1. finance
2. investing
3. venture capital

20
STARTREK
Swiggy,
Bengaluru, food
and desserts delivery,
$2
million
– from Accel,
SAIF
Sriharsha Majety
founder
Nandan Reddy
Rahul Jaimini
founder
founder
THE TIMES OF INDIA, BENGALURU
FRIDAY, APRIL 10, 2015
D
PERSON OF THE WEEK
DONE DEALS
P
ranay Chulet’s online classifieds portal Quikr raised
$150 million this week at a valuation close to a billion
dollars. That’s more than double its valuation in its
previous round just six months ago. It has been a busy year
for Chulet, with three rounds of funding and multiple
product launches as it fights OLX and other vertical
classifieds players in what has become a highly competitive
space. Chulet grew up in the small town of Dariba in
Rajasthan, where his father worked in the mining industry.
He went on to do chemical engineering from IIT Delhi, and
MBA from IIM Calcutta. He worked at consulting firms PwC
and Booz Allen Hamilton before the entrepreneurship bug
bit him. In 2007, he founded Excellere that developed webbased educational products, and a year later, Quikr. Chulet’s
focus on product innovation is paying off. Niren Shah, MD of
Norwest Venture Partners, which invested in Quikr in 2009,
admires Chulet’s execution of technology and products. “He
has been exceptional at building the team, reading market
trends and positioning the company to move accordingly.”
Quikr, Mumbai, online
classifieds portal, founded
by Pranay Chulet,
$150 million – from
Norwest, Omidyar, Matrix,
eBay, Nokia Growth
Sustainable Agrocommercial Finance,
Mumbai, NBFC with focus
on agri lending, promoted
by Jain Irrigation Systems,
$6.8 million – from
International Finance
Corporation
OTHERS WHO RAISED FUNDS
Ecozen Solutions ($1 million), Bluegape ($200,000),
PriceJugaad ($160,000)
eepthi Anand did a Master's in biomedical engineering from New Jersey and
returned to India in 2002 to
start a venture to develop a lowcost telemedicine solution. She
then co-founded the Asiatic
Clinical Research to foster
new drug development. Her
latest is Valencia Nutrition, a
Bengaluru-based venture creating healthy eating and drinking
choices. The first product
is multi-nutrient enriched,
low-calorie water. “Given
the rising mortality rates
due to lifestyle diseases,
I wanted to move from
disease management
to prevention. Food is
key to that,” she says.
EUREKA
MOMENTS
DEEPTHI ANAND: HEALTHY EATING
P
iyush Agarwal’s family in Bhopal couldn't
afford to send him to Kota
for IIT-JEE coaching. So he
learned on his own, made it
to IIT Kanpur and went on to do
Masters in Stanford University.
This experience set Agarwal thinking about helping students in small
towns get access to quality
education. His SuperProfs,
a video platform of the
best professors in the
country which uses a
low bandwidth technology that Agarwal
developed, raised $3
million late last year.
If you are taking CA,
UPSC or Gate, just
check it out.
PIYUSH AGARWAL: QUALITY PROFS
Source: TRACXN!
HOTTEST EARLY-STAGE
UNDER
INVESTORS 40
SANDHYA HEGDE, 29 |
PARTNER AT KHOSLA IMPACT
“I
am an engineer at heart and an
investor by accident.” That’s
how Sandhya Hegde describes
herself. After graduating from IIT
Bombay in 2007, she went to work
at McKinsey and Sequoia India
before returning to Stanford
Business School for an MBA
degree. Now she is a general
partner at Khosla Impact, an
emerging market VC fund for
tech entrepreneurs building
transformative businesses. It’s
backed by Vinod Khosla. Hegde
says being one of the few
women GPs investing in India,
she’d love to see more diversity
in the ecosystem. “I didn’t set
out to be a VC, I got exposure
to the industry at Sequoia
Capital, where I started
as an analyst in 2009.” At
Khosla Impact, her investments include Hippocampus, Simpa Networks,
Bboxx, Sunfunder,
among others.
As the Indian startup
ecosystem evolves, it
will need a stellar set of
early-stage investors
who can become the
backbone of the many
young companies being
built. Samidha Sharma
brings to you some of
the hottest under-40
investors in the Indian
venture community
today, those who have
been spotting the big
breakout ideas
especially in
the consumer
internet space
How did FreeCharge happen?
