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How to Bootstrap a Deep Tech VC fund in India | Ashish Taneja (growX Ventures)
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"Cash is just a commodity. What truly attracts top entrepreneurs is the connection you build."
Ashish Taneja completely flips the traditional investor-founder power dynamic in this eye-opening conversation with host Akshay Datt, revealing why the best founders actually choose their investors, not the other way around.
Ashish Taneja is the Founding Partner & CEO of GrowX Ventures, one of India's pioneering deep tech venture capital firms. A Chartered Accountant who transitioned from being the India CEO of Vertex (a major UK BPO firm) to venture investing, Ashish has bootstrapped GrowX from angel investments in 2008 to managing ₹400+ crores across institutional funds. His portfolio includes a spectacular 17x return from spacetech company Pixxel, and notable exits to companies like Reliance and NASDAQ. With 49 investments and 9 successful exits over 15+ years, Ashish has become a leading voice in India's hardware and deep tech ecosystem.
Key Insights from the Conversation:
👉Deep Tech Focus: India's future lies in hardware-first companies solving complex problems in space, defense, semiconductors, and advanced manufacturing
👉Patient Capital Thesis: Deep tech requires 4-6 year investment horizons versus software's 18-month cycles
👉Dual Valley Strategy: Successful deep tech investing means navigating both technology risk and commercialization risk simultaneously
👉Founder-First Philosophy: The best entrepreneurs choose their investors based on value-add, not just capital
👉Barbell Portfolio Strategy: Combining high-risk seed deep tech bets with lower-risk Series B growth investments
👉Bootstrap Mentality: Building a VC fund through personal savings, consulting revenue, and reinvested returns rather than institutional money
#VentureCapital #DeepTech #SpaceTech #HardwareStartups #IndiaVC #StartupFunding #TechInvesting #DefenseTech #Semiconductors #PatientCapital #FounderThesis #AkshayDatt #GrowXVentures #AshishTaneja #StartupEcosystem #AngelInvesting #SeriesB #SeedFunding #TechEntrepreneur #IndianStartups #VCStrategy #InvestmentStrategy #TechFounders #StartupJourney #ModernIndustrials
Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel
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Transcript
Founders vs Investors Focus
00:00:00
Speaker
A lot of deep tech founders are engineering first or technology first guys, which means their comfort zone is to build a solution. We as investors, we are market first people.
00:00:13
Speaker
You know, in deep tech, you know, a lot of people say there are two value of debts. One is around technology and the second value of debt is around commercialization. So how does someone like me get into this world and become business owner?
Investing in Hardware over Software
00:00:41
Speaker
Ashish, welcome to the Founder Thesis podcast. You are a rare breed of a venture capitalist who is funding hardware instead of software.
00:00:53
Speaker
um Why are atoms harder than pixels?
00:00:59
Speaker
I don't know. i think first, I think there are quite a few of us, so you know, investing in hardware first companies. And we're the we one of the fortunate ones so who saw some early success that kind of allowed us to kind of build our playbook around that.
00:01:16
Speaker
Yeah. And over the years, especially this coming decade, I expect more and more investors ah from you know all facets of life to kind of jump in to support you know these true innovators.
00:01:30
Speaker
Yes, you know I think you're right. But you know I think I also say that you know it's not about saying what differentiates. Atoms, Excel, howsoever I put it. we don't At least I don't look at things from that particular perspective.
00:01:44
Speaker
You know, the whole idea is we're an investor. We are backing founders.
Impactful Ideas and Investment Strategies
00:01:49
Speaker
And from our perspective, We have our own definition of, let's say, what looks good for us, what is relevant for current times, and what is but could be significant you know in the long term. right And you pick your bets.
00:02:07
Speaker
you know A lot of people say that you know investing is about all about making money. right Within that, if you can support some great ideas who could be meaningful, create so some significant impact over the years, that gives you more joy.
00:02:21
Speaker
yeah There are thousand ways of making money and all each one of us need to do is kind of pick one that we're most comfortable with, that we're most excited about and jump straight in.
00:02:34
Speaker
Right. So, you know, we took a dive into the deep side of the pool and, you know, we got attracted to the deeper end of technology and we're playing ball, you know, as simple as that.
00:02:45
Speaker
Right. So, you know, it's not about differentiation. It's about seeing what appeals to you and, you know, where you could contribute the best. What's your one big complaint as a deep tech VC fund?
00:02:58
Speaker
ah you know like For example, found for founders, a lot of them would complain that investors don't get it. I'm not able to get funding, whatever. So as a VC fund, I'm curious what a fund manager has as his big complaint.
00:03:12
Speaker
but So, you know, Akshay...
00:03:16
Speaker
I don't want to use the word complaint, right? But there are a few missing blocks. Yeah. And these missing blocks are being built, right?
00:03:27
Speaker
ah you know venture ecosystem in India still very nascent. yeah All of us are learning, be it a founder, be it an investor, be it a corporate backer, it a buyer. All of us are trying to figure out what it takes to truly nurture and mature these companies.
00:03:48
Speaker
There are pieces days that you know I've learned over the years, you know dealing with deep tech founders. and call them red flags or call them ways of doing that underwriting.
Challenges in Engineering and Manufacturing
00:04:00
Speaker
One piece as an example we look at, you know, when we kind of meeting founders, you know, building in, you know, and in these kinds of areas is to understand obviously the technical chops, right? You know, their ability to kind of build this so-called robust solution.
00:04:17
Speaker
a lot of times a solution that has never been done before, know, we're talking about engineering breakthrough or a scientific breakthrough, you know, there's an element of risk around technology, if that's going to be built or not, but were taking a call if this team, this individual can, you know, put the resources together to build it up.
00:04:35
Speaker
where we suffer sometimes as a founder investor, as a team, is that we end up over engineering over building the solution. Yeah. So, you know, we take our eyes off sales.
00:04:48
Speaker
We take our eyes off for the potential buyers. So therefore what I'm saying is that we sitting, are we spending far too much time in the labs, you know, or in our basement building and designing those products. Right.
00:05:03
Speaker
And the, So it's not a complaint, it's an area where I expect improvement to happen in that founders, while they may be technical technically solid and superior than a lot of others out there, you know, go out and socialize the product as early as possible with the relevant or the prospective or the potential buyers.
00:05:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's the piece. There could be more, you know, not a complaint again, but it's an evolution of where the industry is. When you're looking to build anything in hardware, you know, I want to build a machine, that machine has got hundreds small components within that, right?
00:05:42
Speaker
Now, each of those components are not available in India. Each of those those components cannot be produced at a high quality in India. Therefore, the supply chain is complex, right? So I expect, you know, over the years, people to take ownership that a lot of these components, especially the critical ones,
00:05:58
Speaker
are getting manufactured at the highest level of quality in India. And I think it'll probably take a decade or two to kind of reach that particular level, right? So again, an evolution, but you know it's a missing block you know from my perspective.
00:06:13
Speaker
Okay, okay. I want to zoom in on both ah both parts of your answer. um How do you define PMF for a deep tech startup? Does it include sales?
00:06:25
Speaker
Or like is it about, I don't know, like like how do you define that? No, no, PMF includes sales. you know There is nothing called product market fit if the market is missing. Right.
00:06:36
Speaker
You know, i could I could demonstrate viability of that particular product in my lab ah um setting or in my factory setting or in my workshop setting. But that's irrelevant if it's not being tested with, you know, potential clients.
00:06:52
Speaker
Yeah. Now, each of these clients' situations could vary. you know You can't take a deep tech, a full-fledged deep tech product and start generating sales early on. But there could be proof of concepts. There could be validation at the technology level.
00:07:08
Speaker
They could be a component of yours you know being integrated with the main product. So there are multiple ways of kind of engaging with possible buyers. PMF in true sense includes that.
00:07:20
Speaker
And multiple ah portfolio companies are ours, you know have demonstrated that particular aspect. And that PMF is a true inflection point. you know That's when you can say that you know in deep tech,
Deep Tech: Balancing Technology and Market
00:07:34
Speaker
a lot of people say there are two value of debts.
00:07:36
Speaker
you know One is around technology that you could, like i said, a lot of these things play with a bunch of unknowns. We don't know if the tech will get created. So you know there's a value of debt around that if the tech will never see light of the day. and And the second value of debt is around commercialization.
00:07:53
Speaker
right And the whole idea is to kind of cover both these valleys. in parallel to make sure that by the time you have a fully baked product, you've got a bunch of people who interested to buy your services and already tested it or collaborated with you in one way or the other.
00:08:09
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Can we talk a bit more on PMF? I feel like ah a lot of founders... ah don't necessarily are able to judge on their own when they have found PMF, whereas investors are a lot more clear-eyed in judging if a startup has found PMF.
00:08:30
Speaker
you know Can you help bridge that gap? No, I think, you know okay, so one is assessment in terms of what's a hardcore metric to say that if you hit this number, if you hit this particular deliver to this particular target or whatever the number is, you know you hit that PMF.
00:08:46
Speaker
But I think the five million dollars. yeah No, no. So it it need not be and absolute sales number. You know, sometimes you could say that, you know, these are my three marquee prospective clients, you know, get me a pilot with one of those.
00:09:02
Speaker
Right. This is a geography of interest for me. This is, you know, get me interest within that. Right. I'm a competent guy, I play within ah multiple use cases, you know, give me an example that how my solution works in those use cases, right?
00:09:19
Speaker
So there could be multiple ways of doing that. And, you know, we're not fussed about the absolute number. Is it 1 million, is 5 million, 10 million? That doesn't matter, right? The piece where, if it all is a gap between the founder mindset and the investor mindset,
00:09:36
Speaker
is more around comfort, right? A lot of deep tech founders are engineering first or technology first guys, which means their comfort zone is to build a solution, right?
00:09:51
Speaker
We as investors, we are market first people, right? And so the gap often is, you know, the founder could be saying that the CTO could be saying that, you know, I'm not ready to take this product to the market yet, right?
00:10:03
Speaker
And from our perspective, he's saying, no, what you've built so far is good enough to be tested. And, you know, that feedback will allow us to understand, if a market exists or not, and more importantly, you know the solutions viable or not, and plus gave give us an idea in terms of the price points, the use cases, and so on and so forth.
00:10:23
Speaker
So the more time you spend early on with clients or customers gives you enough that feedback loop kind of works very well. So it's the mindset gap.
00:10:34
Speaker
You know, I'm comfortable with working in a garage and just kind of cracking it up to saying this is the solution. It works very well. And, you know as an investor, I'm saying, let's go to the market. Let's figure it out What's happening? What's not right. And the true alignment happens when these two minds, you know, agree on a path, execute on the path and, you know, start seeing results.
00:10:52
Speaker
Yeah. um Okay, so ah you said that there are two values of depth in deep
Scaling Challenges in EV Companies
00:10:59
Speaker
tech. ah One is commercialization risk and second is technology risk. Can you give some case studies?
00:11:05
Speaker
ah So, you know, from our experience with portfolio companies or market in general, um we've seen enough examples where ah founders have picked up an area to develop or, ah you know,
00:11:24
Speaker
be the scientific breakthrough, engineering breakthrough, like I said. And, you know, it's kind of just kind of stayed in the labs, right? And it's never seen a light of the day.
00:11:34
Speaker
We've seen it in healthcare. care we We've seen it in healthcare. We've seen it in electric vehicles. You know, one example in electric vehicles was...
00:11:45
Speaker
ah a company building in the uh the commercial uh uh vehicle space and uh the idea was to you know build these uh large and medium haul trucks uh you know which could fly on electric yeah and uh at a lab level you know at the so-called mvp level which you were talking about you know it felt that the proof of concept uh worked very well uh but when you kind of reached a place where you're trying to build evidence of how superior your technology is?
00:12:17
Speaker
Or are you able to kind of
00:12:22
Speaker
manufacture the product at scale, right? You know, it's an idea, it works at a lab, but when you kind of take it at scale, you know, the economics did not stack up, right?
00:12:33
Speaker
We've seen a recent example around battery chemistry, you know, a founder or two were looking to reinvent and build our own technology.
00:12:47
Speaker
EV cells as an example, and you know didn't see light of the day. right So you know there are several. But you know this is the risk we take as an investor anyways. When you're kind of coming in at that particular stage, we don't even know if this could be developed.
00:13:02
Speaker
And plus, we don't even know how long will it take. So you know the product is no longer deep tech as an example. if we have a clear path, then in one year, I'll be able to move from point A to point B. My point B is my MVP, point C, another 12 months, and that's a product market fit.
00:13:21
Speaker
It doesn't happen, right? We don't know how long does it take in the lab to kind of kind of get the first set of products. Yeah. and What are the stages at which ah people come to you?
