The Neon Show

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.Send us a text

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.Send us a text

Ameera Shah is Founder and Managing Partner of Metropolis Healthcare, one of the largest and most trusted Healthcare Diagnostic company of India.Ameera joined Metropolis when it was 1 lab in South Mumbai started by her father. Over the years she expanded Metropolis to 120 Labs and 2400 collection centres. Metropolis Healthcare went IPO in April 2019. The company in recent fiscal year posted Rs 760 Crores revenue and Rs 205 Crores EBITDA.The podcast shares her journey to make Metropolis one of the most trusted names in Healthcare in India.Some notable quotes from the podcast:1. I started building Metropolis at the age of 21 in 2001. When I started building this firm the biggest issue people had with me was with my age, the lack of medical qualifications and with my gender. People couldn’t see me as somebody who could be relevant as I had none of these three attributes which people assumed to be very necessary to build something.2. To me the principles and the values that built Metropolis are probably the most important pieces of the journey. And we are very happy and proud to say that we accomplished that. Whether we accomplished the size we wanted is secondary. What we wanted is reputation. Whenever we meet anyone in the fraternity, Metropolis and I are recognised for being a clean promoter, for always being fair to people, for giving credible results and for making sure we take care of patients.3. In healthcare industry commercialisation, corporatisation and profit are all bad words. Because in India we are conditioned to believe if you make money you are not good.4. I discovered along the way that expressing your emotions in your work life actually can be a huge strength because it allows you to relate to people, it allows people to feel like they are understood, that we are not all robots coming to work and just doing our jobs but actually we are human beings. That allows ourselves to engage with each other on non professional fronts and that actually helps huge amount in building connections. Along the way I started showing my emotions. Some of my employees have seen me cry.5. I have 3 investors in Metropolis and I have made sure to deliver excellent financial returns on their investment: ICICI Ventures in 2005, Warburg Pincus in 2010 and Carlyle group in 20156. A lot of people used to ask me how are you so confident ? And what I realised where does confidence come from. Confidence doesn’t come from trying to be confident, confidence doesn’t come from suddenly you being born with confidence. Especially for women confidence comes from actually confronting the biggest, deepest fears that you have. And when you come through the biggest fear on the other side, that’s the thing that builds confidence. 7. Governance is a mindset. It’s not for everybody. But for me I was very clear I would build a company like HDFC or Kotak which is about good governance, transparency, good communication and not being overly aggressive but being consistent and delivering what we say.Send us a text

Kunal Khattar is the Founder and Managing Partner of AdvantEdge Founders, an early stage Venture Capital Fund focussed on transportation and mobility sectors in India.The big investments of the fund include Shuttl, Rapido and Chalo.We discuss in the podcast about:1. Why AdvantEdge chooses to focus on only mobility startups ?2. In India 300 Million commutes happen every day India. How AdvantEdge plans to solve for it via investing in technology mobility startups3. Why the fund chooses to focus only asset light models ?4. Impact of Uber and Lyft IPO5. Kunal past experience as founder of Carnation, one of the earliest marketplaces in India for used automobiles.6. Why home startups have an advantage as compared to overseas startups in India7. The early story of Shuttl, the largest intracity bus service in India.Send us a text

Sarbvir Singh is Managing Partner at Waterbridge Ventures, an early stage Venture Capital Fund based out of India. Sarbvir started his journey as a Venture Capitalist in 2007 with Capital 18, the VC arm of media conglomerate Network 18.Back then he was one of the first institutional checks in Bookmyshow, which is today a Unicorn and Yatra, which went public on NASADAQ.Waterbridge was started by Manish and Sarbvir in 2016. It has invested in 16 companies some on which well known ones are Unacademy, Chalo, Ziploan, MagicPin and DoubtNut.Here is what we are going to discuss on in this podcast:1. Why did Manish and Sarbvir start Waterbridge Ventures ?2. What is Waterbridge looking in early stage ventures while evaluating them ?3. What qualities is Waterbridge looking in Founders ?4. The most common mistakes founders make while pitching ?5. What should be the number 1 or 2 slide that should be in your pitch-deck and which thing you should be spending your most time on in investor pitches ?6. What value does Waterbridge ventures add in their portfolio companies ?7. What makes some companies 50 to 100x ?Send us a text

Rajan Anandan is an Angel Investor and Ex-VP, Google India & SEA.Here is what we discuss in this podcast:1) We seem to have entered a new phase of the Indian startup ecosystem..what has changed ?2) Is monetising getting better for consumer startups ?3) Views on SaaS ?4) Big spaces like e-commerce and mobility seeing a lot of renewed interest..what is happening?5) 3 of Rajan's recent investments we are very excited about and why?6) What segments is Rajan focused on as an angel investor?7) What has been different about Rajan's investee companies who have been mega hits?Send us a text

Kanwaljit Singh is the Managing Partner and Founder of Fireside Ventures. Fireside Ventures is early stage Venture Capital Fund investing only in Consumer Brands.Kanwaljit Singh is also known as the gardener of new Consumer Brands in India. Before Fireside, he invested personally in Paperboat, IDFresh. Both of them showed interesting sparks of what was happening in the Indian consumer market. He continued to personally invest in Epigamia, Licious, Yogabar, Vahdam Teas.FireSide has invested in 18 companies in the last 2 years which include MamaEarth, boAT lifestyle, Bombay Shaving Company.Kanwaljit Singh talks in the 100x Entrepreneur podcast about:1. Why he started FireSide Ventures ?2. How Indian consumer has changed in the last 5 years ?3. What’s are two large factors coming together in India which will give rise to hundreds of new consumer brands ?4. How new brands can be built in 5-7 years ?5. The new channels of engagement and sales which have completely shifted how new age brands are built ?6. Why disruption is must have thesis for the companies Fireside invests in ?7. What Founder DNA he is looking to invest in ?8. The evaluation process Fireside Ventures follows in investing ?9. His advise for Founders to deliver excellence in their business ?Send us a text