ANAND DANIEL, 39 | MD AT ACCEL PARTNERS
D
aniel’s big win came when TaxiForSure was sold to rival Ola for
$200 million recently, a successful exit for him and the fund. Some
of his other investments at Accel include healthcare venture Forus
Health, education tech startup Pristine, and food delivery platform
Swiggy. He was at Flybridge Capital Partners, a VC fund in Boston,
before joining Accel. Daniel says he got into the venture business to be
in the midst of technology innovations, learn how to apply these innovations to transform businesses, and partner with smart entrepreneurs
to build valuable companies. He’s been with Accel now for five years,
and became a partner at the firm in 2014. Says a founder of an Accel
portfolio company, “Anand constantly seeks innovation on product rather than chase-metrics - which is a great trait in an investor.”
TARUN DAVDA, 35 |
DIRECTOR AT MATRIX PARTNERS INDIA
A
nand spent ten years in Silicon Valley, studying at Stanford for
his MBA, working for VMware and finally setting up his own
company Tagtile which he sold to Facebook in 2012. He moved from
the Bay Area in June 2013 to be a part of the Sequoia India team. VC
firms are increasingly looking for young entrepreneurs to don the
investor hat and Anand fits the bill perfectly. “Building a company
is an incredibly hard and lonely work. I think that background has
been very helpful for me in understanding what young founders are
going through and (I'll) hopefully be able to help them navigate the
ups and downs of a startup life,” he says. Startup founders say they
benefit from Anand’s high energy and deep insight into products.
His entrepreneur tag is seen as a big plus. A self-admitted geek,
this Delhi lad led Sequoia’s investment in the express delivery
venture Grofers; he also works with other portfolio companies like
FreeCharge (sold to Snapdeal), Appier, and Zomato.
D
MUKUL SINGHAL, 35 | PRINCIPAL AT SAIF PARTNERS
I
n 2006, Singhal and a batchmate from IIT Kanpur were looking to raise funds for
their startup when they met Alok Mittal who was at the time launching the India
operations for the Silicon Valley-based fund Canaan Partners. Singhal ended up
joining Mittal after a few months when he found his startup idea was not taking off.
After three years at Canaan, Singhal moved to the Asia-focused fund SAIF Partners,
where he has over the past five years led several early-stage deals such as Toppr,
TravelTriangle, Zoomo, DSYN Technologies (App Iterate), Niffler, NoBroker, and Qikwell. An entrepreneur says Singhal is a lone wolf, sourcing deals all by himself from
start to finish. He moves very swiftly and takes decisions equally fast, a great asset
in an investor in today’s competitive environment. With SAIF’s push at seed- and
early-stage investments, Singhal has become the most aggressive VC in terms of
the number of deals he’s closed in the past year. “Being a venture investor today is
challenging because results (exits) usually come in very late. One gets to know very
late in life whether you are a good VC or not,” he says.
avda headed Stepout.com, a venturebacked online dating startup that was acquired by Match.com, before he joined Matrix
in 2012. Prior to Stepout, he built BigRock.
com, which was acquired by Nasdaq-listed
Endurance Group. He has a feet-on-the-street
approach while identifying and investing
in startups, and is credited with taking an
early bet on Ola, in 2013, a time when not
many investors were willing to take a wager
on a transportation startup. Founders who
have interacted with him say he has a great
rapport with entrepreneurs not only from his
portfolio companies but from
those outside it. “I’m an
intrapreneur-turned-VC,
having built two internet
businesses,” he says.
Davda was recently promoted to director at the
firm, and is currently
chasing early-stage
deals in the consumer
internet space. His
portfolio includes Practo,
WeAreHolidays, GrownOut
and Stayzilla, besides
Ola. What has
helped Davda is
his operating
experience
across all
functional
areas and
his deep
knowledge
of the
internet
space.
