know, all that back and forth.

00:04:39 It's already got a lot of, you know, focus.

00:04:43 They are saying part of their wealth,

00:04:45 they should invest in alternate asset class.

00:04:47 And believe me, you know,

00:04:49 there's no better alternate asset class

00:04:51 than investing in startups.

00:04:53 And what better place to do it than in India?

00:04:56 So this whole concept of investing

00:04:58 in an alternate asset class has picked so much momentum

00:05:02 that from angels to large family offices to VCs,

00:05:06 we are seeing so much interest in startups.

00:05:08 So they're coming, they're realizing, you know,

00:05:10 probably asymmetric returns are to be made in startups.

00:05:14 There's high risk, there's no doubt,

00:05:16 but the asymmetric returns to be made

00:05:18 and part of your wealth has to be put.

00:05:20 So on that side also, the momentum is huge.

00:05:23 So on both sides, actually,

00:05:24 we are seeing just an amazing amalgam of factors,

00:05:27 which is, you know, I think it's a breakaway year, 2021.

00:05:32 In the first four months,

00:05:33 you have seen already 10 unicorns.

00:05:36 This 2021 will be a breakaway year.

00:05:39 - Sure.

00:05:40 Nandini, that's exactly, I saw on your Twitter,

00:05:43 I think a day or two ago,

00:05:45 you put out this video saying 2021 is a pivotal year

00:05:48 for angel investing in India.

00:05:49 You also said innovation is currently being embraced

00:05:52 at an exceptional rate across sectors

00:05:54 and especially in those that are receiving

00:05:56 positive tailwinds because of COVID-19.

00:05:59 Absolutely true.

00:06:02 Throw some light on,

00:06:04 in terms of actual activity on the ground

00:06:06 and your experience in the past one year,

00:06:09 how this is getting manifested.

00:06:13 - Yeah, so, you know, like Nenad mentioned,

00:06:16 the last year actually was a breakaway year

00:06:20 for the entire ecosystem.

00:06:22 And, you know, I actually want to just throw some light

00:06:25 on the term that we use as startup.

00:06:28 You know, so that actually starts giving you a very,

00:06:32 I think miscalculated nomenclature,

00:06:35 which says startups are something very different

00:06:37 from the other investing activities that you do.

00:06:39 It's not.

00:06:40 It's basically you're saying that the same company

00:06:43 that's going to become, say, listed

00:06:45 or become a unicorn over, say, a three, four years time,

00:06:48 how early are you willing to get into it?

00:06:51 So, you know, so like the place where, say, Nenad is,

00:06:56 he's still even one step earlier

00:06:57 than what we do at Mumbai Invest.

00:07:00 But if you look at where we all operate,

00:07:02 we are operating in what is called

00:07:03 early-stage venture investing.

00:07:05 So you are asking somebody to say, listen,

00:07:08 check in into, say, Uber or, you know, an Ola

00:07:12 or a Flipkart, not when it becomes a Flipkart,

00:07:15 but when it's a two-member team

00:07:16 looking for a two-crore kind of a number.

00:07:19 If you look at what happened with us,

00:07:21 so, you know, when you said on the ground,

00:07:23 I can talk to you about the exact data

00:07:26 of what happened with us,

00:07:27 you know, so to give you a sense of what,

00:07:29 and I think the same thing was replicated

00:07:32 amongst all peers in this ecosystem, you know?

00:07:36 So when we started out, say, in March,

00:07:38 I was very worried, you know?

00:07:40 I thought that, oh, now, you know,

00:07:42 you've got, you're in a lockdown,

00:07:43 everything is going to come down

00:07:45 because you start hearing these, you know,

00:07:46 bad news, et cetera.

00:07:47 We were actually surprised that the next three months,

00:07:51 so April, May, June, were the best-ever months for us

00:07:56 for Moonlight, best ever.

00:07:58 And when I say best ever, I'm talking both in terms

00:08:02 of the investors who came on board.

00:08:04 So more people started, you know,

00:08:07 reaching out to us, became more amenable

00:08:10 to start looking at this as an investor, et cetera.

00:08:13 So we added more members last year than we ever did.

00:08:17 And on the opposite side, you know,

00:08:19 the number of deals that we started closing,

00:08:22 the number of investments that we started closing,

00:08:25 that also started shooting up.

00:08:27 And this started shooting up both in terms

00:08:30 of the number of investments and the amount

00:08:33 that we were being able to invest.

00:08:34 So just to give you a sense on that,

00:08:37 we, on an average, we do an investment in a company

00:08:40 anywhere between 50 lakhs to two crores.

00:08:42 Last year was one of the only times

00:08:45 that we actually managed to do a 1 million round

00:08:49 within the network.

00:08:50 We've never seen it, you know, so that's not the...

00:08:53 And in terms of the kind of companies you were doing,

00:08:55 you were doing all, everything, the entire universe.

00:08:58 You know, we did a defense tech, space tech, agri-tech,

00:09:03 and we don't just do tech, you know,

00:09:06 we also think that at the engine level,

00:09:10 I think it is not just right to say

00:09:11 you're going to unicorn hunt.

00:09:13 Because if you ask me, I think anybody who stands there

00:09:17 and says, "Listen, I know which one is going

00:09:18 to become a unicorn," I'm a little skeptical, okay?

00:09:22 I think it is about going and investing

00:09:25 in interesting, promising startups

00:09:29 and keep working with them, and you will find

00:09:32 some of them will become unicorns.

00:09:33 It's the opposite way that you do it.

00:09:35 So we had a lot of consumer, a lot of non-tech, et cetera,

00:09:40 companies that came up.

00:09:41 Now what happens?

00:09:42 So now, so last year we did about 35 companies investment.

00:09:46 Now there was this big challenge that we started facing

00:09:49 and by say June or so saying,

00:09:51 "Oh, we've done these investments,

00:09:53 but what about the next level, the exits?"

00:09:56 You know, because for the investor, it's the full cycle.

00:09:59 It's not just the investment.

00:10:00 They need to see the exits and the next round happening.

00:10:03 And we were worried saying, "Oh, is this going to happen?

00:10:05 Or is the VC becoming a little worried?"

00:10:07 Because you know, you know this better than me

00:10:09 because you're so much more in the market.

00:10:11 Is that in the beginning of the pandemic,

00:10:13 a lot of VC started saying,

00:10:14 "Listen, we are not going to invest outside.

00:10:17 We are going to double down onto our own portfolio."

00:10:19 You know, you must have heard that over and over again.

00:10:22 That also started easing off.

00:10:24 And you started seeing a lot more investments.

00:10:28 So just to give you a sense of our data,

00:10:31 we invested in 35 companies last year

00:10:33 and we saw 36 of our portfolio companies

00:10:37 get exits or next round.

00:10:39 So imagine the full circle is happening.

00:10:42 And this year, we have again started with the pandemic.

00:10:47 So I think there is this, like, you know,

00:10:48 like Nenad mentioned,

00:10:50 this is the best time that founders can go out,

00:10:54 look for money,

00:10:55 because now there is this irreversible interest

00:11:00 in investors, both at the retail end and the family office,

00:11:04 who start saying, "Can I put up to 5%

00:11:06 of my investable portfolio into this asset class?"

00:11:11 So we are at the cusp of something huge, I would say.

00:11:16 - Sure, sure.

00:11:17 Of course it is,

00:11:18 because overall investment in equity in India itself

00:11:21 is such abysmal levels.

00:11:23 And out of that venture is like an even smaller part.

00:11:26 So obviously, when the equity as an asset class grows,

00:11:31 I'm sure more and more people will get educated

00:11:35 and that will start to have a trickle down effect

00:11:38 on venture investing as well.

00:11:39 So Neha, tell us the macro picture,

00:11:42 because you track data not only in India,

00:11:45 but also globally,

00:11:47 and how much enthusiasm is reflected in the data.

00:11:51 And are there any insights in terms of where maximum

00:11:56 seed stage companies are coming up?

00:11:59 Are people relying more on external funding?

00:12:04 Are they bootstrapping?

00:12:05 What is the change that has really happened

00:12:07 over the last one year?

00:12:09 - Yeah, sure.

00:12:10 So actually, if you look at in the last few years,

00:12:13 and I had actually entered BC more than 10 years back,

00:12:18 starting with Sequoia,

00:12:20 I used to attend Mumbai Angels events,

00:12:23 which were a pretty active way

00:12:25 of sort of meeting the people in the network.

00:12:28 So even from there, like in the last 10 years,

00:12:32 there has been like probably multiple X increase

00:12:35 in the activity that has happened,

00:12:37 both in terms of the number of startups,

00:12:40 the quality of startups and the funding, right?

00:12:43 Everything.

00:12:45 So for instance, like 2010 and all,

00:12:48 when Flipkart was raising the first round,

00:12:51 VCs could actually take like four, five months

00:12:55 to close around.

00:12:56 And right now it happens in two days.

00:12:59 Like you get a term sheet and VCs are working

00:13:01 over the weekend and responding to startups

00:13:03 because there is so much more competition

00:13:05 in the whole investment ecosystem as well.

