The three investment pillars behind Helion's early bet on BigBasket
Rahul Chandra · Episode 54 | Rahul Chandra, Managing Director, Unitary Helion Fund · Mar 2, 2020 · at 29:00
Rahul Chandra details why Helion Venture Partners backed Indian online grocer BigBasket despite historical failures in the sector like Webvan.
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“So big basket, I think there were three things. One was that the founding team had done two startups before. I think the kind of, ah, challenges in a hard business like grocery, we felt was best handled by a team which had been there, done that, right? So, I mean, the gray hair really helped in, Taking a problem, acknowledging again that it was a hard one, and then doing something about it. So, we were assured to some extent by the experience of the founding team. Second is there were examples of companies that were breaking out, not in India, but outside. There were companies that were going public in UK, which were doing similar businesses... And the third was we felt that... Modern nuclear families would tend to, you know, value time over going to the, you know, to the grocery market... The value over time was increasing versus value of a discount or a better price.”
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