00:13:34
Speaker
Like, do they come to you at when they are in the lab stage or do they come to you with ah near PMF stage or we've ah obviously have had all kinds of scenarios, right?
00:13:48
Speaker
So as an example, Akshay, today we do our typical seed stage investment, call it pre-seed or seed. And we also do series B investing.
00:13:58
Speaker
So series B is early growth, which essentially means that revenues, there's a ready product, technology is baked. And, you know, we're looking at compounding from there on.
00:14:09
Speaker
Yeah. But at pre-seed seed, I'll give you an example of a company in a portfolio called Pixel. yeah Pixel is a space tech company. you know In a very simple manner, they're building a constellation of nanosatellites powered with hyperspectral imagery.
00:14:27
Speaker
yeah We backed them in 2019. Yeah. yeah And, you know, we started interacting with them 2018. My colleague, my partner, Manish, you know, met them at a particular event.
00:14:40
Speaker
These two guys, the founders, Shitej and Awais were in fourth year of college then. Yeah.
00:14:48
Speaker
So obviously they had an idea and they'd worked on that particular idea and they had kind of ah you know worked on it deep in enough to figure out where the opportunity is, are the potential buyers, the effort it will take to kind of design the satellite, who do they work with from a component perspective,
00:15:07
Speaker
how they going to launch it, who's going to buy, and so on and so forth. Deep research. But when we met them, they had a slight deck, right? you know That's all they had, right? There's another company of ours, another space tech company. It's a company called Bellatrix.
00:15:21
Speaker
yeah ah Again, we we invested in Bellatrix 2018-2019 timeframe. Yeah. yeah So, Pixel is building their own satellites powered with hyperspectral the imagery.
00:15:34
Speaker
Bellatrix is building, let's call them engines, propulsion engines for in-orbit navigation, as an example. yeah When we started working with them, they had a body of work behind them. you know They were working with DRDO, they were working with ISRO. So, you know they were around for three to four years.
00:15:52
Speaker
They were not at a stage where they were they had space qualified assets. But with the work they've done, um you know with the setup they had, you could tell the effort and the resources it will take to kind of make them space qualified.
00:16:07
Speaker
yeah So one Pixel started at an idea level, we backed them. And you know today, they have a space qualified asset. yeah have It's the first company in the world to offer hyperspectral imagery.
00:16:21
Speaker
Bellatrix, again, that's a second company. They also have space qualified assets and they've done it not once, not twice, four times over, right? Working with some large organizations, right?
00:16:32
Speaker
So two examples where, you know, a different approach. We're doing, you know, talking about space, we're now doing a third space tech investment. I'm not going to talk about that. It's still in stealth mode, but that again is a paper idea.
00:16:45
Speaker
right? You know, but an experienced set of founders. The reason I'm bringing that in Pixel, Awej and Shitech were fourth year students. Yeah. Now the space tech company, you know, it's an idea still, nothing on the ground, but these are both with 10 to 15 years of experience behind that.
00:17:05
Speaker
So this work, which you can refer back to gain confidence, can these guys build a solution like that? Yeah. So I don't know if it answers your question, but you know we see the full spectrum.
00:17:17
Speaker
ah and Very interesting that you do seed and series B, but not series A.
GrowX's Investment Strategy
00:17:25
Speaker
What is the reason for this strategy? First, I want to clarify that we're doing seed, we're doing series B from the same fund.
00:17:36
Speaker
We're not saying that from this particular fund, we're not saying that the seed will jump up to Series B and that's when we'll follow on. We're not saying that. Yeah. Series B is a fresh entry for us. It's a new entry for us. Therefore, we're building a new asset.
00:17:51
Speaker
Yes, we will end up backing some of our prior previous portfolio companies at series B. Yeah. So this is not that, you know, follow on capital is available at series B and not at A. Yeah.
00:18:04
Speaker
But the the the key reason for this thesis, Akshay, is, you know, yeah we were talking about product market fit. Yeah. We were talking about the time it takes to you know truly build a solution, the value of debt around technology, as an example.
00:18:23
Speaker
And our realization over the years of working with these 10, 15, 20 deep tech founders is the series A is not the inflection point.
00:18:34
Speaker
Series A, the needle needle has moved, but not to the extent where you can say that this is the inflection point. Technology is still at risk.
00:18:45
Speaker
We don't know what the market is. We don't even know a lot of the use cases you know which would come out. So Series is underwritten in a very similar manner as how you would underwrite a seed asset.
00:18:57
Speaker
Yeah. and And we realized over the years that Series B is where, you know, you you hit true PMF. And from here, you know, like I said, I've used the word compounding a lot.
00:19:07
Speaker
You know, we expect things to grow exponentially. And we wanted to bring that flavor in our portfolio, right? So seed is true disruption. Seed is therefore, ah you know, places where we expect newer industries to emerge.
00:19:26
Speaker
um ah And, you know, we're taking a 10 to 15 year view at that seed stage. Series B is more a commercial bet than we expect in the next three to five, seven years.
00:19:38
Speaker
You know, let's say from a million in revenue, they could scale to a 10 million in revenue or 100 million in revenue. Yeah. So two different sides, you know, think of it as a left side of the brain and the right side of the brain and you're merging it into a single fund.
00:19:50
Speaker
Yeah. So, okay. That's pretty interesting. how How is a seed series A, series B defined? Is it purely like a valuation, check size definition? Or like how do you define these different rounds?
00:20:04
Speaker
You know, obviously seed is essentially means the first check, right? And, you know, you like I said, we're taking all the risk. We're taking a founder risk, we're taking a technology risk, we're taking a use case risk, we're taking a market risk, we're taking a commercialization risk, all the risk, right?
00:20:21
Speaker
At series A, you know, there are some proof points to saying needles moved, right? And, you know, technically at a series A, we're saying that we have an eye on a particular market or we have an eye on a particular opportunity.
00:20:35
Speaker
We've got some validation of the technology done. It may not be the holistic solution which we're building, but you know there's something on the ground which tells us or gives us confidence that we're on the right path, right?
00:20:47
Speaker
Yeah. and And obviously, it's a slightly bigger check, allows you to kind of ah build a better team. And, you know, it could also mean that you're raising additional capital for one or two more experiments which you want to do or solutions that you want to build.
00:21:03
Speaker
And typically, what are the check sizes or valuations at seed, series A, series B? You know, it it varies, right? So, you know, seed round currently for, let's say, a deep tech company could be anywhere between a million to three million.
00:21:17
Speaker
Yeah. um You know, we've seen five million seed stage checks as well. Therefore, the valuation could be anywhere between, you know, seven, eight million to maybe 20 million.
00:21:28
Speaker
Yeah. So, you know, it's not a standard way of assessing it. Looking at 15, 20% ownership. You know, yeah, 10 to 15% ownership, and but the round could mean that you're diluting up to 20%.
00:21:43
Speaker
Yeah, the round at the round level, you could be diluting 15 to 20%. You know, we could be taking a reasonable equity out of that, of what's available. You know, series Series A could be a 5 to 10 million check. Series B could be a 20 to 40 million check.
00:21:57
Speaker
yeah yeah Okay. Okay. Okay.
Opportunities in Space Tech Industry
00:21:59
Speaker
Got it. Okay. um So you were speaking of Bellatrix, Pixel. ah What is the space tech TAM?
00:22:08
Speaker
ah What are the opportunities in space tech? How big is that the market overall? Because now you're doing a third investment. You obviously must have gotten a macro view of that opportunity.
00:22:19
Speaker
No, so obviously, you know, when you kind of look at the research papers, you know, and all the documents being published on space tech, the numbers being discussed are in trillions of dollars.
00:22:31
Speaker
You know, we're not talking billions, we're talking about trillions of dollars, right? The largest private space tech company, SpaceX, yeah, I think currently they're probably around 400 to billion in valuation,
00:22:46
Speaker
yeah They probably do around 15 to 18 billion in revenues every year. Yeah. I read through an analysis and the the teams ah projecting that SpaceX alone could be worth...
00:23:02
Speaker
two to three trillion in the next handful of years. Right. So, you know, they see that coming. Yeah. and And SpaceX is doing just one part of the work. Right. So, you know, ah rocket launchers, obviously a very unique approach around that.
00:23:20
Speaker
They, you know, throwing satellites in the orbit, you know, pixel in a portfolio companies, it's in the Earth observation, right. again, right? What is SpaceX is doing? Companies in India like a Skyroot and Agni Kool are attempting similar stuff in their own unique ways, right?
00:23:35
Speaker
Within satellites, you know, somebody's working it on thermal imaging, somebody's putting SAR, right? ah ah Somebody's putting ears in the sky, you know, how do you pick up radio frequency signals?
00:23:49
Speaker
We talk more data servers in the orbit, we're talking about debris management, So the opportunity is immense, right? And across the board. This is private spend versus government spend in the the space-time? Actually, a lot is private now.
00:24:04
Speaker
A lot is private. Obviously, people like in India, as an example, ISRO, the idea of this spend a lot, they support a lot of these activities. But a lot of these innovations happening at the private level, right?
00:24:15
Speaker
and ah and Who are the consumers? Like like who's paying for these space services? who So, you know, if you look at Pixel as an example, right, you know, or even Bellatrix, I'll talk about that. so you know, Pixel, they sell to the Indian defense, you know, IDEX as an example. So they're buying from them. They have a contract with NASA, you know, so they're buying from them.
00:24:44
Speaker
Private companies like ah Rio Tinto, British Petroleum, Phillips 66, Google, you know, they're buying from them. So these are large companies for different use cases. Some people are using it from an agricultural use case. you know How do I kind of um view the quality of crop?
00:25:01
Speaker
you know Some people are using it from a mining perspective that you know where is the next copper composition? Some people are using it too from an environment protection perspective, you know deterioration of lake as an example. right So the use cases are immense. you know And the reality is that private companies have never seen hyperspectral imagery before. right They've seen, but they're not seen at scale.
00:25:23
Speaker
And here's a company which is saying, I'm going to provide you at scale, and i'm going to provide you with a regularity which allows you to kind of see how things are changing over a period of time right with historical data. so Analytics and insights a huge part of ah within that, right?
00:25:38
Speaker
And so, yeah, so, you know, ah the opportunity, therefore, is very, very large. So, but, you know, my learning, you know, you asked a question, space, what's the dam? Obviously, it goes to trillions of dollars.
00:25:52
Speaker
But each of the company is, they've got their own addressable market, a serviceable market, right? All of those markets in subsets are large enough, right?
00:26:04
Speaker
But when we come in at seed stage, Akshay, sometimes I think it's foolish to kind of be swayed away with those large numbers. Yeah, because we we're dealing with a lab set issue. we We don't even know if this technology is something we're going to take in.
00:26:21
Speaker
But we also know that if we're able to get this breakthrough out,
00:26:27
Speaker
The worst case scenario is that somebody could acquire them, right? That's the worst case scenario, yeah? If you're not able to kind of take this to market or commercialize this, there's value in the IP itself, right?
00:26:39
Speaker
Now, in our portfolio, we get to see, you know, a lot of examples, you know, where the IP has been sold or acquired by a larger company. But that also means that the market is still nascent.
00:26:50
Speaker
Over the next 5-10 years, you know, that that market will also evolve, yeah. Okay. Okay. Why is ah hyperspectral imaging such a big deal? Can you just help me understand what is this technology?
00:27:04
Speaker
No. So, you know, from a simple perspective, think of it like that. You know, you and I as as humans, you know, when we're kind of viewing an object, you know, we're doing our... RGB level. right Now, here's a piece of object which has been sliced in, let's say, 250 different light bands.
00:27:22
Speaker
right and Each of the light band is giving you a different composition of the object you're imaging. right So image number 53 could say copper composition. Image number 59 could say magnesium composition.
00:27:36
Speaker
So you're looking at the same piece of land as an example or the same object, but the ah the way you sliced it you know in different bands, it gives you a different insight.
00:27:48
Speaker
So you know therefore, you get to see different stories, unique stories, something which a naked eye could miss or something which you know a multispectral imagery could miss. Got it. Okay. Okay.
00:28:00
Speaker
Okay. Understood. So, like from what I understand, a large part of the space-time is insights and analytics, especially private consumption. No. So, you know launch is a huge thing. Launch is also leading to eventually... No.
00:28:16
Speaker
No. no like you know No, one is in sight, but, you know, ah for SpaceX, Starlink is, as an example, the biggest client. Communication. You know, communication is another one, right? You know, that's a big thing. And the rest of the areas are still being developed and, you know, they'll open up those markets. Yeah.
00:28:32
Speaker
Okay. so yeah Okay. Okay. Interesting. oh Does ah ah India have a exit ecosystem?