00:13:08 So I think that whole activity has become much more,

00:13:11 multi-fold, much more mainstream.

00:13:14 Like earlier, Flipkart used to be a product,

00:13:18 which only the people who want to order books would have,

00:13:22 like 10 years back.

00:13:23 And right now, even our parents know Swiggy, Zomato,

00:13:26 they would have used it.

00:13:27 So it has become much more mainstream.

00:13:29 It has become much more larger as an industry.

00:13:32 So I think that has completely changed.

00:13:33 And that is why you see, so that's one thing.

00:13:36 The second thing I feel what has happened

00:13:38 in the last couple of years is that the quality

00:13:40 of companies has become really good

00:13:43 because of obviously the experience pool,

00:13:45 you have much more experience pool of VPs to hire from,

00:13:49 and also you are able to also scale companies.

00:13:52 So the whole quality of companies,

00:13:54 that has become multiple X.

00:13:57 And just coming to India, what has happened,

00:14:00 as Anand was also mentioning, for instance,

00:14:02 like 2020 had, in the whole year,

00:14:07 about 12 companies that had become a unicorn.

00:14:10 And right now, only in the first four months,

00:14:12 there were 10 companies and there are many more companies.

00:14:15 So the third thing I would say is probably,

00:14:17 the scale of the companies has become much more larger.

00:14:20 And sorry, like 2021 is like the first year

00:14:23 wherein you also see a lot more companies going IPO,

00:14:25 like Zomato has filed for DRHP,

00:14:28 there is CarTrade, there is Policy Bazaar.

00:14:30 So this is the first time companies have also scaled

00:14:33 to a level that they're thinking about IPO,

00:14:35 which is of, I think Zomato's is probably

00:14:37 more than $5 billion.

00:14:39 So it has become like a very sizable,

00:14:41 the companies have become very sizable.

00:14:44 So I think there's a whole,

00:14:45 I think in the last decade, India has,

00:14:49 right now it's like the third largest geography

00:14:51 in terms of the funding globally,

00:14:53 in terms of also the number of sizable companies,

00:14:56 unicorns globally, right?

00:14:58 And only behind US and China

00:15:00 and ahead of a lot of the European countries.

00:15:02 Right, so I think there is a lot,

00:15:04 it's at a very interesting juncture

00:15:07 and I'm actually fairly personally excited about it.

00:15:09 I feel that India will create like,

00:15:11 many more companies going forward.

00:15:14 And--

00:15:15 - Just to interrupt, can you tell me,

00:15:17 at the seed stage level, in the last one year,

00:15:20 how many startups have you seen that has like,

00:15:23 that are newly born?

00:15:25 And out of that,

00:15:27 how much is really,

00:15:30 how many of them are really looking for outside funding

00:15:33 and how many have been bootstrapped?

00:15:35 And is there any change, if you look at historic data

00:15:37 in terms of how this universe is shaping up?

00:15:40 - Yeah, so I'll just talk about, for instance,

00:15:43 the angel and the seed rounds,

00:15:45 this is pre-series A ones.

00:15:47 So for instance, there are more than,

00:15:50 I'll just pull out,

00:15:51 I think there are more than a thousand rounds across,

00:15:56 on an analyzed basis, across angels and seed

00:15:59 that are happening.

00:16:01 And that has obviously increased a lot, right?

00:16:03 The average ticket size of the companies,

00:16:06 the seed rounds have increased over that time

00:16:09 because right now you have many more seed funds,

00:16:11 there are funds which are participating in seed funds,

00:16:13 there are larger funds which are also

00:16:15 coming into this stage.

00:16:17 So coming to the early stage as well,

00:16:21 both the amount of activity

00:16:23 as well as the round size have increased,

00:16:25 if you look at in just the last five years.

00:16:27 - Sure.

00:16:29 Nidha, in your own experience,

00:16:31 in the last one year,

00:16:33 how has deal flow really changed?

00:16:36 And is there a perceptible change

00:16:39 in the quality of companies that you've seen

00:16:42 coming up for funding in the last one year

00:16:44 compared to the previous years?

00:16:48 - So one of the trends we are seeing is that,

00:16:51 more and more younger folks are sending us deals.

00:16:55 Now we are getting third year graduate students saying,

00:16:59 "No, no, we want to do it."

00:17:00 So today we have a co-founder who's 18 years old,

00:17:04 just turned 18.

00:17:05 So that is moving really down the ladder.

00:17:08 Earlier, it was more people who have

00:17:10 probably been a graduate and then

00:17:13 worked for a couple of years,

00:17:14 got some domain expertise of e-farmers or something,

00:17:17 then they have FinTech,

00:17:18 and then they think, "Okay, let's do a startup."

00:17:20 These are fresh guys you're seeing.

00:17:22 Suddenly, that's a big trend I'm seeing.

00:17:26 Absolutely raw, they're willing to take the risk,

00:17:29 come to us for mentorship.

00:17:30 So that's a huge trend.

00:17:31 Again, I had mentioned earlier,

00:17:33 a lot of things are moving to tier two, tier three.

00:17:36 Also, we are seeing a lot of women,

00:17:39 either sole founders or co-founders coming.

00:17:41 That's also a good trend.

00:17:43 And I think people are willing to take the leap

00:17:47 on very new stuff which they haven't even experienced.

00:17:50 For example, agri-tech.

00:17:52 Most of the down-city guys may or may not have experienced it,

00:17:55 but they are willing to go down,

00:17:57 stay in these smaller places, experience it,

00:18:01 and have a startup solving problems.

00:18:03 They are realizing that for every problem in India,

00:18:07 there's a solution.

00:18:08 So they are just looking out for--

00:18:10 - That's the thing about this.

00:18:11 And if there are no problems,

00:18:12 they'll create problems and solve them.

00:18:14 That's the beauty of the venture industry.

00:18:16 But go on.

00:18:18 - Yeah, so there is,

00:18:20 for a problem with the mull over the problem,

00:18:22 these guys think of a problem and say,

00:18:24 there has to be a solution.

00:18:25 And they just look out of the window,

00:18:27 they find so many problems.

00:18:29 So that's the beauty of it.

00:18:30 So broadly speaking, yes,

00:18:33 the trend is irreversible as Nandini mentioned,

00:18:36 but more importantly, tier two, tier three is coming up.

00:18:39 New areas are coming up.

00:18:41 You know, Ma, before the lockdown happened,

00:18:44 I used to go to a lot of colleges

00:18:46 while I was active in CII.

00:18:47 And over the last eight years,

00:18:50 I've been to so many colleges across tier two, tier three.

00:18:54 And my last experience is,

00:18:57 you know, eight years back,

00:18:58 if I'd asked in a college,

00:19:00 how many of you want to become startup founders?

00:19:02 You know, barely 20, 30% used to do that.

00:19:04 My last experience, 2019,

00:19:06 late when I'd gone to college in Kuala Lumpur,

00:19:08 80% raised their hands, 80%, girls and boys.

00:19:12 And balance 20% asked, what are you planning to do?

00:19:14 They said, no, we'll work in a large company

00:19:16 and then join a startup.

00:19:18 For a couple of years, you want to, you know,

00:19:20 just have some financial comfort.

00:19:22 So we now have a generation, right or wrong,

00:19:24 and I think it is right,

00:19:26 where most kids have aspiration to join a startup.

00:19:30 Now we have to create an ecosystem in our own way.

00:19:32 You know, Nandini and we are creating an ecosystem

00:19:34 to fund them.

00:19:36 This is irreversible,

00:19:38 and that's why the deal flow is immense.

00:19:40 There's no shortage of people.

00:19:42 - So let me ask you this question, Nandini.

00:19:45 You started off with Benetton, Coleman,

00:19:47 went to JP Morgan,

00:19:49 and, you know, had a long career

00:19:52 in the finance industry, investment banking,

00:19:53 and then you went and did the startup.

00:19:56 Are you already feeling like you're last generation?

00:20:01 (Nandini laughs)

00:20:03 - I think we all feel we're last generation

00:20:05 to people who are even five years younger than me, you know?

00:20:08 - Okay, but that's not the question.

00:20:09 That's just a fun thing.

00:20:11 Does this worry you, this whole thing?

00:20:13 And I ask this question with some healthy skepticism

00:20:17 because it's one thing to say,

00:20:19 of course, you have a OU or a ULA person

00:20:22 who's been a unicorn at such, you know,

00:20:24 under 30 and you're challenging Bajaj Auto or whatever.

00:20:28 So it's huge aspirational,

00:20:30 and everybody wants to be the next big guy

00:20:34 or the next richest guy

00:20:35 or the next star startup, et cetera.

00:20:40 One noticeable trend over the last one year,

00:20:44 that is this, I mean, it's not a very,

00:20:46 I mean, I don't know

00:20:47 whether you'll appreciate this analogy.

00:20:49 I read in one of the papers

00:20:52 that the pet owners in the last one year

00:20:55 have really leapfrogged.

