Evolving for the Next Billion

This episode is co-hosted by GGV's investment colleague Madhu Yalarmathi. In this episode, we have Vamsi Krishna, CEO & Co-Founder of Vedantu. Vedantu is India's leading online tutoring company that enables students to learn LIVE with some of India's best-curated teachers. The name Vedantu is formed by two Sanskrit words Veda (Knowledge) + Tantu (Network), signifying a 'Knowledge Network' where any student can tap into and learn from a teacher, anytime-anywhere. In our conversations, Vamsi shared his experience in moving into online after building a successful offline tutoring center, getting his early users and his definition of an "EdTech" company. Before starting Vedantu, he has been a teacher for 13 years and founded a test prep company Lakshya, which was sold to a listed education company in 2012. You can watch Vamsi's TedTalk in which he made the argument against the standard curriculum. 03:14 Trained as an engineer, how did you become a teacher? 05:03 In your TED Talk, you argued that standard curriculums and standard delivery mechanisms won't work. Share with us more on that. 08:40 Back in early 2012, when you started the company, it was way before JIO and 4G came out in India. Internet users were growing but not as fast as the rest of the world. 13:24 How did you gain the confidence that the right way to build your second startup should be online education? 16:18 What are the scalability aspect of the business model to make it easier for new students to get acclimated to the online learning environment? 21:13 Many of your early users took a leap of faith and moved towards a fully online institution to prepare for the most important exam in their educational life. How did you get them to do that? How are you going about it now? 29:02 As an EdTech company, what do you look for from your tech team? 37:50 It's not hard to imagine that given the large talent pool of Indian teachers here, that the business could exponentially expand beyond India at some point in the future. Share with us how you think about that. 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 GGV's investment team colleague Madhu Yalamarthi. On this episode we have Rajesh Yabaji, co-founder and CEO at BlackBuck. BlackBuck is India's largest trucking logistics company, often referred to as "Uber for Trucks". In the episode, we covered creating a full-stack logistics marketplace in India, the conviction and rigor it takes to create a new category, building an agile company culture, and the choice of living in the same building with his co-founder. Prior to starting BlackBuck, Rajesh worked in the Indian multinational conglomerate ITC Limited for four years as a manager in supply chain and category management. He holds a bachelor's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Kharagpur. 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 Chen Ying. Ying is the founder and CEO of Shihuituan, the leading community commerce company in China. The literal meaning of Shihuituan means plenty of things. It's also a pun for value for money. With its network of 80,000 community influencers, the company currently serves 20 million households in 60 cities in China. For November of 2019, it recorded a monthly GMV of 500 million RMB （roughly 71 million dollars). Shihuituan is a GGV portfolio. Before launching Shihuituan, Ying founded an NGO aimed at helping farmers selling their goods online and another eCommerce company called "The Good Stuff". Ying worked in Bain Consulting and Bain Capital for 5 years before he got his MBA from Harvard Business School. Calling himself an intellectual cowboy, Ying has always been fascinated by the next frontier, which in his mind is the space, Africa and rural China. We discussed the ins and outs of how the community group buy model works, including how he found the product market fit, the role social apps play in this business model, the multi-layer delivery system, and the replicability of this model in other markets. If you have more questions for Ying, please submit them here. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

For this bonus episode, we have Jixun Foo, managing partner of GGV Capital. Jixun recently led GGV's investment in Telio's Series A. Jixun shared with us why he chose to invest in the B2B eCommerce model vs B2C, his advice for founders who are solving the fragmentation of supply chain in different markets, the metrics he tracks for startups in that space and his outlook for Vietnam as a startup ecosystem. 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.  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.