India's Deep Tech and Defense Sector
00:28:40
Speaker
like Like you said, the worst scenario is for a company to be acquired.
00:28:44
Speaker
No, no. I think, you know, I often say, I used to say no longer now, you know, if you spend time in India, we don't know how to make highways, right?
00:28:59
Speaker
Our definition of highways is that, you know, just kind of expand the number of lanes. Therefore, more traffic can be accommodated. And therefore each of those vehicles on the road can move a little faster than usual.
00:29:12
Speaker
Yeah. But each of the exits that we design, these are all bottlenecks, right? So, you know, I live in a place called Gurgaon now and, you know, I'm a Delhi guy through and through.
00:29:24
Speaker
When the Delhi Gurgaon Highway was built, know, the highway was smooth, but coming out of the highway could be a 20-minute, could be a 50-minute ordeal, right? right Now, you know, you take the same analogy to deep tech ecosystem as an example, and even early stage ecosystem as well. You know, today we're building our entry roads.
00:29:45
Speaker
How do we get more and more people excited about participating and supporting these ventures? And alongside, you know, the exits and the consolidation and the mergers and the up rounds and everything will flow, right?
00:29:57
Speaker
So, you know, today... at least when i when we enter into companies, we're not thinking about what's going to happen, you know, five years, seven years, eight years down. There's a a deep belief that, you know, markets will open up, things will shape up, right.
00:30:12
Speaker
ah But today, you know, these exits are non-existent, especially for deep tech. Yeah. But now you take, I'll take you another example, you know, we spoke about space. think defense is an opportunity.
00:30:24
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, over the last two, three years, we've seen enough situations, enough conflicts in the world, which which is pushing every country to become resilient, right?
00:30:40
Speaker
And to manufacture a lot of the work, a lot of the products locally, indigenously, and therefore, IP first companies, right?
00:30:51
Speaker
Within defense, if you look at the value structure in India, you know there's the large companies which are public sector owned, could be a BEL, HAL. There are these private guys like Godrej, like the Tata's, Adani's now, they're into defense.
00:31:08
Speaker
There are these bunch of listed companies you know like Zen, Paris, multiple others you know who are building capability. And now this new crop of startups are coming in. yeah What are these startups doing?
00:31:21
Speaker
They're saying, how do we bring in the modern technology into warfare? yeah you know Autonomous um ah unmanned vehicles compared to taking a fighter jet to this thing.
00:31:40
Speaker
you know, ability, you know, you use the word drones, ability to detect those drones, jam those drones, be it a soft kill or a hard kill. And they're bringing AI, they're bringing this autonomous and multiple other modern technology into subset.
00:31:53
Speaker
Now, when these guys scale up, I expect an exit ecosystem that already exists because we've got these large public sector units, we've got these large private ah companies who are eyeing the sector.
00:32:06
Speaker
We've got these you know mid-sized companies who are building those technology. So there will be an appetite for these young companies you know sitting with uh it that could be sold or acquired by them right so space you know very different ball game defense which is again deep tech you know all of a sudden you see there's an ecosystem in play already yeah okay okay interesting um yeah so when you are uh raising capital from your lps ah lps are essentially the people who fund vc funds uh
00:32:39
Speaker
What do you tell them?
Pitching to LPs: Diversification and Resilience
00:32:40
Speaker
ah Because you know this defense opportunity is recent, ah but you have been raising for a decade now. yeah So what has been your pitch to LPs about why they should back deep tech?
00:32:54
Speaker
those
00:32:57
Speaker
So I think, you know, one is, you know, we spoke about this little ah macro situation around the conflicts happening globally. You know, the other big situation which kind of pushed, you know, India as a country to become more resilient was the COVID situation, right?
00:33:15
Speaker
And, you know, COVID made everyone realize that you can't be dependent on a single source ah for all your products, as an example. You've got to have a backup.
00:33:28
Speaker
A backup needs to be large enough. Call it a China plus one strategy or a China plus two strategy, whatever that thing is. So over the last four or five years, you've seen enough instances which kind of
00:33:41
Speaker
suggesting that you know these sectors, you know and these sectors we call, we label them at GroEx as modern industrials, be it space, be it defense, be it aerospace, semiconductors, new age industries.
00:33:55
Speaker
And these are the industries which will you know form the fulcrum of what the maybe the next set of large companies or institutions will get built.
00:34:05
Speaker
Yeah, so this is one set. The other piece which you know we often cite is, you know if you kind of look at US as an example, and if you look at the top five companies, the top five companies listed companies are all tech first companies, right?
00:34:20
Speaker
And takes the same example with China, you'll find you'll find many such large companies sitting in China as well. So it's a matter of time that India is going to replicate on that.
00:34:31
Speaker
yeah Now you could wait for 20 years to invest in those companies Listed companies then, some of these will emerge, or take a bet today and you know support some of those new ideas.
00:34:43
Speaker
yeah The third piece from an LP perspective is always around diversification. Yeah. To saying, you know, all the LPs, all the investors, these are wealthy individuals or wealthy families, right?
00:34:57
Speaker
this For them, it's not about to saying, I'll either invest in public or do private, I've got limited source, you know. They are thinking about how do we, you know, diversify and how do we,
00:35:10
Speaker
have an element of each from their perspective, decision-making is to allocate 20% to us private assets, which is our kind of work or should I do 5%, right? So the whole idea is to kind of say as to within that 5% the 20%, which you were assigning a private, why deep tech, you know, could be a big alpha generator, right?
00:35:32
Speaker
And, you know, that could be a third way. The fourth thing obviously is, you know, people gain confidence in who you are. You know, when we are backing companies, we getting excited about the founder.
00:35:44
Speaker
Right. so you know, we backing the founder, it's the jockey, not the horse. Right. Same thing when an LP is picking up a a fund manager. They're taking a call or they're taking a bet on the fund manager and the team and the work we've done and our ability to source deals, our ability to find those winning bets, our ability to, you know, make sure that we can get them to the zero to one journey, probably improve the probability of success. You know, that's another factor which kind of comes into play.
00:36:13
Speaker
But I would also want to say that raising capital in India is tough for a fund, right? Is, I don't know, you know, as an entrepreneur, if you're just kind of building a single company, it's a lot easier to raise capital as opposed to getting people to back a long-term, illiquid, blind pool um sort of a fund structure. You know, you you see the issues, right?
00:36:39
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So I'm going to zoom into the GrowX journey, how you raise funds. But before that, so you said the jockey, not the horse is your investing philosophy.
00:36:53
Speaker
ah i want to kind of understand at the seed stage, see at the series B stage, intuitively, one would assume there are enough numbers and enough due diligence and enough data to make informed decisions.
00:37:04
Speaker
But at the seed stage, you don't necessarily have enough data to make informed decisions. What is your decision-making framework when you are seeing so many pitches coming to you you're probably selecting one out of a hundred or it might even be a bigger denominator there.
00:37:21
Speaker
But what's your decision-making framework? No, so, you know, I think the first thing is um we've been doing this for years. Yeah. You know, our first investment was back in 2012. Yeah. And obviously we've,
00:37:37
Speaker
over the last 12, 13 years, yes, we've interacted with maybe close to 15,000 startups. Yeah. Or we've looked at those 15,000 decks. We may have met five, 6,000 of those.
00:37:52
Speaker
of those So, you know, what's happening with that is that our own judgment is getting sharper, right? Our own ability to find who's the right, ah founder, who should we bet, who can deliver, who can execute, who can hire the right kind of resources, you know, who can build as well as sell, you know, we build those frameworks, right?
00:38:15
Speaker
And, you know, um I wanted to say this as well, that, you know I'm blessed to have a partner ah in Manish. For me, he's a true polymath, right? You know, he's the under the hood guy, right?
00:38:29
Speaker
His ability to kind of pick up, and different sectors and different themes and go deep and find the opportunity is quite unique, right? And he's reached that place as well after meeting a lot of the founders, right?
00:38:43
Speaker
So these are conversations, you know, yes, there is a framework, you know, yes, we ask us a certain type of questions, but at the end, you feel good about the opportunity and that opportunity, you feel good about the founder and you end up, you know, taking the bet, right?
00:39:00
Speaker
I think it's more about, you know, you took an example, we back one out of 100. Yeah. The 99, which we don't back, you know, we we could see red flags within those, you know, we could see issues within those.
00:39:16
Speaker
So sometimes even the one which you're investing in, the westing in
00:39:22
Speaker
you know It's a risk you're taking. does not mean that you picked up one out of 100 that you will see this into a large success story. There's an element of failure and there's a large element of failure. So you could go wrong.
00:39:33
Speaker
right But you know we couldn't find red flags. We felt good about that particular opportunity and the founder. And we said, let's just kind of go all in and support that. yeah i'm going to take i'm going to give you another example you know a lot of people have asked us uh why did we invest in pixel uh back in 2019 you know they were college students right you know yes there's a power of idea you know yes uh the founders inspired us and so and so forth but you know we still took a bet we said let's go all in
00:40:07
Speaker
But the big reason for that is that our minds were prepared. And I'll tell you how. yeah Maybe 18 months prior to us meeting or 12 months prior to us meeting Pixel, we had reviewed five, seven, eight different space technology companies.
00:40:24
Speaker
yeah We had made an offer to one, which was in the communication play. We wanted to do invest and lead around. They wanted to raise 3 million at that point of time.
00:40:36
Speaker
So, you know, that opened up a perspective in terms of how satellites could be used, you know, to enable connectivity. And obviously there was a SpaceX, there was a OneWeb, there were multiple other ideas out there, but that was the one where we made a decision.
00:40:52
Speaker
Yeah. And we made that decision after looking at another four five. Then we looked at Bellatrix, which we invested in. And Bellatrix allowed us, give us an idea around different use cases. OK, there's connectivity, communication piece happening.
00:41:09
Speaker
There's a component play, why propulsion systems are important. What's the issue with the current state of affairs within propulsion systems? How are these guys being different? Who could buy that? you know What are the different opportunities within Earth observation?
00:41:23
Speaker
And therefore, when Pixel sat in front of us, we had done a lot of work. Our minds were prepared to react. Had they reached out to us when we had no knowledge or understanding of space tech, I don't think so we would have said yes.
00:41:40
Speaker
We would have been in the same boat as the 100 investors who passed on that opportunity and saying, this is not for us. This is too early for us. we We don't know how to contribute in this particular sector.
00:41:52
Speaker
right And again, Manish did a lot of heavy lifting for us over the last 12 months prior to us sitting in front of Pixel to take that call. That fundamentally is also very important when we kind of take those calls. So if this is not about us just reacting, right?
00:42:06
Speaker
We do a lot of reading. We do a lot of assessment, before a first call with the founder as well, right? Just to make sure you're able to ask the right kind of questions, just to make sure the founder gets the feel that, hey, these guys know or do they understand and they appreciate what we're building.
00:42:24
Speaker
That's fundamentally more important, right? Interesting. So you're saying that... The takeaway from a founder's perspective is to find funds which have built a thesis in your space ah because only they will truly get what you're
Investor Traits: Learning and Strategic Thinking
00:42:40
Speaker
building. Yeah. So build build a thesis or a framework or they see an opportunity. How's going to put it?
00:42:46
Speaker
Right? Now, the reason I'm reacting in this particular way and we've changed our approach slightly and I'll give you an example. There was a time at GrowX, we had a thesis first approach.
00:43:02
Speaker
So, you know, we took electric vehicles as a segment, you know, back in 2018, I think. And they said, let's just scan this. Yeah. What are all the opportunities? Let's just kind of think through those opportunities and figure out the one or two which are the most attractive from our perspective.
00:43:20
Speaker
Yeah. And then we found a particular opportunity. So as an example, we picked up that passenger vehicles will it take longer to scale as opposed to shared mobility.
00:43:31
Speaker
Yeah. So, you know, your taxi should go green first, you know, your two wheeler should go green first, your delivery fleet should green go green first. So the right idea. So we picked up that as an opportunity back in 2018, as an example, and we worked through our own ideas in terms of what will it take to scale these companies, right?
00:43:55
Speaker
Which essentially means that once we're sitting in front of an opportunity, oh, so which essentially means that first we will go all out and find people or founders working in this particular space.
00:44:07
Speaker
The second thing which we do is which we were doing then was we say, okay, I found a founder, I've got these five guys, but who is talking our language that this is our approach to do that?
00:44:18
Speaker
And that may sound very logical, but when you kind of put it to use as an investor is counterintuitively wrong way of approaching because you're putting your ideas on the table all the time. You are focusing more on the...
00:44:34
Speaker
the race, the horse, as opposed to the jockey. Yeah. And therefore you could end up making compromises on the jockey because you see the problem and you're saying, i have a perspective in terms of how these opportunities scaled up.