00:20:56 Like, you know, there's so many people

00:20:58 who have bought dogs at home in the last one year

00:21:00 because this is what the lockdown is doing to you.

00:21:02 All the things that you ever wanted to do,

00:21:04 you feel this is the time to do

00:21:05 because one, there is no day discipline

00:21:09 in terms of, you know,

00:21:10 whether it is school or college,

00:21:11 of course, you always had more freedom,

00:21:14 but even at work, you know,

00:21:15 when you're working from home,

00:21:17 that kind of discipline that we are used to

00:21:20 is no longer there when you do from home.

00:21:22 There is a little bit of leniency out there.

00:21:24 So that motivates you to do things

00:21:26 beyond what you would have thought about

00:21:30 in your normal days.

00:21:33 So is that creating some kind of

00:21:37 unsustainable wish fulfillment

00:21:42 kind of thing that is happening,

00:21:44 which is likely to have its own

00:21:46 unintended consequences?

00:21:49 Okay, so I think I'm going to answer this in two parts.

00:21:53 The first one, you know,

00:21:54 so I'm a dog lover and I have a pet dog.

00:21:57 I actually think that it's a worrying trend

00:22:02 that, you know, I think people don't understand

00:22:04 what actually bringing, you know, a pet home means.

00:22:08 Because my answer is that, you know,

00:22:10 the pet doesn't adjust to you.

00:22:12 You adjust to the pet.

00:22:13 You know, that's one thing.

00:22:14 And anybody who's bringing a dog home

00:22:17 thinking it's a toy and et cetera,

00:22:20 they are up for a huge surprise and challenge.

00:22:22 And I think it will have a tough consequence.

00:22:26 If you just take that same thing into the startup,

00:22:31 you know, analogy,

00:22:32 we are actually seeing at our end,

00:22:36 a shift in the amount of weightage

00:22:40 we would put to younger founders

00:22:43 to the same point that you are making.

00:22:45 And I, for one, I'm quite happy

00:22:49 with the change that is happening.

00:22:51 So what I mean by that is that,

00:22:52 you know, when I started out as an angel investor in 2010,

00:22:56 if you just came and you said, I'm from IIT,

00:22:58 I am, and I am below 30, cut, you know,

00:23:02 your valuation went three times.

00:23:04 And people were cut,

00:23:05 like actually standing in queues to cut a check for you.

00:23:08 Like it was like, you know,

00:23:09 like a sure shot pill for you to become a unicorn.

00:23:14 I think in our own portfolio,

00:23:16 we have seen that it doesn't pan out.

00:23:20 Okay, so like, just to give a sense,

00:23:21 we have 170 portfolio over the last 14 years.

00:23:24 So we have enough data to see what works, what doesn't work.

00:23:27 And what I can tell you is that a younger founder

00:23:30 is not one of the key requirements

00:23:32 for you to make it a successful thing.

00:23:34 What is required is more and more,

00:23:39 we're actually seeing investors back,

00:23:42 people who are from the domain,

00:23:44 who understand, you know, what they are getting into.

00:23:48 So if it's a simpler business, you might just say,

00:23:51 okay, it's fine, let people hack and figure out stuff.

00:23:53 The minute you're looking at more complex stuff,

00:23:56 you need people who are either from the domain

00:23:59 or who have seen what it takes to build a startup.

00:24:04 So what I mean by that is that you see a very healthy trend

00:24:09 of saying, you know, flip card,

00:24:11 the next level employees or the first team

00:24:14 is now coming out and doing their own startup.

00:24:17 So people want to back those guys.

00:24:19 Or people, you know, I also see a very nice trend

00:24:22 of say, second generation of a larger business.

00:24:25 So they'll come out and say, listen,

00:24:26 I don't want to do the main business,

00:24:28 but I want to do a side of this business.

00:24:31 Those businesses have a higher probability

00:24:34 of actually making it through,

00:24:36 rather than, you know, this trend of younger

00:24:39 and younger founders.

00:24:41 So I for one, I'm on the same page as you are.

00:24:45 Let's see, the good thing is that there is now,

00:24:48 like Meenak mentioned, there's this huge excitement

00:24:51 around entrepreneurship, startups, et cetera.

00:24:54 I think a healthier way to do this

00:24:56 is for anybody who wants to get an exposure into it

00:24:59 is join startups.

00:25:01 Because I'm telling you the uncertainty,

00:25:03 unstructured, like say, you know, when we hire people,

00:25:06 one of our key requirements is to say ability to operate

00:25:10 in an unstructured, fast moving environment.

00:25:13 You could be doing anything else,

00:25:15 but if that doesn't take for me,

00:25:17 we are not going to get you on board.

00:25:19 So if you want to become an entrepreneur,

00:25:21 get inside, you know, a startup,

00:25:24 work for two years, three years,

00:25:26 and then figure out, do I have it into me?

00:25:28 That is the point, yeah.

00:25:31 That is the patience level

00:25:36 that the new generation doesn't have.

00:25:38 Yeah.

00:25:39 (laughs)

00:25:39 So, Ninad, in the pitch days that I have attended,

00:25:44 you've also, I saw that a lot of companies that pitched

00:25:47 were also not just digital.

00:25:49 So it's not like the IITIM who come

00:25:51 and say, I can write a code and I can solve this problem,

00:25:55 but a lot more people who can launch a desert.

00:25:57 And I remember some of those companies

00:25:59 into financial advisory and stuff like that.

00:26:03 So what is the nature of non-digital startups?

00:26:08 And what kind of founders are you finding there?

00:26:16 Are they more credible?

00:26:18 And in this environment, how are they faring?

00:26:21 Sure, so, you know, I think we get a lot of pitch decks

00:26:26 and, you know, some of them typically,

00:26:29 as Nandini mentioned, are IIT tech guys, young guys.

00:26:32 So it is neither an advantage nor a disadvantage,

00:26:36 we take it.

00:26:37 So it's, we evaluate everything independent

00:26:40 of the age and profile, all this helps.

00:26:44 But the idea has to be something,

00:26:46 you know, in our mind, we find startups,

00:26:48 which you think are potential moonshot ideas.

00:26:51 I always tell people, we look at what can go right,

00:26:53 we never think of what can go wrong.

00:26:55 In an early stage business,

00:26:57 if you keep up thinking of what can go wrong,

00:26:59 we'll never find anything at all.

00:27:00 Can this go right?

00:27:01 If it goes right, can that be a moonshot idea?

00:27:04 That's the only thing we look at.

00:27:06 And in this process, yes, you know,

00:27:08 if you have a little bit of experience, it does help,

00:27:11 because, you know, then you're part of the domain knowledge

00:27:15 and that can ensure that it makes it successful.

00:27:18 But see, the digital SaaS businesses

00:27:21 have taken off from India, you know,

00:27:23 and there are a lot of success stories.

00:27:25 By its very nature, it can scale up rapidly, you know,

00:27:29 so all those can happen if you're on the right story.

00:27:32 Non-digital also, there are a lot of possibilities.

00:27:35 You know, we have funded a company

00:27:36 which makes Kerala banana chips, you know,

00:27:40 for example, chocolate stuff.

00:27:42 So there is a massive consumer story which is there.

00:27:47 Consumer behavior has changed.

00:27:49 Consumption at home has increased.

00:27:51 Consumption overall has increased, you know, good or bad.

00:27:55 And all this is something,

00:27:56 there is a massive story going on there.

00:27:58 And founders are realizing it.

00:28:01 Thereafter, we fund them.

00:28:02 It's a longer story, you know,

00:28:05 these SaaS companies get very high-octane visibility

00:28:09 because they, you know, if they do well,

00:28:10 they do well very fast.

00:28:12 This is a longer journey, but it's a sustainable journey.

00:28:14 It can make, it can become a unicorn if one sticks to it.

00:28:17 So on the non-digital,

00:28:19 I still think there's a massive opportunity there.

00:28:22 And there are people willing to fund.

00:28:24 We also fund.

00:28:25 We are seeing people.

00:28:27 I have mentioned Agritech earlier, but, you know,

00:28:29 again, young founders are willing to go down that track.

00:28:33 And non-consumer, new products you're seeing,

00:28:35 absolutely something which you're not thought,

00:28:38 you know, where did I think earlier

00:28:39 that a Kerala banana chip would come in a, you know,

00:28:42 hygiene packet, but we funded it.

00:28:45 And let's see how it does.

00:28:46 We are excited about it.

00:28:47 So yes, there's a massive story for non-digital,

00:28:51 which does not get the same amount

00:28:52 of probably high-octane visibility because it takes time.

00:28:56 It's a little bit of journey of perseverance,

00:28:59 but the rewards are fantastic.

00:29:01 You know, on a long-term,

00:29:02 if you get a good market share

00:29:04 of a very specialized product, probably not a, you know,

00:29:08 large basket, it can be very rewarding.

00:29:10 And there are people funding it.

00:29:12 We fund it, you know, after that,

00:29:14 Nandini and team will also fund it.

00:29:16 - Absolutely.

00:29:17 - It's beautiful.

