The Ledger
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Banglani: Returning a $300M fund today is easier than $90M in 2017
“So I'm actually more bullish on
Being able to deliver on a three hundred million dollar fund today than I was in being able to deliver a ninety million dollar fund in 2017.”
Stellaris has led rounds where existing investors refused to reinvest
“There are multiple companies in our portfolio, which had existing investors in the company. They decided not to Put more money behind those companies and despite their signaling, we have actually come and led the rounds in those companies also.”
Goyal: Venture deals should never require consensus or allow individual vetoes
“We do not believe consensus is a great way to make decisions for venture deals. We also believe that nobody should have a veto. No single individual is so smart. Across sectors that they know what the world will look like in eight to 10 years data suggests tha…”
Banglani: VCs should focus on controllable input metrics rather than DPI
“DPI is an output variable Siddharth. We don't really measure ourselves on the on the output that's for our LPs to do. That's for the market to do. We measure ourselves on our ability to attract the best entrepreneurs to ourselves. So, and we try to measure tha…”
Banglani: Alok Goyal and I initially opposed Stellaris investing in Mamaearth
“With Mama Arth with Mama Arth, I'm quite relieved that Rahul did the deal, even though Alok and I were quite opposed to it at that point.”
Goyal: Early-stage investors must evaluate founder learning agility over domain knowledge
“I think we need to judge people for their learning capability, not their Prior knowledge of the problems and the solutions to those problems.”
Goyal: SaaS market premiums only reward category leaders and top followers
“Even in SAS, you will find that in every category, there is like a massive market leader, which will be the outlier, 40, 50, 60% market share. There'll be two or three others, anywhere between 10 to 20, 30% kind of market share, and then there's a long tail. A…”
Goyal: Whatfix would have died if they followed most of my advice
“You know, if WhatFix had listened to most things I had said, I think they'll be dead five years back. The reason they're successful is because they apply their own judgment, and I'm not saying that everything I've said was wrong, but we sit at a distance.”
Chowdhri: Mamaearth Is Close to Hitting $100M ARR
“So Mamard is already hitting that number very close to that. So I don't see why that can't happen.”
Banglani: Stellaris remains strictly tech-only, India-only, and early-stage-only
“We took that call relatively early on that we will we will be tech only, India only, and early stage only. And for the past eight plus years, we have followed that strategy.”
Banglani: One-off late-stage investments increase portfolio risk and hurt LP fundraising
“We can't have a one-off late stage investment in our portfolio because it increases the risk. It makes fundraising harder. And of course that is not our area of expertise either. So we have said no to those kinds of opportunities.”
Goyal: Stellaris approves roughly 80% of deals brought to its investment committee
“Usually about 80% or so, maybe three out of four or four out of five actually do sail through in our case, which is, which goes back to the principle that by and large, we want to back the conviction of the deal team.”
Goyal: Stellaris enforces strict sector boundaries for its investment team
“We took a call right at the beginning that we will be organized by sectors. And these are fairly hard gated boundaries of sectors. If I do SAS, then I do SAS. When I find a FinTech deal, I'm actually going to send it to him. I'm not going to do that because qu…”
Goyal: Stellaris leads all investments rather than following other investors
“We lead all our investments. So we are not trying to tag along somebody else's judgment or conviction in those situations.”
Banglani: Six Stellaris portfolio companies crossed $1M ARR in under a year
“I started in venture in 2007, in that 2007 through 11 period, when we used to build projections for our portfolio companies, we would project them to get to, we would project that they would get to a million dollars in annualized revenue in three to four years…”
Goyal: Mamaearth grew from ₹10Cr to ₹2,000Cr and listed in five years
“If you look at Mama's journey, we came in that company in the second half of 2018, when they were just about 10 crore run rate in five years, they crossed 2000 and listed”
Goyal: VCs are just capital conduits, not world-changers
“We are actually just a conduit for the money supply chain. It's somebody else's money goes to somebody else. We just happened to put our signatures on that checkbook. We think we change the world. We don't. It's clearly the entrepreneurs who change the world a…”
Goyal: Founders succeed through exceptional spikes rather than lack of flaws
“At least we believe, Siddharth, that there is no perfect founder. There is no perfect human being, actually. And people succeed despite their flaws. People succeed because there is some spike that they have that actually covers up for all their flaws. So, our …”
D2C brands need high margins, AOV, and frequent purchases to succeed
“We needed to find areas where things can be sold online both on these commerce platform and also direct to consumer through your own website. And that meant two things. One is high gross margin and good enough EOV so that you can make money on every order. The…”
Chowdhri: Shop101 generates positive cash on every order
“In fact in last several months they also, I would say you know, they make good cash on every order that they do.”
Goyal: Stellaris assumed a $750M exit for Mamaearth in 2018
“2018 when we did Mama Earth,
Our exit assumption was a seven hundred and fifty million dollars valuation for the company.”
Banglani: Stellaris backed 8-9 companies from Flipkart-Myntra ecosystem
“Just the Flipkart and Myntra ecosystem. And just with one fund ours, we have funded at least eight or nine companies just from that one ecosystem.”
Goyal: Stellaris modeled a $600M exit for Whatfix in 2017
“When we backed Wordfix, and this was an early 20 17 investment for us, our spreadsheet math on the exit size was we put six hundred million at that point in time, saying that that's the farthest at least we could imagine.”
Goyal: Stellaris expanded Fund 2 past its hard cap for strategic LPs
“There were some very high quality LPs that were keen on coming in the fund. We talked to our existing LPs as well. And collectively, we all felt that the fund will be a lot stronger by having them as part of the platform than not having them. So we ended up ex…”
Banglani: Stellaris Sees Over 90% of Relevant Indian Market Deals
“When we started, our coverage ratio was about 55%. So we were seeing roughly half of the deals that were happening in the market at the right time. And I'm quite proud of the fact that for the last three years, that coverage ratio for us has been more than 90%…”
Banglani: Stellaris sold small secondary stakes during early COVID
“So we took a decision at that point to do small secondaries in two of our companies so that we have the capital to help our portfolio if needed.”
Stellaris Venture Partners is StepStone's newest LP commitment in India
“So Stellaris is actually probably the newest commitment in India. And I, you know, I, we literally have just done diligence work on that one.”
Goyal: Stellaris now splits diligence 50-50 between devtools/infra and apps
“If I look at our own diligences in infra and dev versus apps, I think it's roughly now 50 50, which was practically zero or 10% at best in the past.”
Goyal: Stellaris reviewed 4,000 deals and backed eight companies
“Last year, we saw about 4000 deals and bagged only eight companies last year. That's all we did.”
Rohit Anand discloses LP investments in YourNest, Pi Ventures, Stellaris, and Sixth Sense
“I am an angel investor in, for example, your nest one, two, your nest one, three five ventures right. A fund, a mixed fund, like Stellaris you know, fund two, which is between consumer and tech, right? The only consumer, large consumer fund where I'm an LP is …”
Mamaearth raised from Stellaris upon hitting one crore monthly revenue
“And then Stellaris round happened when we had hit the one crore a month kind of mark.”
Chowdhri: Mamaearth Sees Inbound International Traction Driven by Pull, Not Push
“Like clearly Mama Earth is finding good traction, but it is more a pull versus a push today. As in a lot more people are coming from other countries wanting to carry their product.”
Senpaty: Propelld pitched roughly 100 investors before landing early venture rounds
“This is the first time we raised venture. We've spoken to close to a hundred investors probably during that time. So yeah, both during the IQ and Stellaris time and even before that as well. Together we would have spoken to a hundred.”