00:44:48
Speaker
So the change or the evolution in our thinking as it as well is that, you know, don't be hardwired to say, this is all I want to do.
00:45:00
Speaker
Prepare your minds, but be open-minded learn from the founders. The best of the founders will teach you where the opportunity is and you'll be able to react well, respond well, work with them and appreciate that.
00:45:12
Speaker
do you Do you understand where I'm coming from? Yeah. Very, very very interesting. um
00:45:19
Speaker
Is this kind of thinking prevalent in the VC community of not sure being led by thesis too much? know yeah See, Neko, we're a small fund.
00:45:35
Speaker
Yeah, we do things our own way. There are smarter people available out out there. There are bigger funds out there. Everyone's got their own approach. They've got their own playbook, right?
00:45:46
Speaker
And they are smart in their... you know, with the way they deploy the capital, right?
00:45:54
Speaker
Sometimes very difficult to appreciate as to how people think, how people approach. ah Our job is to make sure we do what we are comfortable with and what works well for us, right?
00:46:06
Speaker
You know, and taking the same alignment, you know, a lot of people say this real value when you take non-consensus bets, right? It's the same thing that as an investor, you build your own framework that works beautifully for you, right?
00:46:23
Speaker
I've never gone out and asked people in terms of how they approach decision making. I've never gone out to ask, you know what's the current thesis, what are you looking to do? And I'm talking about seed stage managers as an example, peer group from that particular perspective.
00:46:38
Speaker
We evaluate every investment they do. We try to make sense of every company that is raising capital. We discuss debate from a perspective of learning, from a perspective of seeing that what have we missed?
00:46:52
Speaker
What is that we were not seeing? Where could we go wrong? And you know um you know building our own frameworks better. yeah But, you know, to be told, like i said, we're small fund.
00:47:06
Speaker
We do our own few investments every year. There are far more smarter people out there. Yeah. And you interviewed a bunch of those guys anyway. So, yeah. ah Okay.
00:47:19
Speaker
So you're saying that the founder is the the most important piece of the puzzle to look at. ah What are you looking for in a founder? And I mean, I've asked you this question previously and your answer was not satisfactory. You said we've spent years and we've developed frameworks and and we don't see any red flags. No, no, no, no no i think water i mean what are we looking for in the founders and this is me talking this is let's say the way
00:47:49
Speaker
i would assess you walk into the first meeting
00:47:57
Speaker
I want to come out after that first conversation I've learned a few things about the sector, about the problem they're solving for. yeah and learned in a perspective that I may be aware that this is a sector, this is ah this is where the opportunity is, but the founder will always have a unique perspective or a nuanced approach to solve for it.
00:48:23
Speaker
Yeah. So, you know, you come back and say, aha, this is a very interesting way of kind of slicing this problem. Right. So that's number one. If there are meetings where you come out and say, you know nothing inspired me.
00:48:38
Speaker
you know We were just talking what's available out there. More often than not, there isn't a second meeting. right Now we want to replicate the same results for the second meeting, for the third meeting.
00:48:53
Speaker
And in my head, it's very clear that if the first meeting you're learning something, second meeting you're digging deeper, you'll still come out with a lot of insight. The third meeting, you do the same thing.
00:49:05
Speaker
These are the kind of but guys you want to back because they've... they've literally lived with this problem or the need and have the passion to solve for it. And that will show in itself.
00:49:17
Speaker
So you're asking in the basic questions that why are you doing it? Why the pain? why are you relevant? You know, it's the same usual things, right? But the, the, the responses will tell you, you know, if you're on the right path.
00:49:31
Speaker
So the learning is a key, right? The second element, um, which I spoke about earlier, we're looking for people who can balance executing tech or building tech with commercializing tech, right?
00:49:49
Speaker
They have that perspective in terms where the market is, why they why they believe that that is a particular set of ah clients they will approach, when they will approach, right? So, you know, that commercial orientation is important, right?
00:50:04
Speaker
You may hit the market much later, but at least you've done your work, you've done your assessment, and you've...
00:50:14
Speaker
yeah have a You have a handle in terms of ah you know the the GTM, if you like, or the um but structure you're going to take. The third important thing, which probably is related to the two pieces I said, is clarity.
00:50:31
Speaker
Clarity in your the roadmap you build for the next 12 to 18 months. Yeah? yeah
00:50:39
Speaker
Experiments are good. you know A lot of people say that you know startups are all about experimenting, all about pivoting. In deep tech, that's not the case. you know Deep tech, you're saying this is what i want to solve for.
00:50:54
Speaker
You know, in the first year, at least there is no room for playing around with different models or experimenting or saying, you know, you can't do that. So that that that implementation plan or your execution roadmap needs to be very, very clear, right?
00:51:12
Speaker
Sometimes this piece, we also work with the founders post-investment as well. But prior to us committing, you know we get um ah you know enough validation that the founders are thinking right. yeah ah The fourth thing, which sometimes is important, is we ask, and you know we obviously...
00:51:38
Speaker
How much do you need? Why do you need? Where the money will go? Where the money will come from? Who are your right investors? And the right founders have done a lot of work around that.
00:51:50
Speaker
You know, why should I raise from GrowX? Why should I raise from Special Invest? Or why shouldn't I raise from XYZ fund? they've done that thinking and they have a perspective in terms of as to how this investor-founder relationship will work.
00:52:05
Speaker
You know, that's also fundamentally important, right? A lot of people miss out on this part, you know, because the excitement is to just kind of go out and raise whatever money is available and, you know, kind of get started.
00:52:16
Speaker
Yeah. And so, yeah, I think there could be more, you know, but, you know, these are the top three, four that kind of comes to my mind. Yeah. No, this is good stuff for founders.
00:52:28
Speaker
I think, ah ah I mean, you know, in terms of someone who wants to pitch to you, there's a lot of clarity which has come out, like focus on insights first. A lot of people tend to speak of time first.
00:52:41
Speaker
I think possibly better than that is to show that you understand the market, you understand the pain, you understand the technology and try and educate the investors in the conversation instead of trying to talk of time. A lot of founders I see also talk a lot about past achievements which they have done, which may not which you did not mention at all. you know So I found that surprising. You're right.
00:53:10
Speaker
We've sat through pitches where scheduled time is 45 minutes, 60 75 minutes. seventy five minutes but the first 30, 40 minutes is all about the backstory.
00:53:20
Speaker
Right. And, and, you know, it's not relevant, right? You know I'll be very honest. We've, we've done a grow X through different vintages.
00:53:31
Speaker
We've probably done 48, 49 investments so far. Yeah. If you ask me the question, or if you ask my colleagues or my partner, the question, how many went to IIT?
00:53:43
Speaker
How many are your U S Ivy league guys? I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you backed college kids, right? So so obviously, you're not looking at past achievements. Yeah, I don't know.
00:53:54
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, past achievements give you confidence. So, you know, it's important. Yeah, but it's not the one that will truly define you in terms of what you can build in the future.
00:54:06
Speaker
Yeah. yeah Yeah, interesting. A lot of founders also feel like they have to create FOMO among investors. that Does that work? No, it it works. Why not? It works. and You know, because the point is the advantage of, call it FOMO.
00:54:27
Speaker
Okay, the fear of missing out. What does it do? What you, what you trying to create a sense of urgency. Can you give me an example of how a founder would do the FOMO first and then tell me if it works or not?
00:54:39
Speaker
No, you know, FOMO, you know, you could say, Hey, I'm, I'm in advanced conversation with two other guys. Those two guys happen to be a competitor. I'm expecting a term sheet there. So, you know, that's one angle that is investor interest.
00:54:53
Speaker
If you don't respond now, you know, you could end up losing a deal. you know, more around commitments coming and stuff like that. Yeah. ah I think it's largely around that. They're positioning that this is the hottest deal.
00:55:07
Speaker
I'm the hottest founder and, you know I'm in demand. Right. So, you know, that's that's what they're doing. But I guess what is... you know, in the same way, it's about rather than saying create FOMO, it's about creating a sense of urgency, right?
00:55:22
Speaker
To saying why this opportunity is relevant today, why the earlier you respond and, you know, the earlier we kind of get started, you know, the better for me to kind of hit the market, right? So you're able to kind of create a sense of urgency, founders will respond and react.
00:55:39
Speaker
But The former works also way from founder mindset. If you do it right, if you do it ethically, if you do it, honestly, you know, let's say someone's pitching to me and I'm the only dude the pitching to, I'll take my own sweet time.
00:56:02
Speaker
I'll take my own sweet time. You know, I'm testing the founder in that period as well. That, you know, how the needle moving between day one and day hundred. Right. So. So you you put more um ah players in the mix, you know make sure it's up ah um you know it's an actual race where multiple people are eyeing the same price and you know create that sense of urgency, do it positively.
00:56:28
Speaker
What i don't like or what I don't appreciate is when people just kind of throw names, when people just kind of throw term sheets, which are non-existent.
00:56:39
Speaker
Yeah. And I, you know, that is something which, you know, which is absolutely avoidable. Right. Be real, be honest and, you know, play to your strengths.
00:56:50
Speaker
If you are in front of the right investor at the right time, good things will happen. yeah How honest should a founder be? Because at times there are questions to which your answer is, I don't know.
00:57:01
Speaker
But you will typically on your deck have some roadmap, for example, or whatever. but but In your heart, you might say, I don't know, I'll figure it out. But you can't necessarily say that.
00:57:12
Speaker
the you So let's say i asked 10 questions. And for all 10, the answer is, I don't know. and thought There's a problem, right? But they just there is nothing wrong with accepting that this is an interesting question.
00:57:26
Speaker
I've not thought about it in great amount of detail. give me Allow me some time to kind of come back with the right answer.
00:57:36
Speaker
There is nothing wrong with that particular approach and you're able to, you know, that that level of honesty works. Because what also happens is that, you know, let's say a question is asked, be it on a TAM, be it on investor interest, be it on the folks you're looking to hire, be it on what the competitors are doing and so on and so forth.
00:57:57
Speaker
And you just put a random answer up. I think we're smart enough to understand there's no depth in the quality of the response we've got. Right. So there's no point pretending that, you know, I'm smarter than the others.
00:58:13
Speaker
Right. And, you know, be honest, be clear. And but once you're in a situation where you don't have the adequate response and you're asking for time, make sure you follow it up.
00:58:27
Speaker
Okay, make sure you follow it up to saying a day later or two day later, a week later, you think I've done this analysis, I spoke with a few people, I've had a brainstorm with my team, this is what we think what it is, you know, would love to kind of get your reactions on that as well.
00:58:43
Speaker
That follow up is far more important than the I don't know situation in a particular meeting. So there's a room to kind of cover up.
00:58:55
Speaker
And you know this piece, we're talking about the founder investor piece. When we go out and raise funds with our LPs, it's not that we have all the answers.
00:59:07
Speaker
I've been in situations where people are asked a particular question and I said, you know, I don't know. Right. This is a very interesting question. we just need to do some work around that. Right. And. but go back with that response. And, you know, if the response works, you know, things will move in the right direction.
00:59:25
Speaker
Yeah. So, but you know, actually the, the, the piece you asked was how honest should a founder be is about saying how honest should a relationship be?
00:59:39
Speaker
Right. So if you could just, if let's say you're dishonest with your responses, And we end up doing some work together. You know, I wasn't smart enough to just that.
00:59:51
Speaker
What will this dishonesty lead to? this will become a behavior, this will become a pattern, and you're just kind of pushing yourself in a particular trap, right?
01:00:03
Speaker
And be it at the time of raising capital, be it at the time of post-investment, updating your investors, be honest, right?
01:00:14
Speaker
You know, one small example, um i may have ah written about it as well, Updates speak a lot, right?
01:00:26
Speaker
the The mistake a lot of founders do is not, you know, go back to the investor's existing or perspective in the defined frequency. That rigor is the most important thing, right?
01:00:42
Speaker
So if I'm saying I've agreed on a monthly update rigor, What's happening in the first week of the succeeding month is people are saying, hey, what is the big news I can share?
01:00:54
Speaker
Then saying, hey, I don't have a big update. Let me just add another two, three days. of be yo who know i it but that um You miss that window. That four-weekly update tends to be a six-weekly, then it's a quarterly, then it's a six-monthly.
01:01:08
Speaker
And there's a clear sign that the business is under tremendous stress. say the way it is, we're in it with the founders, we're in it to build together. And we know that any business is associated with a bunch of risk, right?
01:01:25
Speaker
Everything will never go as per plan. And, you know, we're prepared to kind of take that on and support the founders in as much as we can. Right. Yeah. Interesting. What do you answer to an LP when they ask you, how when will you give me my money back?