00:29:18 And I think this is very, very relevant one insight

00:29:20 from what you said, Ninaj, for me,

00:29:22 the greatest insight is when the difference

00:29:24 between how you look at public markets and venture funding

00:29:27 is that you only look at the positive aspects.

00:29:29 You know, what can this become as the primary driver,

00:29:32 as opposed to what is the downside?

00:29:34 Because as a public market investor,

00:29:35 that's exactly what you want to avoid.

00:29:37 You say, you know, what is my potential capital loss?

00:29:41 And then you decide, no, this is a no go.

00:29:44 So you want to protect your capital,

00:29:45 but here you have to be more optimistic

00:29:49 and passionate about that.

00:29:50 Nandini, so tell us, what do you look for

00:29:54 when you, you know, put out a research on a company

00:29:57 or put out a company to solicit investments?

00:30:01 Take us through that checklist, if I may call it so.

00:30:07 In terms of what do you look for

00:30:09 and how do you, in some sense,

00:30:11 reduce the risk of investing in startups?

00:30:15 - Good question, Maa.

00:30:16 One more secret.

00:30:18 Get out all the secrets of a success.

00:30:20 (both laughing)

00:30:23 I was waiting for you to ask her that.

00:30:25 (both laughing)

00:30:27 - So you know, this question actually

00:30:30 has a very long-winded answer,

00:30:32 but I'll try and just, you know,

00:30:36 maybe synthesize it into what we have seen over the past.

00:30:39 So, you know, actually I think for us to identify,

00:30:42 say, is this a good company?

00:30:44 So just to give you a sense of the kind of data

00:30:46 that we look at, we look at about 800 to 1000 startups

00:30:50 a month.

00:30:51 And from there, we actually get it down to about, say,

00:30:55 12 to 16 startups that we showcase to our investors.

00:31:00 So that's the kind of funneling that you're doing.

00:31:02 So 1% to 2% of what is going on.

00:31:05 And if you actually ask me to put down a list,

00:31:08 laundry list of the kind of parameters that I'm looking at,

00:31:12 it would go easily above 100, easily.

00:31:15 It would actually go more than that, you know?

00:31:18 And what we have actually started now doing

00:31:20 is trying to take away the human intervention

00:31:23 to some part on it, because there are,

00:31:27 see, now you have it, we have enough data

00:31:29 on not just some company that comes in

00:31:31 and we say, "Oh, is this looking exciting?"

00:31:33 But we also have data of about 60 of our portfolios

00:31:36 that have got exits and next round investors.

00:31:38 So we are being able to combine these two

00:31:41 and say, based on these two bits of analysis,

00:31:45 what looks exciting versus what has worked.

00:31:48 And then we try and say, "Okay, is this a company

00:31:50 that we should put out into the member domain?"

00:31:54 Now, of course, there will be these usual suspects,

00:31:57 and I'm sure you've been on so many of these questions

00:32:00 and panels and stuff like saying,

00:32:02 founder and the size of the opportunity.

00:32:05 I'm not going to go to those which are very, very regular.

00:32:10 I'm just going to maybe talk about a couple

00:32:12 that might not have been that fully discussed.

00:32:16 - So before that, can you tell me

00:32:20 some criteria for elimination?

00:32:21 Because the conviction level on elimination

00:32:25 can be very, very high.

00:32:26 - That's correct.

00:32:27 - So you know what you have to avoid,

00:32:29 and then the harder part is, of course,

00:32:31 how do you pick the best ones?

00:32:37 But the avoiding part is simpler

00:32:39 and it can be very concrete.

00:32:40 So, I think you can do that.

00:32:42 - Yeah, absolutely.

00:32:44 I think number one for me is if the founder

00:32:48 is not fully invested in building the company.

00:32:50 It doesn't matter how good an idea is

00:32:54 or what is happening.

00:32:56 But if a founder comes to us and says,

00:32:58 "A, I run five other businesses and this is one of them."

00:33:01 Or, "B, I'm working actually,

00:33:04 and this is something I'm doing on the side."

00:33:06 Or, "I have not yet fully decided to be full-time on it."

00:33:10 Run away.

00:33:13 Because I think it is important for the founder

00:33:17 to be fully invested in this.

00:33:19 So see, for the investor,

00:33:21 I'm going to look at diversifying my portfolio.

00:33:23 But I can't have the founder diversifying his or her risk.

00:33:27 So that's number one that is there.

00:33:29 The second one is actually something

00:33:31 that we are seeing over and over again.

00:33:34 It becomes a huge challenge.

00:33:35 Our litigation risks.

00:33:38 So for example, if you have companies that are already,

00:33:42 it's an early stage company,

00:33:44 there are already fights happening

00:33:46 between the founder and the earlier investor,

00:33:49 or there are some litigation, some legal suits, et cetera.

00:33:52 We want to stay away from such companies.

00:33:56 And I think those must be the similar elimination criteria.

00:34:00 A similar thing, or one needs to really look at,

00:34:05 is actually what is the cap table structure?

00:34:07 So I want to spend like a 30 second on it.

00:34:11 Is that, look, we hope that any company that we fund

00:34:16 goes through several rounds of funding,

00:34:18 and it should become a unicorn.

00:34:21 I'm not saying all will, I will not,

00:34:23 but if nothing else, every company's valuation

00:34:26 from where we fund, and a good company,

00:34:29 at least the valuation will go up

00:34:31 at least five to six times minimum.

00:34:33 The founder or the founding team

00:34:37 has to have enough equity on the cap table for themselves.

00:34:41 That in subsequent rounds,

00:34:45 they keep holding enough of the equity

00:34:48 to be interested in the company.

00:34:50 Otherwise what that will do is that

00:34:52 the company might do really well,

00:34:54 but the founder has such low equity in it

00:34:55 that after some time they say, "Listen, why should I work?"

00:34:58 So it's silly, right?

00:34:59 So what is that kind of number that you're looking at?

00:35:02 The sweet spot, so like, see, I think at Ninad's level,

00:35:05 it will be even more because they are coming in much, much.

00:35:08 So if, you know, but at our level,

00:35:10 you will need to have the founding team anywhere above 50%.

00:35:15 - Above 50%?

00:35:16 - Above 50, even more, even more than that.

00:35:19 Because see, imagine if you don't do that

00:35:21 and we come in, then after some time,

00:35:23 another layer happens, another layer,

00:35:24 after two layers, assuming the founder's equity

00:35:28 has gone down to 10%,

00:35:30 what is their, you know, to actually, to build it?

00:35:35 Because see, who's the dreamer?

00:35:37 The dreamer is the founder there.

00:35:38 Who are you backing?

00:35:39 So those are the couple of things

00:35:41 that we will absolutely see.

00:35:45 Then, you know, then there are these other things

00:35:47 that start coming on saying,

00:35:49 is it a large enough opportunity?

00:35:50 Are there enough funded peers in the market?

00:35:55 So what happens is that sometimes

00:35:56 it might be a really large opportunity,

00:35:58 but there are already so many guys there

00:36:00 that, you know, the fifth guy will only remain that much.

00:36:03 So then the other big question that we always ask people,

00:36:08 and we've seen that, is that, you know,

00:36:11 between the co-founders,

00:36:12 so if there's two people or three people,

00:36:14 do they have complementary skills?

00:36:17 And between them,

00:36:19 are they being able to cover all bases?

00:36:22 So like one of the key things that we look at

00:36:24 is to say, okay, if there are two people

00:36:25 and it's actually a retail business,

00:36:28 and we'll ask the question,

00:36:28 saying, "Acha, who's responsible for sales?"

00:36:32 And it happens a lot more in tech companies

00:36:34 where, you know, founders are looking at each other.

00:36:37 They're like, "Listen, I am strategy."

00:36:38 He's like, "I am development."

00:36:39 They're like, "Okay, but who's going to go out there

00:36:42 and sell the product?"

00:36:43 If the answer is not there,

00:36:45 you actually start saying, "Okay."

00:36:46 You know, you take a step back saying,

00:36:48 is this interesting enough?

00:36:49 So at times, we have actually walked in

00:36:51 and we have said one of the key requirements

00:36:54 for us to actually put the money in

00:36:56 is that you get in a co-founder.

00:36:58 So we actually walk in, we see that happen, you know,

00:37:00 and it happens a lot more in, say, consumer companies

00:37:03 where there is a huge sales push.

00:37:06 So a couple of these, I think,

00:37:08 apart from, you know, the regular ones

00:37:10 that you talked about,

00:37:11 yeah, founding team, et cetera,

00:37:13 and more and more so,

00:37:15 we have started, you know,

00:37:16 looking at this as an algorithm-based approach

00:37:19 for us where we have started integrating our exit data.

00:37:23 You say, "Okay, what has worked?

00:37:25 What has given a thing?"

00:37:27 One more thing that I have seen

00:37:30 has worked for our successful companies, okay,

00:37:34 is the realization of the founder

00:37:38 that when you are bringing an investor on board,

00:37:41 that person has a voice on the table.

