The Neon Show

Dheeraj Jain, Founder at Redcliffe Capital shares his experience and thoughts around investing in Biotech / Health Care & Consumer Brands in India.By now he has invested in 32 companies, whereas some of his notable exits include Innov8, Burger Singh & Supr Daily. Some of the successful companies where Dheeraj initially invested, and since then they have raised significant amount of subsequent fundings are PeeSafe, LifCare, The Man Company, Drivezy, Coho, Coutloot and Qdesq, among others.Some Questions answered by Dheeraj in this Podcast -1. What caught his attention towards Health Care companies in India?2. Why is it the right time for Biotech Startups to scale up in India?3. Can Consumer Brand Startups become massive?4. What were his thoughts while investing in PeeSafe & The Man Company?5. What’s was the secret behind the 100x growth of Drivezy?6. What role do markets play when a company has to scale?7. What kind of characteristics does he look for in a Founder, during the early stage funding?8. Over the last 4-5 years, How has he seen himself grow as an Investor?

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Brij Bhasin (General Partner at Rebright Partners, Ex-Operating Partner at GSF India).In 2012 he joined GSF (India's first multi-city accelerator program for early-stage tech product startups). Then in 2015, he joined Rebright Partners (an early stage Japanese Venture Capital Fund investing across Deep Tech, Healthcare, Mobility, Enterprise SaaS, B2B products and Internet/Mobile). Some successful portfolio companies in DocsApp & LetsTransport.Some Questions answered by Brij in this Podcast 1. What were his key learnings at GSF India?2. What were some of the key startups he advised or mentored?3. How did he joined Rebright Partners?4. Which few startups has he invested at Rebright Partners recently? How has their growth been?5. While evaluating deals for Rebright Partners, how does deal flow works for him?6. As an early stage investor what markets have been a win for him in the last 5 years?7. What would be his advice to founders in order to reach out and pitch to him?

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Sukhbir Singh is a well-known Bollywood singer. He is also called the prince of Bhangra. He has recently become an active startup investor. His first investment is in the beverage market in India.In this podcast, Sukhbir shares his journey of how living hand to mouth in Kenya, in a Gurudwara taught him humbleness and never letting your success or work change your human principles. His parents migrated when he was just two years old from Jalandhar, India. His father was into singing, classically trained, but he was spiritually inclined. So he worked as a Gyaniji in Gurudwara in Kenya.He learned different instruments by being in a band in Kenya, started off as a keyboard player, then progressed to a drummer, guitarist, and then eventually a singer, started from backing vocals and then lead vocal. More on his journey in the podcast.When being asked on:1. How do you feel when you meet young founders today?I see myself in them. I see when I was their age and I had that desire and passion to create a song, would take an idea from just a melody to a song. And, for Startups I see them in a very similar fashion it starts with an idea and then the passion behind the ideas of people actually take that idea and make it into a reality. 2. How music production and startups are related?It's the same thing with startups you don't know if that is going to work. It's unless and until you put it into practices. Similarly, with music production, you take an idea to make it into song and then let you know the masses decide whether it's a hit song or not.Sukhbir also shares:1. What he is looking in startups and founders that he wants to fund2. His advice to founders to deliver excellence in business3. His learnings from 25 years in the music industry that can be applied to startups4. His advice from his own experience on dealing with failure in startupsFrom Siddhartha: A shoutout to India’s first start-up to create shoes with Natural and Sustainable Fibres. Neeman’s shoes are extremely lightweight and flexible. I wear them without socks, and I don’t have to worry about odour anymore. Plus, if they ever catch a stain, I dump them in a washing machine. Overall, after wearing Neeman’s – I don’t think I can wear any other shoes. So, go ahead and try them. Just for the audience of 100X, my buddies at Neeman’s are offering an exclusive 15% OFF using the code 100X on https://neemans.com

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Semil Shah, Founder at Haystack & Venture Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, talks about his journey to becoming a successful Venture Capitalist.Semil founded Haystack in 2013 (An Early Stage Investment Fund). Some successful portfolio companies in Haystack include DoorDash, Instacart, Carta, Giphy, and Wag.Some Questions answered by Semil in this Podcast -1. What are his learnings for people who want to become a VC?2. How to choose the kind of Investor you want to become? Do you want to sit on the Board or do you want to be Growth & Network Driven?3. Is there any other path to become a VC other than an Ivy League college followed by some experience as a Consultant? 4. What should a 23-24 year old be doing fresh after college, to enter this Ecosystem?5. What was his First Fund size? How did he convince his first 5 LPs to put in the money?6. How did he happen to join Lightspeed Ventures?7. What are the Key Elements he looks for while investing?8. How much of his time does he dedicate to raise funds vs time spent on deploying it?9. What habits does he attribute for his success as a VC in such a short time (which generally takes others 10-15 years to achieve)?

