Evolving for the Next Billion

This episode is co-hosted by Dimitra Taslim. Dimi is on the investment team at GGV Capital. 

Today on the show, we have SyPhong Bui and My Linh from Telio. Founded in 2018, Telio is already Vietnam's largest b2b eCommerce platform. It connects small traditional retailers with brands and wholesalers on a centralized platform using technology and data. Telio is a GGV portfolio. On the show, we discussed how SyPhong got his idea for Telio because of Jack Ma from Alibaba, the lessons he learned from 2 previous failed startup he founded, the challenges facing mom and pop shops in Vietnam and how the tech ecosystem in the market has evolved in the market.

For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com
Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

On the show today, we have Ankiti Bose, the founder and CEO of Zilingo, one of the largest fashion & lifestyle marketplaces in Southeast Asia. According to Bloomberg, the latest financing valued Zilingo is at $970 million. Ankiti is among the youngest female chief executives to lead a multi-million-dollar startup in Asia.

Ankiti reveals how she thinks about the nature of Zilingo's business, the growth drivers of a 12x track in a short span of 4 years, being a first-time entrepreneur at 23, building localized teams in different countries and the staples in her wardrobe.

Prior to launching Zilingo, Ankiti worked at McKinsey as a management consultant and Sequoia as an investment analyst. She holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics and economics from St. Xavier's College in Mumbai.

For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com
Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

This episode is co-hosted by Dimitra Taslim. Dimi is on the investment team at GGV Capital.

In today's episode for Southeast Asia, we have GGV's managing partners Jenny Lee and Jixun Foo. They shared one thing that excites them as investors about the region, what we learned from being an early investor of Grab, the role of China's tech giants for this fast-growing market, and the implications it has for local founders. We've been getting a lot of questions about Southeast Asia. While we believe the talent to build great companies can come from anywhere, this episode is about Southeast Asia, home to 360 million internet users.

Much has been written on the growth potential of the region. If you don't have the time to dig deeper, here're some quick facts. A third of the population is under 30, 90% of the internet users are primarily on mobile. They are young, connected, and madly in love with social media. The average users in China and the US spend 6.5 hours online per day. The average Indonesian and Filipinos are online for 9 hours per day.

Some say if you missed the China train ten years ago, you could not miss this one. Others are more skeptical given the different stages of socio-economic development among various countries in the region.

As a firm, we have done ten deals in the region. More than half of that comes in the last 2.5 years. We are an early investor of Southeast's leading Super App Grab. We reopened our Singapore office early this year and started spending more time on the ground. My colleague Dimi, who's also the co-host for this episode, is from Indonesia and looks at investments in Southeast Asia.

For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com
Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

This episode is co-hosted by Dimitra Taslim. Dimi is on the investment team at GGV Capital. 

In this episode, we have William Tanuwijaya and Patrick Cao from Tokopedia. Tokopedia is an Indonesian technology company with the largest online marketplace business and its mission is to democratize commerce through technology. The name 'Tokopedia' is a combination of Toko (shop) and encyclopedia.

It was founded in 2009 by William Tanuwijaya and his best friend Leontinus Alpha Edison. According to the company, the firm’s annual run-rate GMV has reached 222 trillion IDR (15.8 billion in USD), which would be equivalent to 1.5% of Indonesia's GDP. It has significantly impacted the fate of many small-scale entrepreneurs since its launch 10 years ago. 89% of sellers on Tokopedia do not own a physical store and 86% of merchants are first-time entrepreneurs.

In this hour-long conversation, we covered William's founding journey from working in the internet cafe to meeting Daniel Zhang and Joe Tsai from Alibaba, how to get a great executive team as an Indonesian company, Tokopedia's ambition for the next 10 years, and what it means to achieve work-life harmony while running a big company.

William Tanuwijaya is the founder and CEO of Tokopedia. He was born and raised in Pematangsiantar, North Sumatera. William has a bachelor's degree in Information Technology from Bina Nusantara University, during which period he worked as an internet café keeper and saw the potential of technology.

Patrick Cao is the President of Tokopedia, Indonesia's largest online marketplace, a position he has held since October 2016. Previously, Patrick worked at Formation 8 in Singapore and UBS Investment Bank in Indonesia, specializing in M&A and capital markets advisory in the TMT, consumer and industrials sectors. He received a B.S. in Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon University and currently doing his MBA program at Tsinghua University.

For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com 

Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

This show is previously known as 996 with a specific focus on tech in China. You can access all the previous 996 episodes in this same feed.

Today on the show we have, Ming Maa, President of Grab, Southeast Asia's leading super app, providing the everyday services that matter most to consumers. The conversation covered a wide range of topics; how Grab thinks about expansion (markets vs verticals), the tension between product development and scaling, what are the right kinds of high frequency use cases for a Super App, the Uber deal, best piece of advice he's ever been given and what it is like to work with Masayoshi Son from Softbank.

This episode also features a bonus interview with GGV Managing Partner, Jixun Foo, who led GGV's investment into Grab in 2014. Jixun shared how he met Grab's founder Anthony, the reason behind the different growing paths of Didi and Grab, and what he looks for in mobility startups.

Grab offers transport, food and package delivery, mobile payments and financial services to over 36 million users across eight countries in the region. Launched in 2011, it is now reportedly valued at $14 billion, making it Singapore's first "decacorn", and a GGV portfolio company.