00:37:43 So any investor, any founder who walks in

00:37:47 and who says, "Oh, there is free money,"

00:37:48 because, you know,

00:37:49 this is what I call the Shah Rukh Khan effect, actually,

00:37:52 where, and I think, you know,

00:37:53 these mainstream media

00:37:55 actually just talks about these successes, you know?

00:37:58 So there are these who are saying,

00:37:59 "Oh, this company got funded by this man,

00:38:01 this got funded by this man."

00:38:03 What they don't realize is the responsibility

00:38:05 that comes from taking money from an external investor.

00:38:09 And one of the key things that is there

00:38:11 is do you know how to manage your investor?

00:38:14 Do you understand the responsibility that you're taking

00:38:17 of bringing somebody on board with, say, 30% equity?

00:38:21 That person needs the answer.

00:38:22 So you can't start saying,

00:38:23 so, you know, we have this situation

00:38:25 where a lot of founders will say,

00:38:26 "Oh, but this is so much of responsibility.

00:38:28 Oh, but you are asking so many questions,

00:38:30 or you are asking so much reporting."

00:38:33 They're like, "Listen, you chose, right?

00:38:35 You walked in to take the money."

00:38:37 So that's a big one.

00:38:38 We have seen, that's the big difference we see

00:38:41 between a successful company and not,

00:38:43 is are you being able to manage your investor

00:38:45 and maximize the kind of doors that they can open for you?

00:38:50 It's a skill, you know?

00:38:52 It's a skill on which founder can,

00:38:54 the same investor, two founders,

00:38:57 one will get more doors open than the other one

00:38:59 who will just keep saying,

00:39:00 "Oh, no, he's asking too many questions."

00:39:02 I'm sure Ninad can add a lot more to it, but like-

00:39:05 - I'm going to come to that,

00:39:07 just in order not to lose the thread,

00:39:09 you made this point on capital structure,

00:39:11 which I'm very keen to understand.

00:39:13 You said the promoter should have

00:39:15 more than 50%- - At our own scale, yes.

00:39:18 - Company, at least,

00:39:20 so that they have adequate skin in the game,

00:39:22 so the interests are aligned.

00:39:25 Now, does this not lead you down a path,

00:39:29 especially when, you know,

00:39:30 if the founder himself is not well-funded,

00:39:35 is unable to put in money,

00:39:40 does it not drive up valuation

00:39:41 in order to ensure that your capital structure is maintained?

00:39:45 - It's a- - On the investor.

00:39:46 So how do you deal with it,

00:39:47 especially if the underlying business is really promising,

00:39:51 you don't want to lose out on the opportunity,

00:39:53 at the same time, you have a constraint

00:39:54 that the founder may have,

00:39:56 and, you know, it might just,

00:39:59 if you just still want to go ahead,

00:40:00 your valuation will get pushed up.

00:40:02 - Yeah, so very good question.

00:40:05 I think there are two ways to handle it.

00:40:08 One is to keep asking the founder

00:40:10 if they actually need so much money.

00:40:13 So a lot of times what I see is, you know,

00:40:15 founders are coming up and they're asking for money,

00:40:20 which will maybe fund them for five years.

00:40:23 And then, you know, then say,

00:40:24 "Okay, now I need so much money,

00:40:25 back calculation, I need 50%, so this is the valuation."

00:40:30 The next, the better way to do this is to say,

00:40:32 "Okay, you are at the seed stage.

00:40:35 How much money do you need over the next 18 months?"

00:40:38 And now, you see, earlier it was still 18 to 24 months.

00:40:42 Now I see even that runway compressing more, you know?

00:40:46 So you're saying, "Okay, how much money do you need

00:40:48 to run for the next nine months to a 12-month period?"

00:40:52 Now look at the valuation.

00:40:54 So the minute the ask goes down,

00:40:56 the valuation will be, you know, it can come down

00:41:00 and the cap structure still remains intact.

00:41:03 So that's one of the best ways of doing it.

00:41:05 The second way, of course-

00:41:08 - So to clarify, the valuation is more driven

00:41:12 by the need of the business at that point in time

00:41:15 than the expectation of the founder?

00:41:18 Because that can be a very difficult conversation

00:41:20 because the business may need something,

00:41:22 but the founder has his aspiration in terms of,

00:41:25 you know, what is the return he's making, isn't it?

00:41:28 - No, so see, what I'm saying is that

00:41:30 you basically divide your fundraising activity

00:41:34 from say, saying one inflow of money

00:41:39 and I don't need money for the next five years, okay?

00:41:42 Versus saying no fundraising is an ongoing activity

00:41:45 for me over five years,

00:41:47 and I might take money in five rounds

00:41:49 and from five different investors.

00:41:51 So what that does is say, like say, for example,

00:41:54 if you will come and get funding,

00:41:56 if you become an MA portfolio company,

00:42:00 your valuation automatically doubles for the next guy.

00:42:04 See, like for me, if Ninad has funded a company,

00:42:07 I'm saying, listen, these guys have already looked at it,

00:42:10 so I don't need to start from scratch.

00:42:12 So in my view, two companies come,

00:42:15 same business, everything, everything,

00:42:16 but one comes from Ninad and one doesn't,

00:42:19 the valuation of the one that's come from Ninad

00:42:21 is much higher, correct?

00:42:23 - Right.

00:42:24 - Same thing that happens with say,

00:42:25 something gets funded from, so just think about it,

00:42:28 if there was a company looking for $2 million

00:42:31 and it hadn't got funded before,

00:42:33 and there is this company that needs $2 million

00:42:35 and it has already got funded by Ninad and by IMEI,

00:42:38 the valuation is much higher

00:42:40 because two levels of investors have already shown interest.

00:42:43 So you have to go, the valuation has to go step by step

00:42:47 rather than a jump,

00:42:50 because I've seen that a lot of companies

00:42:53 fail to raise money

00:42:55 because the founder's expectation of the valuation

00:42:59 is at such a huge contrast

00:43:02 to what the investor is willing to pay.

00:43:04 And the way to handle that is to get the ask down

00:43:08 and the relative valuation down

00:43:10 and then look for money at every,

00:43:12 so I was in fact saying that to somebody

00:43:15 a couple of days back,

00:43:16 you need to get onto the highway first.

00:43:19 If you keep standing on the side and say,

00:43:21 no, no, till I don't get this valuation,

00:43:23 I'm not going to get onto the highway.

00:43:25 You have to get onto the highway

00:43:26 and then raise lesser amounts of money,

00:43:29 you will get to that valuation

00:43:31 without diluting your stake.

00:43:32 I don't know if I answered the question.

00:43:35 - Sure, sure.

00:43:36 - Yeah, and just to add actually across the stages,

00:43:39 there's a little bit of understanding,

00:43:41 like seed you typically dilute 10 to 15%,

00:43:43 then you go for a series A,

00:43:44 you dilute anywhere between 20 to maximum 30%

00:43:48 and then lesser dilutions in the subsequent,

00:43:51 like a series B or a series C.

00:43:53 So that actually dilution percentages

00:43:55 is sort of fairly standard.

00:43:57 What typically happens is that,

00:43:59 if a founder does, for instance,

00:44:01 two seed rounds or a bridge round in between,

00:44:04 then the dilution is a little bit more

00:44:06 than what a typical incoming investor

00:44:09 would want to see in a cap table.

00:44:11 - Yeah, absolutely.

00:44:12 - So Neha, also what is the trend

00:44:14 in terms of bootstrapping and people,

00:44:17 postponing external funding?

00:44:20 So what's the trend in terms of bootstrapping you've seen

00:44:23 and in terms of sentiments of founders,

00:44:26 what have you noticed in your data?

00:44:28 - Right, so there are two ways.

00:44:29 So bootstrapping, you typically see companies.

00:44:33 So one thing is that if you raise a venture funding,

00:44:36 then you have to give an exit to the venture,

00:44:38 to your investors saying, in the next eight to 10 years.

00:44:42 So there's a whole cycle which typically happens.

00:44:44 So there's basically like a fork

00:44:46 that founders have to choose

00:44:47 that you need a venture funded life of a company,

00:44:50 which is fast growth, which is there,

00:44:52 but then it comes with some liabilities

00:44:56 or after a few years, you have to either do an M&A

00:44:59 or an IPO or get them a secondary.

00:45:02 So that is one part.

00:45:03 The other part that some of the founders choose

00:45:05 is that I want to keep growing my company

00:45:08 and in a bootstrap manner.

00:45:10 The first thing is that you can do it

00:45:13 only in a select set of industries.

00:45:14 For instance, it's very difficult to do that

00:45:16 in a consumer industry,

00:45:18 where you have to put a lot of upfront cost

00:45:20 in building the consumer,

00:45:21 like in a company like a Zomato or a Swiggy

00:45:23 or even a Flipkart.

00:45:25 They're very capital intensive businesses.

00:45:27 So it is much lesser likely to do

00:45:29 in a capital intensive business

00:45:30 versus like a B2B business, slightly easier.