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Sanjeev Aggarwal is the Founder of The Fundamentum Partnership, Growth stage fund.Sanjeev has also been the Founder of Helion Ventures, one of the earliest Venture Capital Funds in India established in 2006.Sanjeev started his entrepreneurial journey as the Co-Founder of Daksh, one of the largest BPO in India which sold to IBM for $150 Million in 2004.Sanjeev shares his investing thesis in the podcast where startups need to solve a big problem for a large market. And if the participants in the market is very diffused which is the case with most consumer businesses, then organising that market can deliver you a very big impact.Eg Daksh was participating in $100 Billion outsourcing industry.MakeMyTrip $20 Billion travel industry.BigBasket $300 Billion grocery industry.Common theme is that very large market, highly under penetrated in terms of how it is organised and how digitally influenced it is.In founding team Sanjeev looks for First Principals thinkers. Reason that element is you are solving problem that has never been solved before so you can’t use a template to replicate. You have to create you template on the run.He is looking for Co-founders who are like Hindu gods Brahma and Vishnu, who are very complementary to each other, one if the visionary and other executes and builds on that vision.Why story tellers win ?Storytelling is as much about your thinking process as it is about communication process.Capital goes to those founders who are thinking big and who are thinking scale. Investors make their own mistakes but that is what is very attractive to investors. Are you solving a big problem. Do you have vision of the future. While you will solve actual problems bottoms up but do you have bigger picture very clearly in front of your mindThere is value in how you communicate but to me communication skills is an outcome of your thinking skills. And therefore they are the rightful recipient of large capital because in India GDP is growing and digital GDP is growing even faster. So there are lot of big problems which are waiting to be solved which is what these entrepreneurs are doing.Journey of scale up think in horizontal. It’s really about 4 things:1. Strategy: How are you thinking of shaping a market2. Structure: What is the organisation design. 3. Putting the right people 4. Having a very strong governance mechanism.

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Prashant Pansare is the Co-Founder of Eagle10 Ventures, Seed Stage Fund investing $150,000 to $450,000 as the first external check in the startup.Eagle10 has invested in 6 startups which include TravelSpice, Zestl, Pi Beam Labs, Mate Labs, Net Analytics.Prashant has been founder of Playerify, Online Prasad, Medissist.Excerpt from the podcastPrashant's 5 favourite mistakes from his entrepreneurial journey:1. When we were building Playerify, Just Play sports, we kept on building considerable amount of time. We should have shipped lot faster, we should have iterated lot often. Key thing that I have learned the hard way that iterate faster, make mistakes.2. Being overworked as an Entrepreneur. Most of the entrepreneurs think that they need to keep clocking the hours. But I learned the hard way that it is important to take a pause. Moment of reflection really helps to see, to reassess. “Even Ferrari takes a pitstop”. 3. I have made tons of mistakes in hiring and not hired the best way in my earlier journeys. You need to always hire the people who are committed to you in your vision. People who come with a short term vision of may be making quick money or not understanding your vision they usually fall apart first. They don’t contribute to you as meaningfully as you would expect. 4. I didn’t do really well which I picked up in 4th year is peer to peer learning. You need to talk to more founders, share yours and listen to their challenges and not build in silos.5. Not just go for your passion. Most of the entrepreneurs tend to start their journeys with something they are extremely passionate but it may not be a business worthy idea. Passion is something you really love but is the market large enough. Because what you are doing if doesn’t have a wider acceptance, it’s really hard to build a large company even to be self sustainable forget about raising venture capital.