Ming has over 12 years of finance and investment experience across the U.S. and Asia. He joins Grab from SoftBank, one of Grab's key strategic investors, where he played a key role in overseeing SoftBank's investments in SoftBank's Series D and F investment in Grab. Ming received his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com

Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

This show is previously known as 996 with a specific focus on tech in China. You can access all the previous 996 episodes in this same feed.

This episode is a recording of the fireside chat we hosted in Bangalore on September 19th. In the chat moderated by Madhu Yalamarthi, a member of GGV's investment team for India, we talked about what does evolving for the next billion means for each of the panelists, the evolution of India's startup ecosystems and what keeps the panelists going.

We were overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and brilliance of the audience that night and everyone we met during this India trip. We want to express our gratitude towards everyone who showed up that night despite Bangalore traffic. Thank you!

For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com
Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

This show is previously known as 996 with a specific focus on tech in China. You can access all the previous 996 episodes in this same feed.

On this episode, we have Manu Kumar Jain, the global vice president at Xiaomi and the managing director of Xiaomi India. Xiaomi is currently the world's fourth-largest smartphone brand. Besides smartphones, the company also makes other smart devices connected to its IoT platform. It is the youngest company on the Fortune Global 500 List for 2019.

In the wide-ranging conversation, we discussed the biggest success factor of Xiaomi in India, how he goes about hiring, working with Xiaomi's founder Lei Jun, and his advice for foreign brands who want to make inroads into India.

Manu joined Xiaomi in 2014 as the first employee and managing director of Xiaomi India, where he has grown Xiaomi to India's NO.1 smartphone brand for 6th consecutive quarter. Before joining Xiaomi, Manu co-founded the fashion eCommerce company Jabong and worked as a consultant at McKinsey. He holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi and a post-graduate diploma in management from Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com
Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

Today on the show, we have Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, co-founders of Snapdeal. Snapdeal is India's leading online marketplace. The company started out as a flash deal website in 2010, soon evolved into a leader of India's e-Commerce sectors. In early 2017, it was on the verge of being merged to its biggest rival Flipkart, then upgraded itself to Snapdeal 2.0, with a focus on the value-conscious buyers in India. Over the last couple of years, with this focus, the company has seen a significant and positive transformation. As of July 2019, the month this interview is conducted, the company has increased its annual revenue by 70% and cut its loss by 70% comparing to last year.

The two co-founders of Snapdeal are high school friends bonded over food and math. Kunal graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with two bachelor's degrees in Business and Engineering. While studying in the United States, he also started a detergent company and worked to sell his product at Walmart stores. Rohit graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology New Delhi with a bachelor and a master's degree in computer science, India's top engineering school.

On this episode, we covered the behind the scene story of their decision in saying No to Flipkart, focusing on the 400 million value-conscious buyers in India, navigating substantial change in high transaction velocity business, building a culture of acute intellectual honesty, and going through the best and worst of doing business alongside of your best friends in high school.

- For full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com

- Join our listeners'community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

For the first episode of the Evolving for the Next Billion podcast, we have Vaibhav Gupta, co-founder of Udaan, India's top B2B eCommerce. The company connects manufacturers, wholesalers with retailers online, often referred to as India's fastest unicorn, having achieved over $1 billion valuations in a short period of 26months. Udaan is a GGV portfolio.

Prior to starting Udaan, VG was the senior vice president in Business Finance and Analytics at Flipkart, one of the most successful e-commerce platforms out of India, sold to Walmart in a $16 billion deal last year. His other two co-founders for Udaan were the former president of operations and CTO at Flipkart. VG holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology and an MBA from the University of Virginia. Welcome to the show, VG.

On the show, VG shared how his time at Flipkart, the eCommerce giant of India sold to Walmart in a 16-billion-dollar deal, helped him launching Udaan, why distribution is a much bigger business in India than retail, India's second generation of founders, and the most frequent item he buys online.

- For full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com

- Join our listeners'community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

GGV Fellows is accepting applicants for its 2020 cohort. The program, which is a week-long intensive learning experience in Beijing, provides a fast track for aspiring entrepreneurs who want to become part of China’s startup ecosystem. On top of hearing from some of the biggest names in China’s tech industry, fellows will be equipped with essential skill sets to survive and thrive in their entrepreneurial endeavor and get plugged into the supportive network GGV provides. The deadline for applications is Sept 30th. The program will be in Beijing from Jan.2nd to the 6th, 2020. 

Note that the program will be conducted in Mandarin, so the applicants need to be fully proficient in the language.  

Apply at http://ggvcommunity.mikecrm.com/cEkWZYw. Read on why we organized GGV Fellows here https://hans.vc/why-we-organized-ggv-fellows/ 

After 20 months and 42 episodes, we are taking a moment to reflect and celebrate on this podcast. You will hear from Hans and Zara on the behind the scene story of how this podcast was started, why an English podcast about tech in China and what people can expect for the next season. You will also hear from our listeners’ community asking Hans and Zara a wide spectrum of questions, from how to spot a good CEO to how to break into VC if you are a fresh undergraduate. 

Special thanks to Kenny Chan, Jacky Shen, Jun Zhang, Huang Zexin, Jenny Niu, Jonas Wolf and Barbara dos Santos, who recorded their questions for us. 

The new season of this podcast will be launched in late September. Stay tuned to hear from some of the most exciting founders from India, Indonesia, Singapore and more.