00:45:34 Second is that, here you've seen actually

00:45:38 very good bootstrap companies also come in,

00:45:40 like Zoho is an excellent example,

00:45:41 Zerodha is an excellent example,

00:45:43 Browserstack, who are actually my seniors from IIT,

00:45:46 that's an excellent example.

00:45:47 So actually they bootstrapped all the way.

00:45:49 And then the first round that they had

00:45:51 is a late stage sort of around that came in.

00:45:54 So the trend that we see is that

00:45:58 there are some founders who would want to build company

00:46:01 in a bootstrap manner.

00:46:02 It depends a little bit on the sector that you can,

00:46:05 because you'll have to finance,

00:46:06 your business has to start generating cash upfront.

00:46:09 And that's actually a very interesting also path to take.

00:46:14 But more and more I see right now,

00:46:17 because there are so many funding happening

00:46:19 and you can see such mega rounds happening.

00:46:21 There's always this temptation to go towards the funded,

00:46:24 because you can just accelerate

00:46:26 a few years of development that happens.

00:46:29 So I would say it's a very sort of a difficult

00:46:34 to not be lured away with the funding landscape

00:46:37 as a founder when you're starting a company.

00:46:40 - So back to you, Ninad, what is your criteria?

00:46:43 I mean, how do you weed companies out

00:46:45 and what is your selection criteria to back companies?

00:46:49 - Sure, so thanks for asking, Nandini.

00:46:52 You asked a question which I dare not ask her ever.

00:46:54 So I got information indirectly.

00:46:56 But yeah, she's covered a lot of ground.

00:47:01 I won't talk about the normal stuff,

00:47:03 which is market size, great big opportunity,

00:47:05 all of that stuff, which is of course important.

00:47:07 And founders also important.

00:47:09 See, at our stage, there are very early revenues.

00:47:13 You know, there's sometimes pre-revenues, concept stage.

00:47:16 So really speaking, the founder and his or her idea

00:47:20 is the main thing and how we think it can scale rapidly.

00:47:23 That's the only thing we, you know,

00:47:26 that's the most critical thing.

00:47:28 So how do we weed out?

00:47:29 You know, weeding out, so we are all in a 1% business,

00:47:32 you know, 1% of the pitch decks we select to fund

00:47:37 and 1% of all we fund is going to become huge.

00:47:42 So, you know, 1%, 1% business, my mother,

00:47:44 she's no longer there, but she, when I explained to her,

00:47:46 I said, "What are you doing in this 1% business?

00:47:49 Why are you in this business?"

00:47:50 But yes, we are in that 1% business.

00:47:52 And not that the people we have said no to

00:47:55 won't become big, they will.

00:47:57 I mean, some of them will, it's just that we haven't done.

00:48:00 So to weed out, you know,

00:48:02 obviously there are some easy things like,

00:48:05 if you're not a full-time founder,

00:48:08 we don't fund at all, zero.

00:48:10 You know, you have to put a total skin in the game.

00:48:13 If your equity is diluted, we don't fund.

00:48:16 You know, at our stage, we require 100% equity by founder.

00:48:20 It could be a little bit 4%, 5% here or there,

00:48:22 but that is absolutely critical.

00:48:24 If there's a solo founder and we feel that

00:48:26 one founder cannot handle this diverse thing,

00:48:30 we are careful.

00:48:31 We have funded solo founders, not that we have not,

00:48:34 but we are a little bit careful of solo founders

00:48:37 because, you know, it's not easy

00:48:38 because today you require from coding skills

00:48:41 to marketing skills to finance, you know,

00:48:43 it's not easy for one person to handle it.

00:48:46 And we also like companies which are momentum companies.

00:48:49 You know, because we are giving capital

00:48:51 at a very early stage.

00:48:53 Are these companies going to become momentum companies

00:48:56 or will it become all as in the industry we call it?

00:48:59 - What do you mean by momentum companies?

00:49:00 Momentum stocks do I understand, but momentum companies?

00:49:04 - So I will first explain living dead companies.

00:49:07 Living dead companies are companies

00:49:08 which are just about doing okay,

00:49:11 you know, 10% year on year growth.

00:49:14 They're neither raising funds nor are they exiting.

00:49:17 So, you know, it's there, but it's living,

00:49:19 but it's dead for as far as VCs are concerned.

00:49:21 These are no VC likes as companies.

00:49:24 And if you think, you know,

00:49:25 our investment will eventually land up with this guy

00:49:28 leading a living dead company, we do not invest.

00:49:31 Momentum companies are companies which, you know,

00:49:33 will keep scaling rapidly.

00:49:35 The founder has the passion to scale.

00:49:38 The business has the opportunity to scale.

00:49:40 He or she will keep raising money.

00:49:42 And eventually after seven years, we'll get an exit.

00:49:45 See, eventually if you don't think we'll get an exit,

00:49:47 we do not invest.

00:49:48 That's simple as that.

00:49:50 And Neha alluded earlier to the fact

00:49:52 that Zomato and others are doing an IPO.

00:49:54 It's a big, big landmark thing which is happening.

00:49:57 That will show a real opportunity

00:50:00 for a lot of people to exit.

00:50:01 So will the exit happen?

00:50:04 Will this guy give us an exit?

00:50:06 If this person is not going to give us an exit,

00:50:08 he's going to just be happy with the lifestyle business,

00:50:11 living dead business, we do not invest.

00:50:12 So these are some of the factors

00:50:14 to look at the passion of the founder.

00:50:17 Will it scale?

00:50:18 And eventually will we get an exit?

00:50:19 - Sure.

00:50:21 So Nandini, from an investor's perspective,

00:50:25 you've been in investment banking

00:50:26 and you've seen the public markets up close and personal,

00:50:30 and now being on the venture side.

00:50:33 For a public market investor to start thinking,

00:50:37 or anybody who's experienced equity markets,

00:50:40 never done venture before,

00:50:41 but wants to look at this opportunity,

00:50:44 what would you say are the lessons that you need to unlearn?

00:50:49 Like one thing I have learned from Nand is,

00:50:50 don't think about downside, think about upside only.

00:50:54 So now tell me the lessons you have to unlearn

00:50:57 when you want to say that I want to allocate

00:50:59 5, 10% of my capital to this space.

00:51:02 - Yeah, I think the first thing

00:51:05 that you need to forget are Excel sheets.

00:51:07 So we are so geared towards looking at ratio and DCF

00:51:13 and pure comparison and what was funded,

00:51:18 what was not funded.

00:51:20 This doesn't work at this stage.

00:51:23 So we actually see a lot of our investors,

00:51:27 and I went through that same journey,

00:51:29 because I was just so tuned to looking at Excel sheets

00:51:33 and taking all my decisions over there, et cetera.

00:51:36 So that's the first thing.

00:51:37 So what we need to realize is that this asset class

00:51:41 is about betting on a larger number of companies.

00:51:46 So the key thing, so that's number one.

00:51:51 The second is that I don't subscribe to the view

00:51:55 that you need to go out there and do unicorn hunting.

00:51:58 So like I mentioned in the beginning of the thing,

00:52:01 I want to look at a format

00:52:06 of where you're actually looking at it

00:52:08 as a portfolio and asset class.

00:52:09 So what you do is you actually become very, very disciplined

00:52:14 and start saying, I'm going to start investing

00:52:17 in a certain number of companies every year.

00:52:20 So just to go back a little bit,

00:52:22 all of us have heard that calculation

00:52:25 in startup investing, right?

00:52:26 10 companies, three will do really well,

00:52:29 three will die, three will run, et cetera, et cetera.

00:52:32 It works, but it doesn't work at 10.

00:52:35 It starts showing signs of working at a 50 to 60 companies.

00:52:40 Start showing signs of 50 to 60.

00:52:43 So what does it mean?

00:52:44 That even at an individual investor level,

00:52:48 you will have to then basically start saying,

00:52:50 how can I grow my portfolio to say about a hundred companies

00:52:55 in a three years period?

00:52:57 And what you do is that you join platforms

00:53:03 and incubators and asset allocators,

00:53:06 like say NINAD who are at much earlier stage

00:53:09 or say networks like ours,

00:53:11 and you start investing in as many companies

00:53:16 as you can over a period of time.

00:53:18 Because what happens is, like say today,

00:53:20 today we have an active portfolio of about a hundred companies

00:53:25 and at any given point of time,

00:53:27 about 15 to 20% of those companies are in play.

00:53:32 What I mean by plays that they are in conversation

00:53:35 for next round of funding, exits, et cetera.

00:53:37 So of hundred, 20 are in play.

00:53:40 Each investor also has to reach that same place.

00:53:44 And that cannot see.

00:53:47 So how do you do it?

00:53:49 If you are a retail investor or somebody who has say,

00:53:52 a certain amount of money to put in,

00:53:55 you can't do this on your own.

00:53:56 You need to start becoming a part of a larger thing.

00:54:00 Even if you are a family office.

00:54:01 So assuming you are a family office that has say,

00:54:05 I don't know, thousand crores to deploy.

00:54:08 And you say that, okay, my allocation to start up

00:54:11 should be about 50 crores.

