The Exchanges

Q And what have been the two top companies of yours, which you led in every fund since you came?

A So I did, uh, in Oonain, as I said, PTM, uh, you know, that was the, the top, uh, one returned the fund two times, and as far as Reliance was concerned, a little over that, uh, and, and the others were also all added up, uh, you know, they were, they were decent returns. Some were decent, some were good, and, you know, some duds as well. So, you know, that's, that was the case as far as Reliance was concerned. Uh, you know, and, um, this, uh, in fund three, when I joined Red Nexus, those would be, uh, Postman would be one, and, uh, the other one would be, um, you know, we, we'd invest into Roadrunner that acquired, got acquired by Somato, so we did a share swap there. Uh, fund four, I would definitely say, uh, you know, all on Academy, Zorro, and Jumbotail, and Hasura, and, you know, we're all, all strong companies, And goals are all strong companies as far as, uh, returning, uh, the capital for, you know, we will, it looks very, very, very possible that we will return over three, fifty million dollars of capital from that. You know, some are, some already marked up and, and are on track to be very large sizeable companies. Um, and fund five is early. We raised that last year, and I'm bullish about, uh, one of the investments that I've just done. It's not announced, so.

AI assessment note: “in fund three, when I joined Red Nexus, those would be, uh, Postman”

Q So what was in Gaurav's case that motivated or, you know, inspired you to give term sheet within 48 hours, do the IC meeting in between?

A I think just the guy. I think, and I love the team, and I was just, it's only Gaurav, it's Roman, and it is Emish, and so it's a, it's, it's a well-rounded team, number one. Uh, the fact that they were building strong, a free platform, which was building top of funnel, and their approach towards totally decentralized core structure, they had very strong platform thinking. Uh, you know, Gaurav, uh, previous venture hadn't worked out, uh, so he knew what not to do at this time around. And Roman obviously extremely bright chap, uh, you know, understood how, and he was an educator himself. I was able to draw in a lot of people. And when we invested in the company, there were companies only doing UPSC, right? And it was all free. And, uh, but we loved the approach that they were taking because it was a YouTube channel moving to a platform, uh, you know, and we knew that, uh, you know, that these guys could pull in the requisite kind of teachers. We were seeing some bit of early signs that, you know, That they were on to something special, right? And they, you know, the way they were, uh, kept their content, it was just like, you know, short, short bite-sized videos. People were consuming those. We were seeing some good metrics at that point of time that, you know, made, made it happen. But if you ask me, I'll put everything aside. It was just the team and, and, and the market opport…

AI assessment note: “I think just the guy. I think, and I love the team”

Q And Samir, if you could share, you know, what have been your learnings from the mistakes which you have done, which could be valuable to other entrepreneurs or VC listening to the podcast?

A Sure. I think the biggest thing is that you just cannot be fixated on opinion, right? I think when we are funding companies, there's a hypothesis on, in terms of what is the market, what is the product going to be? It's a, it's a hypothesis testing phase, right? So, uh, Where I've made my mistakes in, in, in terms of entrepreneurs is that they have a hypothesis, but to stick that, stick to that and make that the approach by which they will go out to and build the company. I think my failures in, in investing have been where I did not read the entrepreneur's ability to adjust to market. And they were too rigid and too stuck on the process and too overwhelmed with their approach or, or too into their approach and couldn't take outside and feedback. And, uh, they read the market very wrong. I would say, you know, that's, that's what, that's what happens. So, you know, get rid of rigidity. I think that's very, very, very.

AI assessment note: “my failures in, in investing have been where I did not read the entrepreneur's ability”

Q And how big you believe the test prep market in the country is today?

A I mean, there are many ways to slice and dice it, and I was reading the last, uh, there, so some KPMG report, which estimated to be four and a half billion in four, four, four and a half billion in 2016, which was early part of 2016. That's what the estimate was at that time. Uh, I believe my, my, my gut says there was another report. I actually came across about a month back, which was saying seven and a half billion dollar market. And, uh, my sense is potentially is global return because it's very unorganized, extremely unorganized, right? And some of those numbers don't get reported with smaller, small, very small coaching centers and all that stuff. Those numbers don't get reported at all. The main reasons for that, uh, Tax, tax issues, and all that. So none of that gets captured here. I think it's a fairly large market. If you look at across all exams, right, and today on academies, you know, I think about 23 categories of examinations, right. We started off with UPSC, but we have like NEAT, we have NDA exams, we have GMAT, all of those exam categories are now, each of them can be large verticals if you have to build them out. We're just putting all the Requisite people in and, uh, getting the platform up and running. We're doing closer to 2000 live classes with several hundred people in each of these classes now every day. So it's just starting, I think. But, you know, I,…

AI assessment note: “there was another report... which was saying seven and a half billion dollar market”

Q Do you find the pace slow because like evaluating those deals two, three months and What takes?

A You know, I, given the nature of business and, and, and you, we meet companies every single day. There are, there, I mean, my typical day has, I probably meet about five to six companies every day. Um, so obviously us, I am fairly selective what, what I want to pick up and do. And, um, so we, you know, end up doing things that you're very passionate about, right? And like, I'm fairly passionate about marketplaces and B to P commerce companies and, uh, Uh, you know, again, enterprise tech companies going global from India. So I think, you know, I, I stick to those kind of areas where there's some bit of competence, a circle of competence built in, um, and, and, and try and optimize around those spaces. Uh, I think so. I think, you know, if you're doing, you know, the way, way any of these funds are funds or any generally venture funds are structured is, you know, you would do, you, each partner would do about two to three investments every year. And, you know, And you do that for the, in every fund you would do about six to eight investments, because you invest in the first three years of the fund, and after that you go out and raise the next fund, because these eight companies, and if there are five partners or whatever, you know, there's, there's fatality which comes along the way. In some of those cases you'd be seeding them. So there, all of that exists, right? So I think th…

AI assessment note: “each partner would do about two to three investments every year”

Q Yeah. What, what do you think that as per your focus, you know?

A I haven't invested in many of those guys. I, you know, fortunately, unfortunately, I think market perception is, uh, unfortunately, I think fortunately I have made up effort to kind of potentially invest into founders. And of course I've got companies wrong. Please don't get it. Think that I've got everything perfectly fine. I made a lot of mistakes, but try to invest into founders, which are building a genuinely good business. Execution oriented. Good business. Timeless principles are not. Maybe we compromised growth around it. I haven't discounted to get GMV. I haven't, I've always charged commissions to get GMV. Try to get to an economic profitable model. At least we tried to. We haven't, uh, just raised money and just tried to get scale and just fool people around.

AI assessment note: “try to invest into founders, which are building a genuinely good business.”