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In this podcast with we explore Mayank Khanduja’s journey as an investor at SAIF Partners India. SAIF is among the Tier-1 early stage investors in India, investing across all sectors.Mayank comes from a family of engineers so getting highest education was the top priority in his family. After completing his engineering from Delhi, Mayank went on to MBA from IIM-Calcutta.After working 5 years in Technology consulting in McKinsey, Mayank itch to work closely with technology companies brought him to world of early stage investing with SAIF Partners. Some of the companies at SAIF, Mayank has been involved and invested in, are Sharechat, PropTiger, NoBroker, Playsimple, Treebo, TravelTriangle, Airblack.Mayank has spent most of the time at seed stage of the companies. SAIF had invested in 2015 in Sharechat. Back then there was no wave of content startups. It was a thesis from SAIF looking at growth of content consumption in China and asked themselves will India get to that stage in 3-4 years. Yes of course it will. And once data and handsets are available to Next Billion Users, which is a big term now. Back then they thought next 200-300 Million users what will they do first. They will like to access some content, some entertainment on their phones. And that was SAIF thesis when they invested in Sharechat there was a new wave of users coming in India and they would like to access some form of entertainment content on their handsets.In the podcasts Mayank continues to share his insights on:1. Importance of storytelling in building a large company. Can it be learned or great founders are born with it ?2. What happen when your competitor in a large market raise tons of money from VC like Softbank ?3. How to spot the Founders who create 10x - 20x value for their stakeholders ?4. Key skills for Founders to learn and keep building on ?5. The current exit scenario in India and some of the SAIF portfolio exits ?6. Book recommendations by Mayank for founders on scaling and thinking ?7. What habits Mayank attributes in his success as a Venture Investor ?8. What is the one most important factor which will have disproportionate impact on the size of outcome you generate ?

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Raja Ganapathy is the Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Spring Marketing Capital, a skin in the game marketing capital firm that partners with founders to offer capital & marketing expertise.Raja has been ex-Chief Marketing Officer of Sequoia Capital India and has delivered some of the biggest marketing campaigns like BYJU'S.Why should you listen to the podcast ?- If you would like to know success story behind the marketing campaigns of Byju, Cars24, Epigamia ?- What power can celebrities bring to your brand ?- How did Byju team and Raja came up with the idea bringing the king of bollywood Shahrukh Khan in Byju marketing campaigns ? - The process that goes behind creating Wow and Viral marketing campaigns- Raja’s journey as a investor in Startups and his 10 year stint in Sequoia India as Chief Marketing Officer - What’s the new term on the block coined by Spring marketing capital. How Raja, Arun, Vineet and their team are creating magic by marrying marketing and capital for young startups.

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Ajay Hattangdi is Managing Partner and Co-founder of Alteria Capital, India’s largest venture debt fund. Ajay started the country’s first venture debt program while at Citibank in 2005. He subsequently went on to create the first dedicated venture debt business in the country as the founding CEO for InnoVen Capital’s flagship India NBFC which he ran from 2007 to 2017. Alteria Capital was started by Ajay Hattangdi and Vinod Murali in 2018. It has invested in almost 20 companies including Stanza Living, Dunzo, Universal SportsBiz, ZestMoney. Vogo, Country Delight and Toppr among others. Here are some of the key takeaways from the podcast:1. Venture debt is very helpful for companies to add to their cash runway between equity rounds. It can help the startup improve valuations while minimizing dilution when taken as part of an equity round. Companies should not take venture debt where there is a binary element to their business or if the business model is still in the proof of concept stage.2. Entrepreneurs should not underestimate the importance of serendipity in achieving success. Serendipity is the combination of preparedness and timing. Once you have the opportunity and the timing is right, execute the heck out of it.3. It is very important for entrepreneurs to balance passion with cold logic to chart the path forward in their business. Passion provides the fuel that entrepreneurs need to obsess about their companies and drive forward relentlessly. But entrepreneurs that work with only pure passion may miss the signs that the business is off course. Knowing how to balance these two forces is critical for success.4. The best teams always include people with complementary skills which compensate for each other’s weaknesses. Build your teams accordingly.5. The best advice is to find something you enjoy doing, stay curious, not be afraid to revise your thinking if the facts change, take ownership for your mistakes, and don’t take life so seriously.

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Hari TN is Chief People Officer BigBasket and Strategic Advisor, The Fundamentum Partnership, Growth Stage VC Fund.Hari is also an angel investor in Rocketium, BestDoc, UnFound.ai, Jiny.ioWe discuss in the podcast about:1. Hari's learnings and lessons from 17 years journey in Startups2. The early story on team building in TaxiForSure. Also we discuss about the TaxiForsure $200 Million exit and what led it. Key lessons on building a marketplace and raising capital.3. The culture of BigBasket and key processes incorporated which makes Big Basket the largest grocery service in India4. Hari's experience in working with Daksh, Virtusa, Amba Research, TaxiForSure, BigBasket. Key lessons on why only few companies scale 100x5. If you are looking to work in startups how to choose which startups to work for. Hari has identified his key criteria on it.

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