00:54:13 The same math that you are doing.

00:54:15 If you want to deploy that 50 crores on your own,

00:54:18 you need to have a team which is as large as what we have

00:54:21 to be able to deploy that money properly.

00:54:24 If not, you will have what is called selection bias.

00:54:26 You will see 10 companies and you will say,

00:54:29 are there seven of them are looking very good.

00:54:30 You don't need to see 10.

00:54:32 You need to see a thousand companies a month.

00:54:35 'Cause like we mentioned, both of us,

00:54:37 it's a 1% to 2% selection.

00:54:40 So it has to be looked at a step back

00:54:43 from trying to look at the same criteria

00:54:47 as a grown company.

00:54:48 You can't.

00:54:49 You can't even evaluate a company at our level

00:54:53 with a series A because the growth changes.

00:54:58 And second is you will have to build a large enough portfolio.

00:55:02 Both things need to be done.

00:55:04 After that, you will get the understanding of how,

00:55:08 then over a period, okay, there is a third part of doing.

00:55:11 You need, and that's an individual investor thing.

00:55:13 And I keep talking about it to all our investors.

00:55:17 Is that you need to double up on the companies

00:55:19 that are doing well.

00:55:21 What I mean by that, and I'm just going to throw out.

00:55:23 So what happens is that when you are invested

00:55:27 in at our level and the next level happens,

00:55:30 there is what is on the table called the pro-rata rate,

00:55:33 which means that assuming at our level,

00:55:35 you own 1% of the company.

00:55:37 When the next level happens,

00:55:40 the founder of the company is bound by the agreement

00:55:45 to allow you the opportunity to retain that 1%.

00:55:49 But you'll have to put money,

00:55:51 much more money to retain that because of valuation

00:55:53 and maybe say gone five times.

00:55:55 We keep telling all our investors that please double up

00:55:59 and put that money there.

00:56:00 Because that is when the returns will come.

00:56:04 You will get the returns which are equal to,

00:56:07 you know what you're putting for your invest.

00:56:09 - Sure.

00:56:10 - Very, very critical thing.

00:56:12 - Sure.

00:56:13 So if anybody thinks of getting into venture investing

00:56:18 at all, what do you suggest should be the bare minimum

00:56:21 purpose that you need to have?

00:56:23 And secondly, what should be your expectation

00:56:26 in terms of timeline?

00:56:28 What's the minimum period for which you need to,

00:56:30 the minimum period you need to give an investment

00:56:33 before you take a buck?

00:56:34 - Yeah.

00:56:35 So see what happened is that SEBI mandated.

00:56:39 So SEBI today, you have this whole angel fund structure.

00:56:43 They're the mandators of saying that you have to deploy

00:56:45 25 lakhs over five years minimum.

00:56:49 So anybody who wants to be an angel investor

00:56:51 in this country today has actually got to meet two criteria.

00:56:56 This is a SEBI mandated.

00:56:57 And I don't agree with the second one so much,

00:56:59 but that's what we're dealing with today.

00:57:01 So one is 25 lakhs over five years,

00:57:04 which means five lakhs every year.

00:57:06 Okay.

00:57:07 And the second one is a two crore net worth

00:57:10 outside of your main residence.

00:57:13 That I think is a little restrictive because then,

00:57:15 you know, you could have 25 lakhs to invest,

00:57:17 but you might not have two crores.

00:57:20 - Right.

00:57:21 - So that's the number that you have to look at.

00:57:24 That's that's number one.

00:57:25 - That is the regulatory part.

00:57:26 But what do you suggest is ideal?

00:57:28 Because the regulator will always set the floor in a sense.

00:57:33 But do you think that's it?

00:57:35 - See, is it enough?

00:57:38 I'm not sure.

00:57:39 Will it work if you have structures where people can,

00:57:44 you know, even diversify the five lakhs

00:57:46 into more companies?

00:57:48 It will work.

00:57:49 So then what will happen is that if you're assuming

00:57:51 you're saying that, listen,

00:57:52 build at least a 30 company portfolio

00:57:55 for say a three year period.

00:57:57 You're talking about say 10 done every year.

00:58:00 So I think that's, so 25 lakh is basic.

00:58:03 I think you can start with that number.

00:58:05 You have to have the patience of minimum three to four years,

00:58:10 four years and above before you will start seeing anything.

00:58:13 Like, you know, I've seen,

00:58:14 and I have made the same mistake myself

00:58:16 when I started out as an investor.

00:58:18 I put money in 10, six of them tanked.

00:58:20 And then I said, oh, you know,

00:58:22 this asset class doesn't work, et cetera, et cetera.

00:58:24 If I had continued doing that,

00:58:27 I would have been a much richer person, you know,

00:58:30 if I look back.

00:58:31 So you have to have the patience,

00:58:34 which is minimum three to four years.

00:58:36 And you have to keep investing.

00:58:39 Don't stop because the first year has not worked

00:58:42 or your first three investments have gone down.

00:58:45 And the other big one, and I keep saying this,

00:58:48 is don't worry about the ones that are going bad.

00:58:52 Don't spend, you know, it's like those foreign movies.

00:58:55 (speaking in foreign language)

00:58:56 You know, don't spend time on saying,

00:58:58 (speaking in foreign language)

00:58:59 That's the nature of the asset class.

00:59:01 - Right.

00:59:02 - You know, so I don't know if I answered that question.

00:59:06 - Sure, sure, sure you did.

00:59:08 So Ninad, from your perspective,

00:59:10 what do you think should be the minimum corpus commitment

00:59:13 and the, you know, the time horizon

00:59:17 that you need to look at?

00:59:18 - So at our stage, we tell people to look at

00:59:21 a minimum five to seven years horizon,

00:59:23 because of course we are coming a stage earlier

00:59:25 than what 90% will change.

00:59:27 The second important thing is, you know,

00:59:29 yes, we do keep getting these comments,

00:59:31 you know, you're on a morning walk nicely at racecourse.

00:59:33 And, "Ninad, you're in a startup,

00:59:36 "I invested in one, I lost all my money."

00:59:38 I said, "You will."

00:59:40 He said, "What are you saying?"

00:59:41 I said, "No, the, so my benchmark is I tell people,

00:59:45 "you have to look at whatever corpus you have,

00:59:47 "look at 20 companies to invest minimum before,

00:59:52 "so that your capital is protected.

00:59:53 "You're not even starting to see returns."

00:59:56 So if you do not have the energy or wherewithal

00:59:59 to invest in 20 startups,

01:00:01 don't do it because this is a portfolio investment.

01:00:03 And you can invest, it is not, you know, you can invest.

01:00:06 - Be prepared for the losses.

01:00:09 - Yeah, so 20 companies, you know,

01:00:11 it's then a exciting, very exciting investment opportunity.

01:00:15 So I give 20 number as a benchmark number,

01:00:18 saying that you will not lose money.

01:00:20 Below that, see, you can hit on a great idea.

01:00:23 You know, you can invest in one startup

01:00:25 and hit on a great idea.

01:00:26 Although, if you're a strategic investor,

01:00:29 so you know, if you are in some particular

01:00:31 manufacturing domain, energy saving, for example,

01:00:34 and if you like a startup, you can add value,

01:00:37 then it's a different matter.

01:00:38 But if you're looking at it as an investment,

01:00:40 it has to be a portfolio investment.

01:00:42 We recommend 20, whatever money you can put in 20,

01:00:45 whether it's two lakhs, five lakhs, 10 lakhs,

01:00:46 20 lakhs, 50 lakhs, look at 20.

01:00:49 That's the rough benchmark we give.

01:00:51 - Sure, and the timeline is five to seven years, you say?

01:00:54 - Because ours is early stage, you know, much earlier.

01:00:56 We are in our very early, but the-

01:00:58 - And you think that people, you know,

01:01:00 reserve capital for like, you know,

01:01:03 to put in the same company a second time and a third time.

01:01:06 Is that like, you know, how do you strategize

01:01:08 that corpus?

01:01:09 - So, you know, Nandini said the right thing,

01:01:12 you should double down, but we don't.

01:01:14 We advise, you know, if you're doing a portfolio investment,

01:01:18 you invest in this, that's it.

01:01:20 But yes, of course, you know,

01:01:22 I generally agree 99% with Nandini,

01:01:26 this is one of the places which possibly

01:01:28 you can have two views, you know.

01:01:30 Yes, if a startup is doing exceedingly well,

01:01:33 you can double down at a higher valuation and take more risk.

01:01:35 But if you're looking at, you know,

01:01:37 keeping on increasing your portfolio,

01:01:39 you have to do that.

01:01:41 So it depends on the investor.

01:01:43 At 100X, we do not do that.

01:01:45 We just, with the first check, that's it.

01:01:48 If the company does well, good, if it doesn't do that.

01:01:51 So we are first check writers.

01:01:52 So it depends on your thought process.

01:01:56 You want to just keep diversifying

01:01:57 and have a large number, do that.

01:02:00 If you think this course is really going to do

01:02:03 extremely well, double your bets.