Amit Somani is Managing Partner, Prime Venture Partners, an early stage fund investing in Technology startups in India.Amit previously was Chief Product Officer at MakeMyTrip, which went IPO in 2010. Before MakeMyTrip Amit was Head of Product at Google India.Few notable quotes from Amit Somani at 100x Entrepreneur podcast:1. "Came back to India in 2007 from Silicon Valley when I though India was a really really tall building and I am getting in the ground floor. Now 11 years later now I still feel India is going to be a really really tall building but hopefully we have now come onto the second floor."2. "Every 10 years people should take a year off on a self-imposed sabbatical or jobbatical. Take that time for self discovery, take that time to find yourself, take that time to learn about what else is happening. 3. There is Alvin Tofler who is this futurist has this beautiful quote, that people who are going to succeed in 21st century are not going to be the gyanis or the wise people. It’s the people who have the ability to unlearn, re-learn, learn all the time because you are seeing new situations all the time.4. Number 1 reason for startup success is not market, not team, not the product, nor some bell and whistle feature but TIMING. And you can’t predict it as an entrepreneur.5. If you have tailwinds behind your back, or timing is right or market is ready for your solution that is often the big difference between the companies that really break out and those that don’t.6. So really timing and getting some wind or current behind your back so you can get velocity that is often the predictor between the 100x startups and the 3-5x startups7. I have mantra called MEDS - Meditation, Exercise, Diet or Nutrition and Sleep. I try to follow daily all of those and recommend the same to all entrepreneurs because entrepreneurship is a marathon and not a sprint.Send us a text

Karthik Reddy is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Blume Ventures, one of best early stage Venture Capital Funds in India.Blume Ventures started in 2010 as $20 million fund. Today the 3rd fund of Blume is $100 million. Blume has invested in 120 startups in the last 8 years. Some of the well known startups in Blume portfolio are TaxiForSure, GreyOrange Robotics, Unacademy, Locus, Exotel, Mettl.Karthik shares very candidly in the podcast:1. "Why to build for an IPO" is the only thing Founders should aim for and nothing less2. How Focus on new behaviour creation leads to creation of incredibly large long term value in the world. 3. Why to build a very large business without the capacity to storytelling is fooling yourself. 4. How founders who build 50-100x ventures punish themselves5. Why the early exits are never phenomenal.6. Why good storytelling is must in founding teams which make it large7. The Life Time Value (LTV) of a founder8. The Purpose of Blume is to nurture really passionate entrepreneurs who are trying to solve really hard problems.Send us a text

Rajul Garg is the Founder and Managing Partner of Leo Capital, a Pre-Series-A Venture Capital Fund. Rajul has been the founder of two Billion Dollar companies Global Logic and Pine Labs. Rajul is counted among the top 10 early stage investors from India. Some of notable quotes by Rajul from the podcast:1. On purpose in life ?"My view of life is to be more in the present. I like to think here in this moment how I can be most productive. So my main focus now is how we make this conversation most productive for the listeners. So in my ideal state I would like to blank myself from everything else and be fully here in this moment. I feel if I can achieve that in every moment, in every hour that would come closest to my purpose."2. I do think when you look at any success including the companies I founded there definitely an element of topicality in the time they happened. Lot of different things come together to make a big company. There were so many points in the journey where the two companies could have totally shut down. Lot of ducks have to line up to make a company successful.3. "The quality of people you assemble in the company is really really important."4. Every big success is death by thousand cuts, it not one big thing but a combination of small things.5. Out of the three things - Market, team and traction, Market is something you can’t just fight with at all. Team you can still work with, you can hire more people, chip and chop, thought it's still difficult. Market is very very hard to fight. If you find yourself in a market which is small, hard to penetrate or super competitive or timing wise wrong, that is the number one reason why things don't work out. Number 1 predictor of success for investment has been timing.Getting the timing right of why this make sense to do it today is a very difficult part from an investment perspective and you often get it wrong as an investor.6. The magical thing which leads to scale of 50-100x? "I think it’s Product Market Fit. Product Market fit is one of those non-deterministic problems. It’s like asking - How do I fall in love or How can I be happy. It is not a problem that you can solve with money. It goes back to the timing thing, Is the market ready for the product today ?"7. "For me what I seen over the years I tend to let the process take over instead of thinking too much about the outcomes. I get into action mode and do things which need to be done instead of thinking what will happen tomorrow."8. On strengths and weaknesses “Because I am so aspired to be in the moment I am a good tactical thinker. Given 3 options I quickly able to latch on to what to do now and move forward, sort of bury the past, keep going. I am able to quickly correct mistakes and navigate my way through complex problems step by step. At the same time I don’t think of myself as a big strategic thinker like how will the market evolve in 5 years or 10 years.”9. The only way you can really judge an investor is look at their portfolio. Everything else is just talk. I can talk endlessly but you have to look where I have put my money in. That defines me more than anything else.10.Philosophy I life by:"You can’t make your happiness conditional to everything else. You can’t generally say if I do this then I will be happy. Specially for entrepreneurs if you say if I raise the next funding then I will feel happy. I feel there is an intrinsic fallacy in this. Chances are if you are not happy today you will not be happy tomorrow either. So I think happiness is something which comes from within and has to run like a fabric parallel to every thing else. Find a way to be calm, joyous and happy today because its not contingent on your business success or any other success, find that place today work on everything else alongside."Send us a text