Sarbvir Singh discloses Waterbridge Ventures' exit returns from their initial investment in edtech platform Unacademy.
Opinion
Singh: Founders who neglect documentation often cause their own fundraising delays
“Many times people blame investors, but a lot of times I feel founders don't take the process very seriously. Whether you know, and I don't know exactly why, because I assume they want to get the capital in fast, but you know, you have to understand that there …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Singh: Large Indian VC funds vacated the early-stage seed market
“And we realized that this is actually a very big space and it has been vacated by some of the larger funds.”
Insight
Singh: Co-founders must have a shared history before partnering
“So I think it is very important that when you Decide to partner with someone and I'm sure whether as a founder or co-founder or anything else, you need to have some degree of history with the person because it's a difficult relationship. I mean, any partnershi…”
Assertion Supported
India's $60B bus market dwarfs the $10B car ride-hailing market
“Chalo is doing exceptionally well, managing over 10, 12,000 buses already. A huge space in India. Buses are a sixty billion dollar market as opposed to, you know, cars, which Uber or Nola, which is like a ten billion dollar market.”
Disclosure
Waterbridge spends 70% of evaluation time assessing founders' motivations and capabilities
“We are a founders first fund. We're very clear on that. We spend, I would say, 60, 70% of our time in understanding the founders, their motivations, their ability to, you know, execute their suitability for the business that they are doing.”
Insight
Mega-rounds from funds like SoftBank overwhelm competitors regardless of execution
“See what has happened in India, and I think it's a global phenomenon, not just in India that sometimes some industries get overwhelmed by too much capital. So one player is able to raise, you know, significant capital from one of the big guys, let's say soft b…”