Rajul Garg
Founder & Managing Partner, Leo Capital. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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Rajul Garg is the founder and managing partner of Leo Capital, an early-stage cross-border venture capital firm. Prior to venture investing, he co-founded multi-billion-dollar technology companies Pine Labs and GlobalLogic.
Everything Rajul Garg said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Building a new Infosys or TCS is incredibly difficult today
“So I do think you have to always keep in mind the sort of the topicality, the times, like for example, you know, like you can't really build a new, I think it's hard to build like a new Infosys or TCS today. You know, there was a time through the eighties, ear…”
Over-attachment causes bad founder decisions, while over-detachment drains fire
“I think if you get too attached, I think you take wrong decisions. If you get too detached also, you know, then the company lacks the passion and the fire of an entrepreneur, right? So I think balancing the two is definitely a difficult thing to do.”
Leo Capital committed to investing in Bulbul during their first meeting
“I know one investment we did earlier this year, Bulbul, you know, that was the first meeting itself because I just, we loved the idea. We knew the entrepreneur from back to Sachin and all that. The team looked fabulous, right? So that was kind of first meeting…”
Founders can fix team and traction, but cannot fight a bad market
“Out of the three things, market, team and traction, market is something that you just can't fight with at all, right? I think teams you can still work with, you can fix them, you can hire more people you can chip and chop and things like that. Though it's hard…”
User acquisition is a money problem; retention is a product problem
“I believe that sort of the acquisition problem or how do you get more users to get into your app is kind of a solvable problem through money, right? So I think you raise VC funding, you advertise, you deal offers, this and that. So I think that, that is kind o…”
Intercity bus routes lack usage frequency to build sticky consumer apps
“I think intercity use case is not that frequent use case. You know, how many times would you go to Delhi Chandigarh or Delhi Jaipur, right? You'll go once a year, twice a year. So it lacks that frequency to build a sticky consumer product.”
India's venture landscape has only six or seven institutional seed funds
“So I think honestly, I think the Indian venture ecosystem is relatively small. So there are six, seven seed investors institutional you know, who are all, I actually, I find them, all of them pretty good.”
Investors could not predict Meesho's five-year scale in the 2015 seed round
“I felt for the business that he's chasing at that point of time. I felt he's the right guy to take it next one or two years. It was very hard to predict if he could take it all the way five years to the size of the business that it is today, right?”
New angel investors should spread capital across at least 10 startups
“I think what I've seen is where people get screwed is where they fall in love with one thing and put a lot of money behind one thing, and that doesn't work out. I feel if you take a portfolio approach, let's say you're an HNI and let's say you want to invest a…”
The only way to evaluate an investor is by their portfolio
“I think the only way you can really judge an investor in my view is to look at their portfolio. I think everything else is just talk, right? I mean, I can sort of talk endlessly, but you have to look where I put money in and that's what sort of defines me more…”
Both Pine Labs and GlobalLogic almost shut down in early years
“Like I remember there was a year where Pine Labs could totally shut down. There was a year where global logic could totally shut down, you know, but somehow survived and sort of we built on that.”
Rajul Garg exited Pine Labs as a shareholder in 2008
“Yeah, so I actually exited Pine Labs in 2008 as a shareholder. I hired Lokvir, who was the CEO who sort of built the company over the 15 years between 2003 and 18, but I exited as a shareholder in eight, nine when Sequoia came in.”
Leo Capital received 472 new investment pitches in a single quarter
“We were just compiling our quarterly report and I can tell you that last quarter we received 472 new investment pitches.”
Leo Capital's average investment ticket size is roughly $1 million
“Our average ticket size is about a million dollars.”
At least 10 of Rajul Garg's 28 angel investments completely failed
“Out of the 28 that I did, I think there's obviously a lot of them that didn't work out at all. They were like probably at least 10 companies which completely shut down. And offered zero return completely.”
Rajul Garg wrote the first investment check into Shuttl in 2015
“When we invested, so we, I was the first check back in 2015”
Early-stage investing is like recruiting and heavily relies on gut instinct
“I think investing, especially early stage investing, there is there is some science to it. There's some art to it as well. I think there's some experience to it as well, based on your own experiences and instincts. It's like recruiting, right? Let's say you're…”
GlobalLogic had only three months of runway left after 9/11
“So this is the time we had sort of global logic had started and we were still in the first year. And it was kind of a critical year for us. We had raised some funding as well. But we were struggling. We hadn't found product market fit and all that. So we had t…”
Most founders pitch Leo Capital without researching the firm's portfolio
“I see still a vast majority of entrepreneurs don't take even five minutes to go through sort of what we've done, maybe our existing portfolio on our website, there's some frequently asked questions.”
Institutional venture funds cannot operate within artificial one-week fundraising windows
“Some people say, okay, I'm sort of raising investment. You know, we have a one-week window. We have these investors come in. I mean, normally institutional investors can't work that way, you know?”
Rajul Garg made 28 angel investments between 2010 and 2015
“And I made almost 28 investments, including BabyGoGo, between 2010 and 2015.”
The other half of the tape: Rajul Garg's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 9 times in 4 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Siddhartha Ahluwalia 5Alok Mittal 3Kunal Khattar 1
Statements about Rajul Garg, by other people (1)
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
the Neon Show 9
2022 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Rajul's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NEON SHOWLEDGER | Founder & Managing Partner, Leo Capital | 1 | 22 | — | full record on the Neon Show → |