GAUTAM MAGO, 36 |
MD AT SEQUOIA CAPITAL INDIA
P
rior to joining Nexus, Bhushan was at the beauty
and fashion e-commerce site Urbantouch
(sold to FashionAndYou.com) where
he built and led the portal’s category
functions. He has a mix of operational and consulting experience
that he gained at Bain & Company in
San Francisco and New Delhi. His
investments at Nexus include some of
the fastest-growing tech startups
including Housing, TinyOwl
and Delhivery. Young entrepreneurs like this 34-yearold for his friendly
demeanour. “He’s
extremely sincere and
very structured in his
approach, someone
who can take a lot of
responsibilities and
grow his team along
with him,” says Abhishek
Goyal, founder of Urbantouch.
OTHER HOT PICKS
M
BRIJ BHUSHAN, 34 |
VP AT NEXUS VENTURE PARTNERS
RITESH
BANGLANI,
SUMIT
JAIN,
KARAN
MOHLA, 33
SHAILESH
LAKHANI, 36
37 | Partner,
Helion Venture Partners
35 | Principal,
Kalaari
Capital
| Executive
Director, IDG
Ventures India
| MD at
Sequoia
Capital India
Investments
Investments
Investments
Investments
TaxiForSure,
Housing,
TalentPad,
Truly Madly
Triphobo,
Aurus,
Vakilsearch
Vserv, Tripoto,
PeelWorks,
FirstCry
Truecaller,
Cardekho,
Healthkart
VIKRAM VAIDYANATHAN, 33 |
MD AT MATRIX PARTNERS INDIA
H
e is one of the youngest non-founder
MDs in a VC fund. Vaidyanathan, 33, has
spent five years at Matrix largely focusing on
mobile internet, software-as-a-service (SaaS),
and education tech. He led investments in
Newshunt, Mswipe, Woo, Red Monster and
LimeTray, among others. He started as a
programmer at IT giants IBM and Cisco, and
then took up consultancy at McKinsey after
an MBA from IIM-Bangalore. Being a young
investor in a high-growth market is challenging, he says. “It’s tough to drown out the noise
and make good decisions in a short period
of time; it requires tremendous discipline
which I’m trying to develop.” Vaidyanathan is
regarded highly among his VC peers as well
as partners at other firms.
BA in Philosophy,
MBA dropout,
$400 million deal
Anand J & Shilpa Phadnis | TNN
ABHEEK ANAND 35, PRINCIPAL AT SEQUOIA CAPITAL INDIA
ago became an MD just a few months ago at the
India unit of the Silicon Valley fund Sequoia Capital
where he’s been involved in the firm’s most high profile
early-stage tech deals. With a laudable list of companies in his portfolio – such as Bankbazaar, Practo, Ola,
Oyo Rooms, Mobikwik, TinyOwl and Capitalfloat – he
is known among entrepreneurs and peers as someone
with an eye for identifying big ideas early on. He
comes from a consulting background, having worked
at McKinsey in India and the US. Mago joined Sequoia
eight years ago when he was just 28. "The ability to
interact with the smartest entrepreneurs and be a business partner through their early journeys is the reason I
remain excited every day," he says.
Kunal Shah has just sold his four-year-old online
mobile recharge venture FreeCharge, which he
started with friend Sandeep Tandon, to Snapdeal
for a whopping $400 million, the largest deal to
date in India’s consumer internet space
LEE FIXEL, 35 |
PARTNER AT TIGER GLOBAL MANAGEMENT
T
his media shy and ultra low-key 35-yearold would hardly qualify as an “upcoming”
investor, given his enviable list of companies
in his portfolio, including Flipkart and Ola. Fixel
is arguably the rockstar internet investor currently. He established a
beachhead in India back
in 2007 with his investment in travel portal
Makemytrip. Famous
for having put $9 million
in e-commerce biggie
Flipkart (valued at over
$11 billion now) in 2009,
Fixel’s investment style
has gained currency over
the years. Indian founders like how he comes in early and backs companies until the growth stages. Says a founder
whose company raised capital from Tiger, “The
size and speed of Lee’s bets are so much more
aggressive compared to traditional VCs. This is
one of the biggest reasons most front-runners
in any category end up working with him and
Tiger.” Fixel has been with Tiger for ten years
and co-heads its venture capital business
globally. He has made investments in job site
Glassdoor, eyewear retailer Warby Parker,
and social networking service Nextdoor in the
US. His more recent early-stage deals in India
include News in Shorts, Grofers and Roposo.
