The Exchanges

Q And how is Indonesia a market as compared to India in terms of SaaS adoption and willingness to pay for SaaS?

A So I think, um, that's a great question, Sadam, and you know, something that we've asked ourselves a lot of times as well. Um, I would say the, the adoption is actually a bit similar to India, like it's just starting to happen. Um, I think just like India had its own geo movement, like, um, Indonesia has had not a telco-led movement, but more, uh, uh, tech unicorn-led movement. With the likes of Gojek and Grab and Toppedia and Bukalapak sort of opening up the market and educating the market towards tech, right? Like, um, all of these platforms have, um, hundred million plus sort of users, and, um, the total population of Indonesia is around two sixty million, and the addressable population from, from, you know, a tech VC perspective is maybe around one 50 max one eighty million. Right? So significant amount of adoption has already happened on the consumer side, which is sort of seeping into the SME side, and now is sort of the best time to build these kind of SME, um, digitization platforms, right? So from an adoption perspective, very similar to where India sits today, but from a willingness to pay perspective, it's very interesting. I think the willingness to pay is a bit higher than in India, um, thanks to sort of the higher GDP per capita. Um, that Indonesia sits at. Um, but again, that there's a slight nuance, you know, Indonesia is mostly led by micro, um, businesses and …

AI assessment note: “adoption is actually a bit similar to India... willingness to pay is a bit higher”

Q And in case of some of these companies, let's say Hasura and, uh, TestSigma, what were their metrics at very early stage that caught your eye in?

A Oh, okay. Metrics. So actually, Siddharth, like we're seed stage investors. So we, we are sort of, as I mentioned, we are the first institutional check into these companies. So when we meet them, uh, forget metrics, sometimes they don't have a product. So when, when I met actually the Hasura founders, um, they were building, uh, or they were planning to build a A backend as a service. Um, and at that time, they were running what, you know, we guys call like a dev shop. So they were building some, you know, apps for some people, and on the side, they were building this product, and I really found the team very interesting, and I found what they were starting to build quite interesting. Uh, but that said, I didn't invest in them at that time. So we kept in touch. For another five, six months because I wanted to see how they evolve on this platform and what, how their thinking evolves in the So actually when they came to me again after five, six months and we discussed, uh, they hadn't reached any particular metrics in terms of, you know, customers or revenue or ARR or ACVs or whatever. Um, all they had was maybe like a few beta users who were just starting to use the platform. But what was more important was, uh, a vision, right? Like now they had a vision. That, hey, we want to make back-end development easy for, you know, mid to high, uh, sort of, experience depths, right? So t…

AI assessment note: “they hadn't reached any particular metrics in terms of, you know, customers or revenue”

Q So is there a playbook available on web where SaaS founders can look out for various GTM strategies or by talking to different people?

A Nothing that I've come across right now because I think this also keeps changing, Siddharth, right? Like, I mean, the GTM pre-COVID is probably very different from GTM even post-COVID, right? Um, so I think, like, it changes every six months, I would say. The market changes, you know, the channel changes. Like, the reason why it changes is because the channel changes, right? Like, and the latest buzzwords change, right? Like, at some point, you're, you know, right now, let's say, let me tell you about a specific example, um, within MarTech, right? Like, let's say you were building a MarTech solution. Um, you know, probably 12 months ago, you would have talked about lead generation, You know, closing velocity, um, even things like expansion and, you know, inside sales and, and content led strategy, et cetera, right? Like sort of the HubSpot methodology. But now it's all about what they call demand gen, right? So the buzzword has changed from lead gen to demand gen. Why? Because it's like, it doesn't matter whether you have a lead, but you need to have a qualified lead. You need to know whether there's real pull, whether there's demand. Otherwise you'll be wasting your time, sort of trying to close a customer that's not going to close, right? Um, then secondly, the, the channel changed, right? Like channel used to be content, blogs, et cetera, earlier. Now there's just so much of…

AI assessment note: “Nothing that I've come across right now because I think this also keeps changing”

Q And can you share a few, you know, examples from your portfolio, or even just one example from your portfolio, which you loved on GTM?

A Hmm. Yeah, this one is actually very close to my heart, because, as I said, like, you know, I'm a developer by training, and, you know, I love some of the dev tools in general, and so Hasura, I think, they came up with this GTM, um, somewhere sort of a couple of years into, into their journey, right? And when we invested in them, like, they did not have this GTM in place, but they came up with this unique open-source-led GTM, right? And within DevTools, I think one thing I've realized is that there's a lot of power in this open source GDM, right? Um, again, it comes with its pros and cons, but for a company like Hasura, um, which was trying to sort of get mid to high tier sort of developers onto the platform, uh, it was very important to get that initial mindshare from the top tier devs, right, and get Sort of the KOLs to, um, testify that, yes, this is the right platform. This is the right way to build your GraphQL APIs. I won't bore people with, like, what Hasura is, because unless you're a geek, you'd probably not be very interested, but, uh, you can go check them out on Hasura.io. But, um, one thing they realized was that they need to get these KOLs to sort of give Uh, lend credibility to their platform. And the best way that they discovered, uh, during the journey to do this was by taking an open source led approach. So open source was sort of in their DNA from day one bec…

AI assessment note: “and so Hasura, I think, they came up with this GTM”

Q You worked in Pi, which was acquired by Google. What made you shift to VC side? Like, it's a very different path for a techie to go into VC, and that too, not in India, in Singapore.

A Yeah. So, Pi was actually in Singapore, so I was already in Singapore, uh, at that time. Uh, what made me switch to VC was lack of options, Siddharth. So, when, when Pi got acquired by Google, uh, You know, I was, I was actually working with them while I was doing my business school. Um, and so when my plan was, you know, that right after business school, I'll just go and, you know, work with them. It was a fabulous team. I loved the team. Um, you know, we were growing very quickly and my plan was, you know, this is good because that's what I had come to Singapore for to get sort of that a bit more broader experience, uh, international experience. And so this was perfect for me. You know, we were, Going at the US and EU and sort of, um, developed markets, and I was learning a lot, right, on GTM and product and success, customer success.

AI assessment note: “what made me switch to VC was lack of options, Siddharth.”

Q So if you can share some details, what, what's the typical ACV in India for, let's say, a company like, uh, you know, Class Plus compared to Indonesia and Japan, and how do you tend to focus? Because it cannot be like equal focus on each market.

A Yeah, that's, that's a tough one, right? Like, I think, um, most, most VCs tend to focus on just one market and sort of go deeper into it, and I think that's been sort of the traditional, uh, approach towards VC. I think when we, when we started this fund, the two managing partners that are based in Japan, and they started the fund, they always had this vision of being a broader sort of Asia fund. And I think, uh, that attracted the, a similar set of people, including me, who joined them on this vision, right? Um, and I think we really enjoy being this, uh, sort of cross-border VC. Um, we like sort of connecting dots from different markets. Um, it definitely comes with its own strengths, um, where we can sort of leverage on knowledge from each market and sort of apply it to another market. Or leverage our networks across these multiple markets. But it also comes with its weaknesses, right? And one of them is, is this, ah, exact problem that you mentioned, how to, how to focus on so many markets at the same time, right? Um, I think one thing that we have done is we've been disciplined. Um, we've sort of focused on a few sectors as, as you can see, like, we are focused on SaaS, and that gives us the, the opportunity to not get confused or not get straight away, um, and start looking at, you know, the next, uh, I don't know, food delivery company, um, and so on and so forth, right…

AI assessment note: “one of them is, is this, ah, exact problem that you mentioned, how to, how to focus”