01:01:39
Speaker
Is there ah Because the the thing is that, you as you said, the exits are not yet there for deep tech. Then how does that happen in your fund structure?
Fund Lifecycle and Liquidity
01:01:49
Speaker
No, so, you know, like I said, we've done these 49 investments. You know, we've been in the market for 10, 12 years. We've had nine exits, right? So we've had exits.
01:02:00
Speaker
What kind of exits were they? Like acquisitions? No. So, we've had acquisitions. you know but One of our companies, ah Broadly, at CDC, was acquired by Reliance.
01:02:13
Speaker
One of our companies was acquired by Condal. One of our companies ah company was bought by EasyTap. So, we've had acquisitions. We've had secondary exits, you know, a larger financial investor buying us out at Series B, Series C. Yeah.
01:02:28
Speaker
One most recent exit from a previous fund is Pixel. You know, we took a a small exit, ah you know, announced it a few days ago. So again, a financial investor bought us out ah for the units that we sold.
01:02:43
Speaker
So we've had exits. And now there is enough proof points in the market. You know, you can... to some extent extrapolate to some extent give a guidance that these kind of companies take this kind of time to maturity uh so yes if a question is asked by our investors uh what's the broad plan we have a response and our response is you know we're an 80 year fund the first three years is when we'll build the portfolio
01:03:14
Speaker
Year four and year five is when you know you expect the portfolio to mature. We nurture these companies, we support those companies, they go out and raise the next round of capital. Year six onwards is when we start generating exit.
01:03:27
Speaker
So year six and year seven and year eight is when you know money will start rolling back. Our expectation is that year six, we should be able to generate a meaningful exit, which translates to broadly your capital being returned, right?
01:03:46
Speaker
So, you know, we're drawing down capital year one, year two, and year three, taking average at year two is the point, year six is when we exit. Time in the system, four years, is when, you know, your money's blocked in with us.
01:03:59
Speaker
yeah So we have a response and this response is built in based on what we've seen with the portfolio, based on what we've seen with the market, based on what we expect how the market to evolve.
01:04:10
Speaker
yeah yeah ah ah How much time does it take for a seed stage investment to...
01:04:19
Speaker
Go on to Cdc. Yeah, yeah. Cdc is when you would look at an exit, right? Either a financial investor or... yeah That's right. You know, so seed to Cdc. And the reason why Cdc, Cdc tends to be a large round.
01:04:32
Speaker
Cdc tends to be a defining round. Cdc tends to be where larger investors are looking to bulk up their ownership. CDC, when the founder aspirations are 10x, they're saying open new markets, open new geographies, launch new products. You know, it's a large, meaty round therefore.
01:04:48
Speaker
Yeah. And from seed to C, you know, you could see a 100x sort of a number, fifty x sort of a number, or in an average company, we would have 15x, 20x, which is meaty enough to kind of classify them as fund returners, if you like.
01:05:05
Speaker
Yeah. The time it takes for a breakout company. Yeah, for a breakout company, it could be four to six years. You know, we've had examples where companies have scaled from C to C to C in four years, five years, six years, you know, that's the band.
01:05:23
Speaker
There are companies which take, you know, the first couple of years take longer or in the middle, it takes longer to achieve scale. So, you know, you're talking about seven, eight years.
01:05:34
Speaker
Yeah. So that's why going back to you know our fund structuring, you know three years to build a portfolio, and for the last company, you get a clear five years to generate the exit.
01:05:47
Speaker
Now, in our it's probably not even relevant for this, but you know when you construct the portfolio, you kind of think through what kind of companies require the longest gestation period.
01:05:57
Speaker
yeah So we're doing seed investment, we're doing series B investment. Now intuitively, the seed investment going up to Series B and Series C will take longer. So we are front-ending a lot of our seed-stage investments.
01:06:11
Speaker
yeah So year one will build a large part of our seed portfolio to give them the full life of the fund, the series B will follow year two and year three, you know, faster to maturity if you like.
01:06:23
Speaker
Yeah. So these are examples or ways of us making sure the liquidity can be generated and the right bets are taken at the right stage of the fund.
01:06:35
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Interesting. This also is the reason why you're doing this combination of seed and series B so that Liquidity is like a defining motivation for this strategy.
01:06:48
Speaker
You know, Akshay, when we started investing, the motivation was to build our personal angel portfolio. Right? That was the motivation.
01:07:00
Speaker
And that motivation was met through finding the right founders, getting excited about what they're building and putting a check. The check was diverse, you know ranging from at an individual level, you know couple of lakhs to tens of lakhs, or at a fund level, 40, 50 lakhs to a few crores.
01:07:21
Speaker
yeah But over the years, as you go deeper into the system, as you manage third party money, you have a fiduciary responsibility to generate returns, which means that,
01:07:38
Speaker
The realization comes that your customer is the investor, not the founder. yeah So yes, we are founder first in our approach, but we are investor first in our returns. right So you've got to create the right balance to make sure the structure allows that flexibility.
01:07:54
Speaker
yeah So liquidity is important, and that's something which is core to our business. If you can't generate DPI's, dividends, you know, or liquidity for investors, they're not supporting us again, right?
01:08:07
Speaker
The newer guys are not coming in again. So, you know, that's the cycle of this ecosystem, right? But the other reason also, which is very important is... When you're doing your seed stories, you're coming out of series B and series C, which means you're not seeing the you know the long game. You're not playing the long game with the founders.
01:08:26
Speaker
yeah You're not sitting through a listing story, and through a post-listing performance of a particular company. right you know You want to see the full you know a journey from a seed to an enduring company. You want to see it all.
01:08:41
Speaker
And a lot of that, when you're part of those cycles, you bring those elements and fuse them into your underwriting mechanism. Now with the current fund, we get to see, we've we've done seed before, we get to see what it takes to support the seed.
01:08:57
Speaker
When we do the series B to a potentially a listing story, we learn a different element. A lot of that could be baked into our seed. yeah The other aspect, actually what is happening is, you know over the last 10 years, 20 years, if you see...
01:09:12
Speaker
the The new edge tech companies, you know take a what they've done is they've disrupted the incumbents or the legacy, the traditional players. Now, the there's a bunch of, why a bunch?
01:09:25
Speaker
The early stage entrepreneurs are disrupting the disruptors, right? Right? So, they're disrupting the disruptors, right? So, If you apply both lens that you're sitting on series B, you know, 10 million ARR, how do you scale to 100 million ARR?
01:09:42
Speaker
And you have a lens of pure innovation and disruption happening at the ground level. You're able to see that what could go wrong in this 10 to 100 million path, right?
01:09:53
Speaker
So this different lens, different perspective allows us to generate returns, support the portfolio founders across different cycles, see play the long game and you know bring in all those learnings to make sure the playbook gets better.
01:10:10
Speaker
Does make sense? yeah yes Yes, understood. oh So by year eight, you need to liquidate all your holdings. um What if there have not been liquidation events for some of the portfolio companies? then no so you know So SEBI allows extensions, right? So in um and obviously with with the consent of your investors.
01:10:38
Speaker
Yeah. uh know you could potentially extend it by another year then another year so you know you can you can increase the life of the fund if you're sitting on some assets or the macroeconomic cycle is such that uh you know finding exists or creating liquidity is just not possible you know you create those scenarios that uh you know you extend your fund life yeah the other aspect which is very clear is uh today you know earlier a lot of these private investments The shares were in physical forms.
01:11:09
Speaker
The share were, therefore, the transferability was very limited. now Private shares are treated from a tech perspective in a DMAT format like public companies.
01:11:23
Speaker
At the end of a shelf life, you know, you reassign or you allocate all these units in the hands of the investors and the investors manage. Yeah. But from a liquidity perspective, also the market's also changing, Akshay.
01:11:36
Speaker
You know, one is finding a larger investor who could buy it out. Now this larger investor is taking different shapes. yeah As an example, there are a bunch of secondary focused funds which are hitting the market.
01:11:50
Speaker
They can buy your entire portfolio or they can buy a few of your companies, right? You know, the good ones, right? And they're saying, fine, we'll give liquidity to your investors.
01:12:01
Speaker
We'll hold it for the next three, five years, generate an alpha for ourselves and take it forward. So, you know, the multiple structures which are available today to, you know, enable those exits for the early investors.
01:12:15
Speaker
If you have a deep conviction, can your next fund buy the... You can, why not? you know these are These are called continuity vehicles. ah People have done this in India as well.
01:12:27
Speaker
If I recall, Bloom did it with the first fund. Aniket did it. a couple of other guys, I'm sure they've done it. These are standard structures available. So you can set up a next fund and saying, I'm allowing liquidity at fair market value to my existing investors and the new fund will hold it.
01:12:45
Speaker
um yeah Some of the investors who are getting liquidity could recycle back into the new fund or a newer breed of investors come in who are looking for safer assets, ah you know clear identified assets in terms of the companies you're backing and therefore a path to liquidity.
01:13:05
Speaker
Absolutely, this is doable. Okay, interesting. interesting yeah What do you regret more, saying no or saying yes? So regret to regret saying yes means you said yes and it turned out to be a company which did not scale and regretting saying it means like, you know, it blew it out of the park and you said no.
01:13:23
Speaker
You know, the classic ah type A, type B, right? Error of omission, error of commission. Yeah. So no, no, first, you know, once we're in, we've said yes.
01:13:35
Speaker
We're all in. there is There are no regrets. No question of any regrets. yeah Do you have a single regret in your portfolio of 49 where you felt like took a bad call?
01:13:48
Speaker
No, we took a bad call. There's one actually where we backed around ah wrong founder. yeah We had trust issues. you know In a way, it felt that the money wasn't truly deployed it into what it was meant for.
01:14:05
Speaker
Yeah. So we've weve had we've had one out of 49, but we've got you know we've had several instances, i think seven, eight of our portfolio companies that we've written off.
01:14:16
Speaker
Right. And but in each of those instances, we knew or we we could tell that the founder, along with us and all the other investors,
01:14:30
Speaker
put in everything it required to salvage the asset, find some value to rebuild, to you know make sure it remains relevant. yeah So that effort is important, right and you know dealing with that.
01:14:45
Speaker
So you know therefore, there are no regrets. Regrets will happen when ah the founder gives up before us. Yeah. And, you know, or like I said, the example where, you know, the money was meant to build a business, but felt like it was diverted for personal needs.
01:15:04
Speaker
Yeah. um So, you know, that is a regret and, you know, you question your underwriting at that point of time. Yeah. ah you and i'll I'll give you an example, you know, from the current fund.
01:15:16
Speaker
We are investing in one of our founders. Yeah. We backed this founder. It's a stealth mode company. Actually, we're announcing it um in the next week, 10 days. So this episode will be live by the time you announce it, in case you want to mention it. No.
01:15:32
Speaker
So if it's live after, then it's okay. Yeah, it's live after. Yeah. It'll be live after six, eight weeks. Yeah. this is ah This is a company called Armory.
01:15:43
Speaker
ah You know, the founder is Amardeep Singh. We backed Amar in 2014. You know, he was coming out of IdeaForge. Yeah, IdeaForge is a drones company, now a listed company.
01:15:56
Speaker
publicly listed company. He was a guy who built the initial set of drones, sold it to different um parts of Indian Army or Indian defense. Right. So, you know, had that body of work. But when he was coming out of IdeaForge, he was building a hardware company.
01:16:10
Speaker
But this was a consumer focused hardware company. OK. We put in some seed check or an angel check at that point of time. And, you know, Amar, Rahul, his co-founder and the rest of the team gave it everything.
01:16:23
Speaker
Yeah. But we had to wrap down the company after two two years or three years of effort. he They put in a lot of their own capital as well after a round.
01:16:34
Speaker
And, you know, we didn't see success. And now he's rebuilding again. We backing Amar. Yeah. The big reason why we're backing Amar, you know a lot of people could say, hey, it wasn't a financial success.
01:16:48
Speaker
It wasn't a positive outcome. Why are you putting in money again? The reason is our experience of working with Amar as an individual was top-notch, right? ah ability His ability to create a ah the product which he's picked up ah for his current startup,
01:17:09
Speaker
you know, ah there is no reason to believe that he can't do it. So that fundamentally is important. It's not the financial outcome. It's, you know, you know the core around that, right? So we're open to that, you know, and like people say, you learn more from failures, you know, success teach you nothing, right? It's failures that kind of teach you everything. You know, we've heard this again and again.
01:17:32
Speaker
And, you know, here we are ah partnering again after a good 10 years. Yeah. And we are very, very excited about what he's building. This is a defense tech company, ah very relevant for the current times.