(Those we have picked haven't been in the business for long enough to show major exits so we have based our choices on other factors, including their early investments in promising
consumer internet companies, praise from entrepreneurs as well as from fellow VCs, and quick promotion to being a partner in the firm)
The idea came when Sandeep
(Tandon) and I were doing a marketing solutions company. Sandeep is an engineer by training,
and has built businesses, and I
have known him for 15 years. We
learnt about interesting marketing techniques that drive consumer behaviour. We started PaisaBack that ran cashback and
promotional discount campaigns
for organized retailers. While
running this, I found that 95% of
the invoicing of a mobile store
was recharges. I was always a
postpaid consumer and never
knew that recharges were that
big. I realized then that a huge
amount of traction could be
gained in online recharges, especially if we could somehow make
it free. FreeCharge was launched
on August 15, 2011. One of our
early partners was McDonald’s
and this helped build our consumer base quickly. When we
started, there weren't many believers in this category. Even today it’s not mentioned in any ecommerce report as a category. It
feels great to be a pioneer. There
are at least six clones now.
Were the incentives you offered
key to your success?
We believe behaviour changes
happen when there is an incentive
or motivation of some sort. Consumers who are transacting offline need a little incentive to
come online and transact. Giving
coupons and subsidizing things
make people do that. For the
youth, it helps them multiply
their pocket money. If you can get
an extra burger with a recharge,
it’s a big thing for a coffee date.
coming into our company. We see
amazing value coming from Bengaluru. But I think the talent
pool is be ginning to emerge
everywhere.
How did you come to be an entrepreneur?
The question should be the other
way. How did I end up becoming
an employee and not an entrepreneur from day one! Because I hail
from a family of entrepreneurs
and never wanted to work for
somebody. But as it turned out,
my first job, in marketing, was
more like entrepreneurship. And
the transition to being a full entrepreneur was natural.
You did philosophy in college,
and then dropped out of your
management course. What
drove you to take those steps?
PayPal founder Peter Thiel is a
philosophy graduate. Philosophy
matters in life. As for dropping
out, I was looking to learn the
practicalities of running a business and I found little of that in
college. But that is just me. It is
not a recommendation for anybody else. Everybody learns differently. I was more inclined to
learn practically than through
theorems that were not relevant
in all contexts.
Based on your experience, what
advice would you give aspiring
entrepreneurs?
If I were going home, it would be
a sellout. I’m not going home. I’m
continuing in FreeCharge as CEO,
doing what I want to do, which is
to build a great ecosystem. We
have taken big targets. We grew
1,000% last year and we want to
do even more this year.
My biggest learning is that you
should have a ‘never say die’ spirit. That is the crux of entrepreneurship. I don’t think talent or
smartness can make you successful. It is the ability to strive and
survive every day that makes an
entrepreneur. When you focus on
the customer, you will realize that
building a product is about making it a seamless and great experience. Every single time a transaction fails, it changes you as an
entrepreneur. Relentlessly pursuing perfection makes you a different person. When you talk constantly to customers, you receive
feedback that helps you develop a
better product. There are millions
and millions of people depending
and believing in you. And that is
your kick every day. You want to
do better than yesterday. I always
feel that money has to be a byproduct. Any entrepreneur who tries
to optimize capital rarely makes
money. If you chase perfection,
money will follow.
Why did FreeCharge move from
Mumbai to Bengaluru?
How many more ventures do
you see yourself doing?
Bengaluru brings a very interesting mix of people who have
worked in product companies
and who have worked abroad. No
other city has that level of talent.
We had people from Zynga games
I don’t know. I’m not done with the
journey yet. I’m sure we are going
to build something really big. I
know entrepreneurs who started
at the age of 62 and became very
successful. I am just 35.
How long can you keep giving
such incentives?
Incentives are sponsor advertisements from other companies. We
merely position the incentive.
We create footfalls for them.
Merchants pay us to list their
coupons.
Why did you sell out?
Kunal Shah:
Building a
Blockbuster
My biggest learning
is that you should
have a `never say
die’ spirit. That is the
crux of entrepreneurship.