01:02:06 - Sure.

01:02:07 Neha, tell me, you are investing in ventures as well.

01:02:12 Tell us the unicorns that you have in your portfolio,

01:02:14 potential ones.

01:02:15 - So I think personally, I started investing

01:02:20 since I'd left VC.

01:02:21 And then we had a fund wherein we invested

01:02:24 about 50 plus companies.

01:02:26 So I think, you know,

01:02:28 unicorn probably, some of the larger ones

01:02:32 that I am excited about are companies like Rubik,

01:02:35 which is into gold lending,

01:02:37 which is doing pretty well.

01:02:39 There are a bunch of other companies in tech as well,

01:02:42 in DeFi, which is into lending.

01:02:44 But I would say that I would,

01:02:48 I think anyone who's looking to get into,

01:02:51 I think now is a good time to sort of start investing.

01:02:54 There are a lot more companies that I'm excited about

01:02:58 and I keep doing that still.

01:03:01 So I think probably I've seen the tip of the iceberg

01:03:05 and I'm hoping that a lot more companies

01:03:07 sort of grow over time.

01:03:09 - Three companies, Nandini, from your portfolio

01:03:11 that look very promising from the last list

01:03:14 that you put out.

01:03:15 - I wouldn't want to give out names

01:03:21 because I don't think that's fair

01:03:23 because we have about, like I said,

01:03:26 100 active and 170,

01:03:29 but I can name some that have done really well

01:03:32 towards the last.

01:03:34 So, and that gives a pointer to what can grow

01:03:37 and what we see.

01:03:38 So one is Purple, you would think.

01:03:41 So it's a NICA competitor.

01:03:42 And when it came and it has pivoted so well,

01:03:45 when it came, it was,

01:03:47 when we funded it, it had come saying,

01:03:49 listen, we are going to connect homes,

01:03:53 spa service providers to clients.

01:03:57 So that's the place where,

01:03:58 then it pivoted, pivoted,

01:03:59 and today it's a NICA competitor

01:04:01 and one of our fabulous.

01:04:04 The other one that we have seen has done really well

01:04:08 is Vardham Tees.

01:04:10 So I'm talking of,

01:04:11 and you know, like we were mentioning earlier,

01:04:12 not all of your good companies need to be tech.

01:04:17 They can be completely consumer.

01:04:18 And if I look at one common thing that is there

01:04:22 in say Vardham Tees and Purple,

01:04:25 is the ability of the founder

01:04:27 to A, keep raising money continuously

01:04:30 and understand that fundraising is a continuous activity

01:04:33 and B, keep the investors completely in the loop.

01:04:36 So I think those two have really worked for both.

01:04:38 So both Vardham and Purple are fabulous.

01:04:41 Then one of our recent exits,

01:04:44 you might've heard is Exotel.

01:04:46 That did really well.

01:04:48 And Exotel is one of our first companies.

01:04:52 And you know, they raised just money from us

01:04:53 and they didn't raise any other round.

01:04:56 I thought that was an amazing story.

01:04:58 Imagine 2011 and they raised like,

01:05:01 I don't want to give out exact numbers,

01:05:04 but in about, so 2011, no money raised,

01:05:09 build the business out

01:05:10 and then you came out with an exit.

01:05:13 So fabulous.

01:05:14 So that's the first thing.

01:05:16 The other one that has done really well is Gigadime.

01:05:19 So that is a company that is actually

01:05:21 one of our recent investments and exit.

01:05:24 So that is also, you know, that's an electric vehicle.

01:05:26 So talking about something dramatically different

01:05:28 where, you know, there is this,

01:05:30 so they've built these batteries and so.

01:05:33 These three, four, I think are fabulous.

01:05:36 The one thing that we have seen actually,

01:05:38 and we're very happy about it,

01:05:41 is that our next level investor is not always the VC.

01:05:45 So I keep saying this, that, you know,

01:05:46 I don't think any ecosystem, not just India,

01:05:50 any other ecosystem can just keep growing

01:05:53 by one financial investor, growing it to a next level

01:05:57 and giving to the next financial investor.

01:05:59 Who's going to put in the strategic money into it?

01:06:03 We have actually seen a large part of our portfolio

01:06:06 getting acquired or getting funded by strategic investors

01:06:11 from that SIP space, you know.

01:06:13 That I think is a fabulous way to look at.

01:06:16 So if you actually, you know,

01:06:19 didn't want to look at just the multiple,

01:06:20 but saying, okay, how did some of the very good acquisitions

01:06:24 or the same.

01:06:24 So we have actually sold companies to Zomato,

01:06:27 we've sold companies to Twitter.

01:06:30 Reliance has bought, you know, two of our companies.

01:06:33 Then, you know, Dream11.

01:06:35 So a lot of our companies have gone to

01:06:38 the next level strategic investor.

01:06:40 So those are the ones.

01:06:42 So I don't want to talk about the ones

01:06:43 that are in the pipeline, but like I mentioned,

01:06:46 I think it's a strategy or it's a play about

01:06:51 having larger number of companies.

01:06:54 Of course, when I say larger, it's still 1% of the pipe.

01:06:57 And then keep working with them to hope that look,

01:07:01 5% of them will become Unicorns.

01:07:05 And 30% of them will give you the composite return

01:07:08 for the rest of the portfolio.

01:07:11 - Sure.

01:07:12 - Ninad, which are the companies in your portfolio

01:07:14 which are going to live up to your company's name?

01:07:17 (Ninad and Nandini laughing)

01:07:20 - You know, this is always a tough question

01:07:22 and I'm glad you asked Nandini that first.

01:07:24 I was thinking in my mind, how do I respond to this?

01:07:28 So we are now invested in 50 companies,

01:07:30 you know, 11 we'll announce today.

01:07:32 Not easy.

01:07:33 So I'll try and give, you know, from different sectors.

01:07:36 And not, you know, Deep Tech is one sector,

01:07:38 but consumer space, Kerala Banana Chips we funded,

01:07:43 they do hygienic, good bananas,

01:07:48 chips from Kerala Banana, Nendran Banana.

01:07:50 It's supposed to be very tasty.

01:07:51 Once this panel discussion is done,

01:07:53 open your Amazon Prime membership,

01:07:55 order Kerala Banana Chips.

01:07:57 Great guy, great founder.

01:07:59 He wants to ensure that his packet of banana chips

01:08:02 are everywhere next to the Lay's packet

01:08:05 and it's much more healthy.

01:08:06 So I'm excited about it.

01:08:07 It's a consumer business.

01:08:09 Will take time, but you know, very, very nice product.

01:08:13 We funded a company which called Vitra,

01:08:16 which, you know, worked in the AI/ML space

01:08:20 almost a couple of years.

01:08:21 And they now have a product which works

01:08:23 and they're funded also,

01:08:25 where a video can be translated.

01:08:27 So this video, we are speaking in English.

01:08:29 They take the product and they can translate it

01:08:32 in 51 languages within five minutes.

01:08:35 So there's no, you don't need to go to a studio.

01:08:38 You don't need to.

01:08:40 So 51 languages they've mastered, they can do it.

01:08:43 So this is on a little bit on Deep Tech.

01:08:46 On EdTech, you know,

01:08:47 Norrish we're funded in class one.

01:08:51 It's doing exceedingly well.

01:08:52 It's a platform for trainers who can do

01:08:55 the online courses easily.

01:08:57 In class one, we're also funded on the healthcare side.

01:09:00 I'm trying to take different segments.

01:09:01 We call it the Renal Project.

01:09:03 They are doing micro dialysis centers

01:09:06 across Maharashtra first.

01:09:07 And then, so today dialysis is quite a painful thing.

01:09:11 Unfortunately, you know, if someone has,

01:09:13 the person has to go to a hospital

01:09:15 at three, four days a week.

01:09:16 And if you're, let's say, far away from Bombay,

01:09:19 you could travel all the way here and do four, five hours.

01:09:21 So they're setting up small centers,

01:09:23 two, three, two, three dialysis.

01:09:24 They've got around, I think, 25, 30 already.

01:09:27 So these are some of them.

01:09:29 I know there is a company which are funded,

01:09:31 which does assessment, you know.

01:09:34 So you don't need teachers now to do assessment of people.

01:09:36 This is not just multiple choice.

01:09:39 This is, you know, even textual assessment.

01:09:41 So, you know, when you go to AI/ML,

01:09:43 there's so many things that can happen.

01:09:45 So these are some of the interesting stuff

01:09:48 which you're funded, but I can go on and on.

01:09:50 - Thank you so much, Ninad, and the two wonderful ladies.

01:09:54 Thank you so much for this discussion.

01:09:55 I personally learned a lot of things from this,

01:09:59 and I hope the viewers would have enjoyed this as well.

01:10:01 Thank you so much.

01:10:02 - Thank you. Thank you for inviting us.

01:10:04 - Thank you for inviting us.

01:10:05 We enjoyed being here. Thank you.

01:10:06 [MUSIC PLAYING]

Outlook Business Investment Summit | Angel investing - profiting from the start-up surge

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