01:17:44
Speaker
we ah We actually committed a few months ago before this India-Pakistan situation. and now all of a sudden, this company is right in the center of demand.
01:17:58
Speaker
Right. So here's an example. Yeah. so You said essentially that you don't regret saying yes unless there's like a misallocation or misutilization of funds. Do you regret saying no?
Reflecting on Missed Opportunities in VC
01:18:12
Speaker
Of course. You know, the error error of emotion hurts you more, no? You know, you've done your diligence and you reached a place where you said no and that company scaled up.
01:18:24
Speaker
And then you go back. So I can give you... Two examples where the company has scaled up and where we carry no regret, or the company is scaled up and we saying, what did we miss?
01:18:39
Speaker
Right. You know, we could have, you know, supported them. Right. So one, ah and I wrote about this, there's a company called BlueSmart, you know, which was, which has been in the news over the last few weeks.
01:18:51
Speaker
yeah Again, mis-utilization of funds. Yeah, we we we looked at them at the seed round or the angel round, you know, when they were raising the first round of 10 crores of capital. Yeah. And ah ah the diligence we did did not stack up and we decided we will not.
01:19:08
Speaker
But the first couple of years, you know, at least I started using it as a consumer and I said, hey, this is a this is a superb experience. Everything stacks up.
01:19:19
Speaker
You know, we we could have backed them as an example. You know, this could make money. But today is a different story that you kind of go back and say that this is what did not stack up the due diligence.
01:19:33
Speaker
i you know don is there It's it's is there on my LinkedIn note. There's a term sheet that they shared with us. The term sheet carried a bunch of names that these are the people who are investing.
01:19:47
Speaker
And we reached out a few of those investors. You know, they were known people. And the response was, we're not in. Yeah. okay So you just designed that formal the part which you were talking about, right? You know, the former part which you were talking about, you know, that was big.
01:20:03
Speaker
set to play in a in the wrong manner, right? And, you know, we we were just fortunate that we said, okay, this does not stack up for us, right?
01:20:14
Speaker
Okay. You know, there are tons of examples, you know, um I'll give you an example, actually, this one, Misho. Yeah. So, another investor... No to Misho. No. So, you know, I'll tell you, obviously, there's always a good reason to say no.
01:20:30
Speaker
Misho... but Prior to Misho being Misho, it was called something else. um um'm I'm not getting the name, right? So another investor, a good friend, at that point of time, used to work with Sequoia. He was a partner there with Sequoia, Peak 15, connected me, yeah.
01:20:50
Speaker
And he said, meet him and figure out if you like the model, right? At that point of time, this is maybe 2016, we were moving away from consumer companies.
01:21:05
Speaker
yeah And we said, we've not seen a lot of success. you know Our money is not doing the trick. We're better off or more suited towards B2B companies. yeah And but I had one call and we're with it and we said, I'm going to be in Bangalore soon.
01:21:24
Speaker
We'll meet up. ah I did go to Bangalore. He did reach out, but the meeting never happened. Right. And, you know, because in my head, deprioritize backing another consumer company on the back of our own experiences. So, yeah.
01:21:39
Speaker
Nisho is what Nisho is today. You know, we had an opportunity to participate and we could have at that point of time. But
01:21:49
Speaker
I spoke about minds prepared, right? And, you know, our mind was prepared to look away, right? So, you know, and so, you know, one is looking in, the other is saying, you know, this is not for me.
01:22:01
Speaker
And, but from a money-making perspective, you know, it could have dealt a good hand for us, right? So, yeah. So there was an opportunity and there could be tons more, right? It's not that, you know, I think if you scan through the anti-portfolio, ah you know, I'm sure there's long list, yeah.
01:22:18
Speaker
But, These are fun conversations. Do they give you regret? The answer is no. And I'll tell you why. Actually, in our business, in our trade, in the venture business, fundamentally the most important thing is access to opportunities.
01:22:34
Speaker
Yeah. If you're seeing the best of the deals and if you're seeing the best of the deals early on, that means your flywheel is working, right? So fine, we looked at Bisho, we looked at Bharat Pay, we looked at everything else and we said no, right?
01:22:52
Speaker
ah But we at least saw those deals at the right time. right there is no point seeing those or they're not i mean if you don't see those deals and and obviously there's no reason for regret so you look at positives you're saying as long as the deal flow is working the mechanics of flywheel is working you're in the right place right and most investors will strive to be at that place where you're preferred if not even the preferred if you're seeing access to high quality deals from various sources yeah yeah How does that flywheel work to get access to piece? No, so obviously, you know, the biggest thing is you've got to do your time.
01:23:28
Speaker
When you do your time, some of your bets, you know, scale out ship up, shape up. And that is what people look up to. So, you know if somebody is building in space as an example, they'll go out and look at a portfolio. They're saying, okay, who did Pixel? Who did Bellatrix? Who did this, the next one?
01:23:47
Speaker
Let me just talk to Avesh and Shitej or to Rohan and Gashir's. Take a founder feedback. if These are the right people to do that, right? So people will look at that. And so if you support the right teams, they scale up well, the next lot is looking up to those founders and saying, who do I go to? What was their experience?
01:24:07
Speaker
That's the biggest flywheel. The other flywheel is, you know, relationship within the ecosystem, right? Your downstream and upstream relationships, you know, you know, their view on us. would be Like incubators and actually incubators. Yeah. Correct. Right. And, uh, yeah, so, uh, yeah, so the other way around and, uh, but yeah, but you know, the, uh, but the, but the ecosystem plays like that. Right.
01:24:35
Speaker
And, uh, so, you plus our own investors, you know, we fortunate to have some seriously high quality investors, right? These are founders and leaders from,
01:24:47
Speaker
tech companies which are now listed. These are partners with consulting firms like Bain, BCG, or the big four firms like EY, BWC. And a lot of people go to them, ah you know, for their opinions, or they're coming out of these organizations to set up on their own, right? So, you know, that that in itself is a good way of getting access.
01:25:10
Speaker
Yeah. Okay.
Oversight Challenges in Venture Capital
01:25:11
Speaker
ah you know When the there is misutilization of funds, misappropriation, whatever term you want to use for it, um often the VCs are blamed.
01:25:23
Speaker
that you should have known better. Do you agree with that? 100% I agree with that. 100% I agree with that. You know, we if you're saying we're active, we're spending a lot of time with the founders, we're their 4 a.m. friend or a 2 a.m. friend, yeah?
01:25:41
Speaker
Then we should be in the know, right? And, you know, we're sitting on structured reviews, we're having informal conversations, we're reviewing data, you know, and if even with all that, you're able to tell that we don't know what's cooking, you know, I find it hard to believe.
01:26:03
Speaker
Why did BlueSmart get away with it for so long before? You know, Difficult tell. Maybe the founders were smart enough to play the data in a good way.
01:26:17
Speaker
And BlueSmart is an interesting story, actually. So BlueSmart, one of the biggest reasons for them to go down is because of their parent company or a shareholder, GenSol.
01:26:29
Speaker
Gensol is where there was a true impact, right? And that took BlueSmart with them. So if an investor is sitting reviewing BlueSmart data, right, you could be seeing a far better picture compared to what's happening in Gensol, right?
01:26:45
Speaker
Yeah, so maybe because of that, right? But, you know, in the past, we've had, you know, Baidu's is the biggest story. You know, how did they get valued at $22 billion and not see what's coming?
01:26:57
Speaker
Go Mechanic was another story, which is going through a, ah you know, ah rebuild. Zilingo was another. There are so many, right? And I find it hard to believe that the investors don't know.
01:27:14
Speaker
Maybe they choose to look away. You know, because actually you've got to be, you've got to understand this. If an investor is sitting in a high momentum company and that high momentum company is able to attract capital again and again, my multiples are showing.
01:27:37
Speaker
Maybe the tendency is to say, okay, let me just play another round. I'll find an exit. I'm out. We'll go. yeah Yeah, you don't want to rock the boat. and You don't want to rock the boat. your money Because your money is in there. If you rock the boat, your money is at risk.
01:27:51
Speaker
Yeah, so I'll give you i'll give you an example. you know i I can't name this company. This is this not from a portfolio. This is from from a private equity company. yeah
01:28:02
Speaker
So one leading private equity invested in a particular company. This particular company... was designed to have retail stores of their own.
01:28:15
Speaker
Okay? So that this PE fund, PE1, they stayed invested in this particular company. They followed on another company, in the same company, and the director or the founder of the promoter kept showing growth, that I'm increasing the number of stores, my revenues are going up, profits are looking better.
01:28:38
Speaker
Another PE guy came in, okay. They did their diligence. They bought out the first PE, okay. And they're seeing only good things.
01:28:50
Speaker
PE number three was pitched to, to say, hey, this company is great. My best performing portfolio company. Can you
01:29:01
Speaker
come in, join, take a bet? They did the diligence.
01:29:06
Speaker
They obviously did the right diligence. They discovered that the number of stores being told are non-existent. 70% of the stores do not exist.
01:29:18
Speaker
Wow. So six years in the making, one PE got an exit as well. Another one invested as well. the third guy i came in and found this a gap.
01:29:31
Speaker
you know Similar example, you know this Indonesian company, E-Fisheries. you know If you read about that, there's again an amazing story, right?
01:29:42
Speaker
Revenues are getting artificially pumped, but there's no core. And the founder said in one of the interviews,
01:29:53
Speaker
that this is a known game, right? This happens all the time. okay So I don't know. Like builder.ai. You know, obviously I'm i'm not privy to builder.ai. These are my privy to eFisheries or the private equity. These are stories for us, right?
01:30:15
Speaker
but you take the stories and make sure that your little shop works in the right way. That's all you can do, right? You can still make a mistake. You can still make a mistake, right?
01:30:26
Speaker
But that's fine. You know, uh, You know, it's a high risk sort of a capital. You'll get better in the game. Do your diligence right. After your diligence, if you still can't find any reasons to, you know, identify those kind of issues, so be it.
01:30:44
Speaker
You know, you made a mistake around diligence, right? Do not compromise on your diligence, right? You know, do not compromise on your diligence. Don't look for false signals as to why, ah you know, this company is worth backing.
01:30:58
Speaker
But what I also hear is, in a way, it's almost your fiduciary duty to your investors that if you did bad diligence and got into a business, you cannot let that business sink.
01:31:10
Speaker
You have to find a buyer for it or whatever. I mean, you have to... like you can ignore attempt No, I disagree with that. I disagree with that. There's an old Punjabi saying, writer ah cobi beardo right? so upt be your but i set people meet you know Take the monkey off your back and give it to someone else and I'm done. No, no, I disagree with that.
01:31:34
Speaker
I think fundamentally, if there's a realization that you made a mistake, you backed around founder.
Transparency in Addressing Investment Mistakes
01:31:42
Speaker
to your investors admit it accept it and go back and sort your process processes and you know make sure i would go out and make sure that the company is completely scaled down written off and nobody else is finding uh figures for that unless there's a scenario where
01:32:06
Speaker
the particular issue is directed to one particular individual and you believe that if you remove that individual out of the equation, you can fix it. So you take the responsibility to fix it.
01:32:18
Speaker
Once it's done, you know, go out and... get people. So yeah, be honest to the incoming investors, bring them in, show skin in the game that, you know, we're also putting in more money and we think this is salvageable and this can be built into something big, but be clear with your investor communication.
01:32:37
Speaker
You know, you cannot fool around and present a story that everything is great because at the end, the founder is backing you. You know, this is a trust. game that you're playing, you can't break that, right?
01:32:50
Speaker
And, you know, you lose trust, you lose respect, you're out of the game, as simple as that. You know, yeaht reputation is all you have, isn't it? Yeah. yeah You know, we've not yet spoken about the GrowX journey, your own journey. You said it started with angel investing.
History and Evolution of GrowX Ventures
01:33:08
Speaker
Where did you get the money from for being an angel investor?
01:33:15
Speaker
so So there's a backstory, you know but the short answer to that is I often borrowed do to my first set of investments. But the backstory, yeah we'll we'll we'll chat about that.
01:33:28
Speaker
But you know the backstory I started Groix 2008. So it's been years. prior to two thousand and eight i had the roughly 15 years of work experience, right?
01:33:44
Speaker
So my last stint ahead of starting GroX was with an outsourcing company called Vertex. yeah I was the ah CEO of the India business and ah global responsibilities and you know I did the six years with Vertex from 2002 to 2008 yeah and this was and like a BPO and it was a BPO it was BPO and with a lot of call center work yeah so you know we were we were focused on UK as a market you know so Vertex was a UK based company and our main focus was UK as a market we were working with the
01:34:26
Speaker
a bunch of you know traditional legacy companies like a telecom company called Vodafone, we were also Orange, we were working with a utilities company called PowerGen and United Utilities and we were also working with a bunch of new age tech companies. Yeah, so lastminute.com, trainline.com.
