Insight
Khandelwal: TAM Matters Less for Early Category-Defining Startups
“So I think I put left focus on TAM in the beginning because of the phase, I mean, it is very difficult. If you're investing in a known category, you always know what is the market that exists. It's all the companies which you try to invest or what you try to t…”
Insight
Angel investors should exit when startups hit $150M to $250M valuations
“I think if you're coming at whatever angel round or a seat round, I think the right size for you to exit, I generally feel it is between whatever, one 50 to 200 to two fifty million.”
Disclosure
Khandelwal: Prefer Founders Targeting Very Specific, Narrow Problems
“I rather like the founders who want to go very specific and there is a problem which is very small and very specific.”
Insight
Khandelwal: Large Indian B2B SaaS Companies Must Target US and Europe
“If you want to become a large, big powerhouse of a software company out of India, ah, still you need to take, tackle the topic, ah, and have this, ah, go to market feature, the U.S. And, as well, in, in Europe, in the foreign part of your, the game plan, rathe…”
Insight
Indian startups are expanding into PaaS, but infrastructure still lags
“Where India has largely been successful is at the top level, which is building those applications with SaaS layers and all those things.
So what has changed in the last few years is even in the past, it was predominantly SaaS. Now we start seeing a lot of com…”
Insight
Khandelwal: Consumer brands underuse tech beyond online sales, creating huge opportunity
“I still feel that they use less of tech still.
they are still, predominantly, of course, they use this, make the sales online, and they make it available online, and all those things, but I am really looking at how you enable more tech in this consumer brand…”
Insight
Khandelwal: B2B SaaS avoids prolonged unprofitability due to sticky enterprise revenue
“It's a lot more easier in B to B SaaS because that cycle is a little bit different when you sell to an enterprise. It's a longer period of cycle. But it's a very sticky cycle. So once you are able to get the product, then there is a constant flow of money whic…”
Opinion
India's lack of infrastructure startups is ecosystem-driven, not a skills gap
“I think it's not about capabilities. It's not about the skills or capabilities. It's about the ecosystem, which is there or exists, the problem exists or not there. And that's why it is a lot more easier when you are based in the US where you have a lot of thi…”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Khandelwal grew SAP's enterprise cloud business from $30M to $1B
“At last when I was leading the enterprise cloud business as an end-to-end business overall I was able to grow this business from close to thirty million dollars to close to billion dollars with a very, very good profitability.”
Insight
Khandelwal: Selling a Product That Cannot Scale Quickly Leads to Churn
“Because you can keep on selling, ah, but if your product is not right, even if you have a large numbers, I tell you, ah, You will use it very, very fast.”
Insight
Khandelwal: Large enterprises suffer from the same lack of focus as startups
“It's, do you see this also in the large firms, right? I mean, you try to do too many things and you don't just attempt to differ let's say and not do anything right in the right way. So I think that's a learning you can even extract this out of through a past …”
