The Ledger, every show

“India doesn't have a middle class boom. It, however, has a huge lower middle class boom. Right. A huge number of people entering at 20, 25,000 rupees monthly income.”

“When we do a brand, we do believe that it might take longer, but the size of the outcome will be no less than the size of a social media or a hotshot tech company.”

“Their repayment rates are far better than multinational corporates today in India.”

“Contrary to perception and you know the common consensus between VCs today, we think that People will do self-service SaaS. So Indians have been written off. We believe that nobody will do self-service SaaS. We think these people will do self-service SaaS.”

“For a investor or an entrepreneur, This is a good audience because this then again, like I said earlier, The expenditure people will do is not restricted by the individual's income. It is about the income of the individual and the parents.”

“Particularly when the business needs a three year, four year discovery phase for PMF, then being too sought after by investors actually works against you.”

“So I feel that next 20 years, The whole rest of the world, which is not in the developed countries will be digitized by India. The developed countries were digitized by America. Granted the next wave is ours because we are the only talent pool.”

“10 years later, it'll be unaffordable unless you're super rich, you will not have any such thing.”

“Because I don't think sitting in India I have an edge in playing the global AI. Global AI boom. Yeah. I don't think so. I would love to. I wish I wasn't here. I was there, but I am where I am.”

“So many unicorn founders, all they have achieved is maybe a 2,000,005 1,000,010 million secondary exit, and they have nothing else to show for it. Now that is nothing. I mean, most people, good qualified people make more than that in a ESOP of a large, let's s…”

“Most founders, when they dilute too much, they become irrelevant and get kicked out of their companies in 10 years, which happened to some of the names that we mentioned, and then they don't get the remaining 40 X because you know, the real juice is when you b…”

“And how, how much capital in a lifetime, maybe in India, you probably don't want to raise more than fifty million capital ever.”

“Not having a lot of hundred million checks into India. Net net will be positive for everybody. Everybody. Yeah. I think I wouldn't regret on the contrary. If they come, then I would wonder what, like, you know, maybe, maybe we need to simply as a policy, start…”

“In SAS particularly, I feel increasingly it's happening in many businesses. There will be enough MNA opportunities also, because like I said, in 10 years rest of the world becomes a more important MNA market than just pure America.”

“In India, public markets are giving more premium valuation to many of these companies than private markets”

“Indian founders have to, just by the sheer number of probability, just because we are so many Indians ourselves, right? We will build our own Facebook.”

“IT salaries haven't grown at all in the last 20 years, right?”

“None of us, you know seed funds have discovered a unicorn. Ever in these spaces, right? So if you look at you know, our good friends Karthik at Bloom, Orias, Rehan, none of us have so far got a unicorn, right?”

“Like I said, right, I mean, I am simply buying a lottery because I have no ability to move that company, right? The winner is not the smartest guy or the best product. The winner is the most well-funded there.”

“For 11 years, we've known that three, four deals a year per person. Is the ideal number to maintain discretion. The moment you start doing 10 deals a year, it's sort of you can't really maintain the same quality.”

“And I think kids will go outside their budgets to buy some of these things, which can show, right? So vanity and luxury I think in India, it's less of luxury, more of vanity.”

“If I'm not early, I'm not relevant. For me, being early is an existential problem, right? I mean, after the space is discovered. So now everybody knows neobanks, right? People have been investing in new banks even till today, right? Now we've got still getting…”

“Being a little bit ahead of time, a little bit contrarian also gives you the automatically access to better quality founders. Whereas if I want to fund the next credit card company, I mean, like, you know, the founders will be today founders will be mercenarie…”

“I mean, even companies like Nica, PTM, Zomato, they have still remained in even by and large, a single digit billion outcome. And these are horizontals. They're not a lot of them. Most other unicorns also are in the one or two billion range.”

“One of the companies that I really missed was MPL. Sai, we had funded his previous company. This Creo, the hardware phone, smartphone, right? And he came back and he raised a five million round. Now, of course, there was Bnext, there was Sequoia, Sequoia was l…”

“So hopefully we'll see Lending Cart and Sugar first. There's a company called Okter. It's a home automation. They build these Paytm sound boxes, the profitable company, electronics outsourcing maybe in 18 months, they'll go a little bit later and maybe in 36 m…”

“They have already like a hundred million, Plus revenue run rate will break even in 12 months.”

“In 2010 we raised our fund too, and one of the first companies that we tried to invest in was a company called Fasos, Rebel Foods. It just so happened that Fasos was very young, and Jaideep had just returned from McKinsey in London. The partnership felt that, …”

“And in fact, I would say, venture to say that Myntra user experience is significantly better than even Amazon, right?”

“You know, the thing is that in social media, there is no mediocre outcome. You can only die creating a Facebook, right?”

“I strongly believe that people, just the way that, you know, we don't go to a D-Mart to buy fashion. We don't go to a, you know superstore, supermarket to buy cosmetics. We go to a specialized store, right? How often do we buy shoes in shopper stock? We actual…”

“And eventually financial services is not about great technology, it's not about great algorithms, it's not about great data science, it is simply about great product and great service, right?”

“I am saying a startup, it starts next year, which will probably prove a product market fit, fit in less than two years from now, three years from now. At that point, maybe you don't need to go offline. Maybe you don't need to go and knock the doors of Supersto…”

“Frankly, I think bigger than all offline retail companies put together, right, in the revenues the credit goes to Flipkart, right?”

“Starbucks per cup of coffee is more expensive in dollars than in U.S. Also. Like apparently, 10, 20% more expensive on a dollar basis. Not purchasing power parity. Pure dollar basis. India is expensive.”

“So the lesson learned in fund one for modeling perspective, you have to have high ownership, even ownership, right? You can't have a fluctuating somewhere, two percent, somewhere, 10% model. You decide, okay, my ownership is 10, it's 15 or it's five. Stick to …”

“Let's say, yeah, in Indian rupees equivalent, yes, we've returned six, six, 5.9 X net to the LPs.”

“So there's a power law about who succeeds, but within that power law, there's another power law. There's another power law. So out of your four winners, one winner will be outsized.”

“So for example, fund two is marked up at six X, but at 10 X, but six out of that 10 is share chat.”

“India is a large enough country that we don't have to worry that every space will have only one winner. You can have two or three in practically every space, every segment.”

“They're like, Almost some 25, 30 crores of revenue monthly, monthly net revenue, right?”

“Because iPhone is the fastest growing phone in the country and it keeps becoming expensive.”

“Suddenly I start doing Silicon Valley, quasi Indian, NRI Indian or Indian kids going abroad. I don't want to fund them. I mean, that's, I may fund one or two because I know them so well, but that's not your DNA. No, it won't be. And that my portfolio won't be …”

“The company can probably go to IPO in three years and may raise one maximum two rounds.”

“The people, that's the first e-commerce purchase, but from there to go buy online, right? You know, take the risk of buying online when you have very limited amount of money would be a far away transaction. But then consuming content where you don't pay anythi…”

“I mean, it's been like six years since Amazon entered, they still haven't taken the number one spot conclusively.”

“I don't think that more than 10% of people who go and buy clothes at Decathlon are buying it for sports. They're buying it just for wearing everyday because it's reasonably priced stuff, right?”

“More importantly is that the amount of money needed by a company to reach a decent series A, let's say, which is sort of at least, you know, five to eight million dollars series A the amount of money to reach there is sort of becoming like one and a half two m…”