01:34:46
Speaker
So, and back in India here we were doing you know, the call center work, the IT services work, the BPO work, so it's a full-fledged, right?
01:34:59
Speaker
I joined 2002, you know, at that point of time, we were just kind of kicking off work in India. And at peak, we had 3,500-odd people servicing the UK market only.
01:35:10
Speaker
And so that was, as a CEO, I was paid reasonably well. Yeah, so it's a different it's a different call that say that I think my last salary, ah at Vertex as a CEO. And what I earned in GrowX maybe for the first 10 years, cumulatively, was still lower than my last four years. like I still make far less than what I used to make then.
01:35:38
Speaker
but so you know So there were some assets that got accumulated and through my angel investing and you know my wife shouldn't be hearing all this, you know all those assets one by one have been liquidated to refocus or reprioritize towards tech investing. yeah But to the point I also borrowed, right? But 15 years of work, 15 years of work, you know, we started GrowX with some savings. and Why did you quit Vertex? You were at the peak of your career.
01:36:07
Speaker
I was just starting my career, you know, I wouldn't say I was a peaker of my career, you know, i I had a, I mean, my entire 15 years, I worked with three organizations and all three phenomenal organizations from a learning perspective. Yeah. And I think I was just starting up.
01:36:26
Speaker
So 2008,
01:36:29
Speaker
uh is a long time back i was uh 35 yeah i was 35 then 35 you're just starting up you know you've done 10 you know you've done 10 15 years of work behind that but this is just kind of molding yourself building yourself figuring out what the core is right and for me the calling always has was to uh you know build something on your own and uh uh GrowX gave me that opportunity, right?
01:36:58
Speaker
Obviously, there's a backstory in terms of how we started GrowX, you know, what was the... No, okay, there are two two different aspects, yeah. So, My main degree is a CA degree.
01:37:12
Speaker
Yeah. You know, growing up, you know, if somebody and this is going going by but back to school days, you know, grade six, grade seven, grade eight, you know, if somebody asked you, what do you want to become?
01:37:25
Speaker
you know, what do you want to pursue? for Strangely, my answer was I want to do CA, right? I have no idea in terms of why I used to say that and why that piece, but fortunately, i finished that degree and in the middle of my degree, I realized that this is not my thing, right? I don't know why I wanted to do this, but Over the years, I've realized in terms of why did I end up doing CA because there was a huge advantage at a life level. You know, we'll talk about that later, you know, which, you know, one door that door opened up for me.
01:38:00
Speaker
But through those CA days, you know, when I did my training, my internship, we used to be called articleship back then. Again, I was lucky to kind of work with a firm which did everything non-accounting, right? So, you know, we were away from statutory audits, which is reviewing balance sheets and finalizing balance sheets or the taxation work or the compliance work.
01:38:24
Speaker
We were not doing any of that, but that experience as the term then still is called management auditors, internal auditors. The job was to go to factories, go to offices, go to warehouses, review internal practices.
01:38:40
Speaker
and find gaps with the systems and procedures, you know, plug those gaps. It could be a fraudulent situation. It could be a efficiency related work.
01:38:51
Speaker
You were doing a lot of those reviews, internal controls, right, to make sure, you know, the governance part which you spoke about that gets fixed at the ground level, right? You know, what gets reported is is actually what happened at the ground. Yeah.
01:39:06
Speaker
but that opened up a consulting career right you know uh so i worked with anderson consulting accenture for five years and at that point of time the tech world was truly you know the first set of dot-com companies were being built yeah so when i joined uh accenture uh 98
01:39:26
Speaker
A global CEO at that point of time, and this was late 98 or early 99, a guy called, I still remember his name, a guy I never met him, a guy called George Shaheen, global CEO, he quit Accenture. Now you could have you should have asked him the question at the peak of your career, why what are you doing?
01:39:42
Speaker
And he quit to set up a company called Webvan. Webvan was the first online grocery company. Yeah. They raised 800 million dollars and they got nothing out it. think they were publicly listed also, right?
01:39:56
Speaker
I don't think they were publicly listed. The company tanked. right Because back then, you know there was no market for tech. But you know these were the first set of tech-first companies. but find is like The poster boy for that dot-com boom and bust.
01:40:12
Speaker
In my Accenture experience, you know, I was working with obviously a lot of these large or mid-sized companies in India, be it a cement manufacturer, be it a pharma company, be it an auto company.
01:40:23
Speaker
But we were also supporting us some of these legacy companies, traditional companies foray into newer segments using technology, right? So with one of my clients we built, which was very, very early,
01:40:36
Speaker
And online or the first electronic exchange to deal in stocks, right? We were replicating, what is this company called in the US? I'll get the name. ah You know, putting that in India and obviously it wasn't successful because the market was non-existent, the APIs weren't there, you know, putting it all together was a nightmare.
01:40:55
Speaker
And today look where Zeroda is, where Gro is, where some of the other platforms are, right? and this is back then so I got exposed to technology i got exposed to this venture ecosystem you know that you raise capital fairly early in my career right and in my head I started dabbling with the idea that I want to go into this side of the thing right and I was divided with two potential line um um or possible options.
01:41:24
Speaker
One was I wanted to work with sick companies. You know, at that point of time, there there used to be a forum called BIFR, Bureau of some some some Assets, which are written down assets, turned around opportunity, some reconstruction thing, right? I forgot that.
01:41:39
Speaker
And I said, giga there you know, find these companies, put your knowledge and rebuild those companies. And the second stage was, you know, the investing, mostly private equity. I think back then in India, there was nothing called PE, there's nothing called VC.
01:41:52
Speaker
And, you know, four or five people were just investing money. I said, you know, if there's an opportunity there as well, you know, wouldn't mind exploring. So I did interview back then with the Chris Capital with a bunch of these new age, they used to be called...
01:42:09
Speaker
tech incubators or accelerators at that point of time, a company called Ant Factory, all of them rejected me and they said, you know, we don't want to see it, we would prefer prefer an IDIM. So that rejection had a huge role to play, you know, starting GrowX.
01:42:26
Speaker
yeah and uh you know when we started grow x we formed ourselves as we called ourselves a management capital firm yeah we said we'll put in a lot of our time work with a certain category of entrepreneurs and these were creative entrepreneurs uh you know think of a chef think of a designer think of an architect we said we'll partner with this lot and help build uh you know large lifestyle businesses yeah And that was my, in a way, ah approach to set up grounds up VC business by not not putting a lot of money, but putting our time and working with early stage companies and building it up.
01:43:08
Speaker
And one thing led to the other, right? You know, we got written about, some people got to know about us, people started reaching out. So deal flow started picking up. And then, you know, we had a first couple of unicorns in India, you know, consumption story stacking up. And we said, now is a good time to kind of build your own angel portfolio.
01:43:27
Speaker
And we started investing and, you know, with investing, these are all great conversations in social get togethers, right? Isn't it? So, you know, you make a point that, you know, I made this investment.
01:43:39
Speaker
this is This is what the company does. The excitement is less about the founder, more about the idea. And, you know, these ideas are unique. You know, nobody's thinking who the founder is. And some people got excited, right? And they said, hey, next time you find a particular deal, let us know, you know, would like to tag along.
01:43:56
Speaker
And me and my partner back then, you know, we morphed into an angel club, a close group angel club. And that's how we did our first set of 23 investments.
01:44:06
Speaker
Yeah. And through that 23 investments, which were actually deployed over maybe six years, 2012, 2018. But the large part was
01:44:20
Speaker
we build our our own frameworks in terms of what's right, what do we want to focus on, what works, how do we support founders and so on and so forth. One piece that kind of came out of that was um we're good at with B2B businesses.
01:44:36
Speaker
These are the businesses we relate to, we can support better, we can contribute a strategy, we can contribute at revenue growth or acceleration, we can contribute with ops issues. And, you know, our money is doing some work.
01:44:49
Speaker
You know, you put 3 crores, 4 crores in a B2B company, lasts a few months. As opposed to a consumer company, 2-3 crores, you blink and the money's over, right? We said, this is safe. So, the 2019 when we set up our first fund, that was all B2B focused. We were probably one of the few guys who picked up B2B focused at that point of time and said, this is all we want to do.
01:45:08
Speaker
And we said within B2B, want to prefer founders building on the deeper end of technology. In our 23 investments, we had done a few hardware companies, consumer as well as be enterprise.
01:45:19
Speaker
We backed a drones company. We backed this GoPro Challenger, which is where Amar fits in. We backed that. We did a bunch of these software-first deep tech companies as well, building proprietary tech to solve for problems. you know Locus was one, Matt Sri Den was another, Condal was another, and a bunch of these companies. And that kind of gave us you know, enough to set up a first fund.
01:45:45
Speaker
So you asked a question, what got you motivated to angel invest? A, there was this deep passion to break into this space become a venture investor b the market was picking a momentum we were seeing signs of that c you know the work we had done i' done with accenture vertex working with these tech companies uh you know that played a role in terms of what's good what's not so the the mental framework was there so all these things contributed yeah and uh today i think uh
01:46:17
Speaker
I call ourselves a bootstrap VC. Yeah, so you know, we, we you know, we laid brick by brick and still doing it.
01:46:29
Speaker
Still a long way to go. Right. Amazing. um Okay. So ah that 2012 to 18 period when it was like an angel investing club, ah how were you meeting payroll, et cetera, paying rent, salary? No, so like no that's so but that's a very good question. That's a very good question. i think a lot of...
01:46:50
Speaker
we We had a consulting sort of a gig. You know, we were working with the mid-sized companies, helping them move from point A to point B. You know, these are long-term relationships. two year, three year and you know take a company public merger integration cycle.
01:47:07
Speaker
So that gave us some kitchen money. When we did the Angel Club, we did an element of fee based model. So we said anyone signing up, put up a small membership fee, which was very tiny, very insignificant, but that allowed us to put one resource and take the salary and the office rent.
01:47:27
Speaker
And the last part was coming out of our savings, Akshay. You know, we weren't at the stage where we were making money. Yeah. But the good thing we did, and we were the first to structure our Angel Club like that, we ran it pretty much like a fund.
01:47:47
Speaker
So sourcing was ours, diligence was ours, external investment committee, all the money was rolled into a single SPV. So, you know, single entry into the cap table of the founders company, ah performance based upside for us, which is carry lower than standard market, but there was a carry.
01:48:07
Speaker
And we said, if you're doing it, let's kind of do it properly. We probably was a, were the only, angel club with a carry model uh with uh uh you know like i said we ran it like a fund yeah so outside of on-demand capital everything else was like a fund yeah and that kind of helped us set up the first structured fund in 2019 so yeah savings had a role to play and true to kind of take care of that yeah inspiring uh so fund one 2019 how much was that
01:48:41
Speaker
ah All put together including our commitment 162 crores 162.5 maybe yeah. yeah And how many funds since then you are now at which? No so this is this is the so in June Club we label it as fund zero.
01:48:57
Speaker
Fund one was this 162 2019 vintage. In between fund one and fund two, we ran a bunch of syndicates, you know, think of it like an angel club only.
01:49:09
Speaker
You know, we were testing strategy for this particular fund. We were making sure we relevant while we raising the capital. ah So that was more like an angel club. So we called it as fund 1.5.
01:49:22
Speaker
And this is fund two. This is a 400 crore corpus. Yeah. ah you're doing the strategy ah you know which we spoke about. We're still raising. so if there are investors listening to the conversation are willing to kind of back us, you know please knock on our door.
01:49:39
Speaker
ah You need to declare in advance the size of the fund, right? like So what is the... 400 crores, I said. This current fund is 400 crores.
Starting a VC Fund: Strategies and Advice
01:49:48
Speaker
Which currently you're still in the process of finalizing. Yeah, we're midway. We've done a first close. We've started doing our first few investments.
01:49:56
Speaker
Like i said, the first announcement will go out next week, coming week, week off. yeah And yeah, we're in the game. Yeah. Yeah. um ah Is 400KD enough for Series B investments also? Because Series B would be like bigger checks, right? like i think I think reality is nothing is enough, right? Is it 400,000, 400,000, nothing is enough, right?
01:50:18
Speaker
you you You need to first figure out in terms of what's your ability to kind of raise capital, how much is good enough to generate a significant alpha for your investors. You know, that's the call, right? The second thing is for seed and Series B, we have very unique strategies.
01:50:34
Speaker
I'll tell you how. Seed, our ticket size could be anywhere between on an average, let's say eight crores. Yeah. And we want to lead those rounds.
01:50:46
Speaker
Seed is focused only on deep tech companies, hardware first approach to solve for a problem. And we are taking from our perspective reasonable ownership. Yeah. So, you know, 8 to 12% at that round.
01:50:58
Speaker
Yeah. Series B on the other side, we're not leading those rounds. We are co-investing alongside a lead investor. we are participating with 10 to 15 percent of the round in the making so if uh it's a 200 crore round our check size could be 20 to 30 crores yeah we are therefore ownership agnostic you know at 20 30 crores we'll probably get uh one percent two percent three percent of the company depending on what it is our idea is to find breakout companies
01:51:29
Speaker
at that inflection point from where we expect compounding to happen at series b you know building our thesis in terms of why series b is the product market fit why series b is the inflection point you know that's what we're trying to do so when we're not leading rounds uh you know 20 30 is good enough and uh both sides of the portfolio are looking to build 10 to 12 companies After 400 crores, therefore, 100 crores is going towards seed, 300 crores is going up to Series B. Yeah.
01:51:56
Speaker
When we do our next fund, you know, hopefully we'll increase the allocation of Series B to, you know, start being ownership sensitive if you like. Right. So, and we'll see.
01:52:07
Speaker
Yeah. But we've got our own frameworks in terms of how do we work with seed stage founders? How do we support Series B founders? Yeah. Yeah. okay yeah no good stuff i like the strategy it's fairly unique uh i hope people don't copy it after listening to you here no no no you know actually the deal is you know there are all the ideas are out there right it's about how you execute right you know yeah so execution is a key you know people can take their ideas if they execute better than us uh all the credit to them right so you know there's no ip around the idea yeah
01:52:44
Speaker
Okay. I want to ask a question which is somewhat personal, but hopefully there is ah listener interest also. How does one become a VC? And, you know, so say someone like me, I have, let's say, a network because I've been podcasting for five years now. So interview...
01:53:04
Speaker
my 50-odd founders, VCs, etc. But I don't have capital. yeah So how does someone like me get into this world and become a VC?
01:53:15
Speaker
um you know That's a very good question and I'm glad you asked a question with your context. you know Because in India, you know leave leave leave out the global markets, In India, there are examples where you know people with the similar ah sort of a context sort of background, they've gone out and raised their own funds. right One of them is Jivraj.
01:53:38
Speaker
A young guy runs his podcast, you know interviews the best and the best out there. yeah and worked with AngelList, but he was more ops through the ops and the money he was making. He started building his own angel portfolio, started slowly on syndicates and demonstrated through his podcast, the ability to ah connect and source the best of the deals. Right.
01:54:07
Speaker
And through the angel portfolio demonstrated ability to underwrite and build conviction around a certain set of ideas so and then when the portfolio started shaping up well you know that's another cherry on the pie if you like to say okay the entire flywheel is in motion right so he's saying my podcast is well listened there's a great audience a lot of people reach out to me for my advice for my capital now a structure to support i understand how to underwrite underwrite i understand how to kind of pick the best out there and you're seeing signs in the portfolio yeah another example is uh a junior vc yeah
01:54:51
Speaker
i But Aviral came from an engineering background, you know, with a good institute. He worked with funds, you know, the last one was with Venture Highway, GC. He participated in deals, led deals to build that shop.
01:55:04
Speaker
But his core machinery with AJVC, you know, was, still is obviously doing phenomenally well. And he is building a fund, right? And globally, there are a bunch of other examples. You know, Harry Stebbings is one big name that kind of comes to mind, right?
01:55:19
Speaker
And I'm sure there are So all of us know that where you're sitting to today, Akshay, as a podcaster, right? You know, you're moving, you're the mover or shaker of this industry, right? And um if you're able to demonstrate the other aspects, which is I know how to underwrite, I know how to support, money will follow.
01:55:45
Speaker
And my advice, Akshay, is... ah don't go out and look for let's say five hundred a 500 crore fund, you know, start small. 20 crores is also good, 20 crores on demand is also good because they're essentially building credibility, right?
01:56:02
Speaker
Second thing I'll say is don't be in a rush, you know, don't be in a rush to say that I'm going to build a 50 company portfolio in the next six months, yeah? because that means you're just kind of saying yes to anybody and everybody coming out. Due diligence is supremely important. Due diligence and conviction as to why you think the sector is going to do well.
01:56:21
Speaker
And in your case as a podcaster, you know, as a solo GP demonstrating as to you picking up bets where you can truly support and understand that area. Yeah. So, you know, build your portfolio at a time because what like but that time will happen, let's it's two year, three year, you build a 20 company portfolio, the initial ones will start showing results.
01:56:41
Speaker
both negative and positive. The learnings could therefore get incorporated into this. yeah the last thing i'll say is sorry The last thing I'll say is make sure you you build a network of experts around it.
01:56:57
Speaker
Network experts who've done this before, right? So, they not you're not outsourcing conviction building, you are helping understand portfolio construct.
01:57:09
Speaker
How do you allocate? relevance of ownership, you know, what rights to exercise. Conviction is yours, right? So, you know, because that is what you need to demonstrate, but you're getting the other network to make sure everything around that to set up a fund, you know, you get to learn and you get to leapfrog working with experts.
01:57:31
Speaker
Yeah. So you're saying start with a small fund. Uh, Start with a small fund or start with syndicates like on AngelList, etc. No, you know, let's say today you decide, Akshay, that you want to start a fund.
01:57:43
Speaker
Okay. but The process is you need to get a lawyer. You need to build your thesis. You need to apply to SEBI. You need to do raise investors. You find investors.
01:57:56
Speaker
This entire thing, irrespective of what the amount is, it's a 12-month to 15-month journey. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not that today you say you're applying to SEBI, SEBI will give you the the next day somebody is sitting with a pack full of money to say hello, right?
01:58:11
Speaker
So you you have that 12 month window, right? Or maybe a 24 month window. Use that time to run syndicates. you know The structure are available is easy to kind of build it. And you know you today you have a network. You know you may have interviewed hundreds of thousands of people, you know use that as a community to raise capital.
01:58:31
Speaker
yeah Yeah. And start with syndicates, you know, build your track record. And when you actually get your approvals, hit the market to raise institutional capital ah structured capital, blind pool capital, you know, you have something to showcase.
01:58:46
Speaker
Right, right. You have a track record. Okay. Interesting. um Okay, let me end with the this one last question. ah What are the opportunities you're bullish on? You have mentioned space and defense as two big opportunities.
01:59:00
Speaker
Are you still bullish on EVs? And what else are you bullish on ah from a deep tech perspective?
Investing in Diverse Sectors for Economic Growth
01:59:06
Speaker
Those are semiconductors, cybersecurity, you know, there's a lot of talk around nuclear, um you know, the entire core IP led manufacturing, you know, bunch of sectors, you know, and, you know like I said, we, we label it as modern industrials, right. And, you know, within that, there are a bunch of these sectors, which are relevant. Yeah.
01:59:27
Speaker
Are we prioritizing one over the other? The answer is no. right Are we saying that this year, let's do defense, next year, and let's do space again? The answer is no. right We equipping ourselves to react best to a high quality founder and make sure we're in the best place to take a decision earlier than the others.
01:59:46
Speaker
yeah What do you mean by IP led manufacturing? No, so, you know, let's say someone's manufacturing drones, right? Within drones, there are a bunch of these components which are going, right? So this is just not a pure assembly thing, right?
01:59:58
Speaker
And you, within those assembly, within those each of those components, there's an element of engineering which is required. Therefore, that is your IP. You're putting it all together. A lot of those components today are not available in India. You know, you source it through Taiwan, you source it through China or other parts of the world.
02:00:15
Speaker
You know, bring them into India, right? Does India need tariff protection from China to build manufacturing? You know, this obviously there is a all these geopolitical issues, right? you know Every leader comes in, the the leader comes in with his or her own perspective in terms of what's right for the country. yeah That perspective holds good for a certain period of time.
02:00:38
Speaker
The next one comes in, changes the game, right? i don't think so we need tariff protections i don't think so we need we need to be aware of what's happening around the world we and that's how you hit the uh uh the ground running and you know you're kind of opportunistic from a timing perspective right uh but you gotta make sure if you build something which is fundamentally strong and fundamentally relevant uh it needs to survive irrespective of these tariffs or no tariffs or whatever structure it is right but you cannot you I mean, yeah are we even close to China in terms of being competitive with them? So then how will we... no How will anything happen if there is no protection...
02:01:19
Speaker
first no no collaborate collaborate collaborate collaborate right you know we i don't think we should even compare ourselves with china uh china is way way ahead you know take uh any field right they're way way ahead i was reading somewhere you know that uh in china i need to pull out a list there are some 40 odd or maybe 50 odd uh space tech unicorns There are these 30, 40 semiconductor unicorns, right?
02:01:48
Speaker
in India, we have zero, right? There are these AI companies which are, you know, in a way beating the shit out of some of the American giants, right? You know, with less capital, um deep you know, deep sea, and few other things, right?
02:02:02
Speaker
And when you try those products, you can tell what's happening, right? I mean, I'm not an expert, but, you know, as a user, I can tell. So, I don't think so. We need to waste our time with... the Comparing us with China.
02:02:13
Speaker
yeah Admit we're behind.
02:02:18
Speaker
But we're sitting in a great time. This next decade or two is for India. Yeah. This China plus one, you know, it's sometimes it feels to me that we wasted a lot of time is been going doing the rounds for the last four or five years.
02:02:32
Speaker
We've not acted on it fast enough. We need to accelerate the pedal and you know build on our own. Right. And they have their own methods.
02:02:43
Speaker
um We need to find our own, right? So, you know, saying that, you know, I'm going to produce the next electric vehicle cheaper than China in the next two years, ah better quality is not going to happen, right?
02:02:57
Speaker
So, you know, there are other opportunities, I'm sure. You know, dig deep, find those, find relevant for India and build it up. this yeah I was listening to an interview of Raghuram Rajan, the former RBI governor, in which his stance was that why are you pushing manufacturing?
02:03:17
Speaker
And why are you trying to compete with China? And why are you trying to get semiconductor manufacturing in India, you will and waste decades and lot of capital. Instead, why don't you ah try and boost services?
02:03:30
Speaker
That is the advantage which India truly has. And ah you also i mean Do you agree with that? No, I don't. I think it's not decades wasted. it's These are decades invested.
02:03:44
Speaker
right ah If we want to be a global major economy, we need to fire on both cylinders, which is services as well as manufacturing.
02:04:00
Speaker
We have a problem brewing in India and that problem is our population. We need to make sure we generate meaningful opportunities for you know, our demographics and that will happen when we are doing services and manufacturing both, right?
02:04:20
Speaker
This is not one versus the other. i don't think so. Anyone is suggesting or any government is pursuing a path that lets de-prioritize services and let's just kind of focus on manufacturing. Nobody is doing that.
02:04:33
Speaker
The idea needs to be if services is working well for us, take it 10x more while attempting to take manufacturing and all the other good things related with that to a zero to one right so you know one to ten x there is zero to one here and you know build it right so uh i mean Who am I to disagree with Raghuram Rajan? But let's say yeah I am disagreeing and that's a very different perspective. Maybe there's more context to what he said, right?
02:05:03
Speaker
We need to ah read through or listen through the full thing. and But these are these aren't years in wasted. These are years in invested. Yeah. And what is the point of saying that, you know, we're behind, so let's not do it, right?
02:05:18
Speaker
That doesn't make sense, right? And, you know, I'll put another aspect to it. You know, we need to ah put sports in the mix. This has got nothing to do with the economy, right? But we need we need to make sure that we play more, you know, ah therefore we fight more and, you know, a resilient workforce comes into play, right?
02:05:36
Speaker
You know, take all superpowers, take all global economies, right? You know, China was nothing when it comes to Olympics, you know, in the last 20 years. the country to reckon with right across all aspects you know build it up top three yeah and uh you know we know where where are our athletes you know where are our swimmers you know find those develop those build that infra as well uh you know we have as we aspire to kind of host the olympics eight years 12 years from now you know we need to have our own army of athletes participating so you know we can't we we need to do everything right and even our services
02:06:15
Speaker
You know, someone could say that, you know, hospitality is huge in India, but a tiny country like Thailand, a tiny country like Vietnam, Sri Lanka, they are ahead of us.
02:06:28
Speaker
They're more service oriented. You know, the only good piece we've done is on GCC, IT services, you know, and now we need to just kind of... grab the ai wave and make sure all of these companies stay relevant right in times to come right so i know this was the last question you asked it was the longest response but this is what it is thank you so much for your time asis it was a real pleasure no enjoyed my conversation akshay thanks for uh hosting me and uh you know let's hope it works out for uh the listeners as well yeah