The Desi VC with Akash Bhat

Mohit Kumar is the Co-founder and CEO of Ultrahuman, a metabolic health tracking platform that provides intelligent nudges based on glucose biomarkers and aims to improve users’ exercise, sleep and nutrition based on deep insights from the platform. Ultrahuman was founded by Mohit Kumar and Vatsal Singhal who were also co-founders at Runnr which later merged with India’s largest food delivery service Zomato.Ultrahuman has raised over $25m to date from Alpha Wave, Steadview Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Blume Ventures and iSeed fund, and a range of other angel investors including Tiger Global’s Scott Schleifer.In this episode, we will cover:1. Impact of the last two years on Ultrahuman (2:50)2. How did the founding team come up with the idea for Ultrahuman (7:33)3. How did the Ultrahuman team perceive the TAM? (17:25)4. How does Ultrahuman raise public awareness about food, diet, nutrition, and lifestyle? (23:30)5. Breaking down data for customers who are not data savvy (30:15)6. The Science of Metabolic Score (35:20)7. What has Ultrahuman team learned from the pandemic user data? (39:10)8. How can men and women understand their bodies better through Ultrahuman (44:46)9. What is Ultrahuman’s vision for the future (52:38)10. How does Ultrahuman intend to democratize data access? (1:09:25)11. How do investors perceive Ultrahuman? (1:11:05)

Vinay Singh is a Partner at Fireside Ventures, a fund specializing in early stage and seed investments in the Indian consumer space. With 7+ years at Hindustan Unilever as Marketing Manager for a multi-crore brand, extensive expertise in digital marketing at McKinsey & Co., and Bankbazaar.com, Vinay has a unique perspective on the intersection between consumer brands and technology. He has also been an entrepreneur, as the founder and CEO of Stepni.com, which was acquired by Quikr.In this episode, we will cover:1. Vinay’s take on the market right now (3:00)2. Does abundant dry powder allow funds to modify their thesis? (8:33)3. How does a venture capitalist look at ‘brand building’? (14:30)4. How can you build a global D2C brand from India? (21:08)5. Does a startup’s mission really matter to investors? (28:45)6. How does a founder find purpose in their idea / business? (37:46)7. How important is operating experience for an investor (44:24)8. For founders: How to build rapport with your investors (48:11)9. What does Vinay and Fireside Ventures do REALLY well (53:04)

Ankur Bansal is the Co-founder and Executive Director at BlackSoil Capital, a venture debt firm based in India. He leads the execution efforts across our large corporate clients in strategic discussions, idea origination, M&A execution, investment thesis, and negotiations. Ankur is a CFA and a CA with a large network of venture capitalists, private equity investors, institutional investors, and investment bankers and has extensive investment banking experience with major banks such as JP Morgan, Citi, and JM Morgan Stanley.In this episode we will cover:1. Thoughts on current landscape within India (1:00)2. Valuations, down rounds and how startups survive this tide? (6:17)3. How long will the economic downturn last (11:25)4. Why Ankur prefers startups that are “dhanda” type business (22:50)5. Does timing really matter for a venture debt investor (29:40)6. Are debt investors in India collaborative or competitive by nature? (32:14)7. Could a founder have more than one debt investor on the cap table? (33:24)8. Value add that debt investors bring to the table (36:53)9. How did the Partners at BlackSoil decide the fund structure (44:19)10. Which sectors are debt investors excited about (51:21)11. Tidbit about the fund name - BlackSoil (1:04:01)

Sunil Goyal is the Founder and Managing Director of YourNest, a deep tech and enterprise focused fund in India. Before becoming a full-time, early-stage investor and fund manager, he had gained comprehensive experience of leading complex projects in the areas of M&A, business turnarounds and strategic partnerships. He has spent over two decades working at CXO levels at Bharti group and Dabur. As one of the country’s early angel investors, Sunil has led seed-stage investments and guided companies to successful exits: his investments which reaped healthy returns include ZipDial (9.6x acquired by Twitter), VuClip (4.4x acquired by PCCW) and Mobiquest (1.8x acquired by PayTM). A former member of The Indian Angel Network and Mumbai Angels, Sunil discovered an acumen for spotting high-potential startups and eventually chose to set up YourNest Venture Capital.In this episode we will cover:1. How does Sunil define deep tech (3:05)2. Why did Sunil take a bet on deep tech and enterprise when very people did back in 2011? (6:10)3. Why was early stage investing a big boys game in India back in 2011 (13:52)4. How do you track progress in deep tech and continue to support a company’s growth (21:40)5. Tracking progress in deep tech against the competition (25:54)6. Best time to fundraise for a deep tech startup in India (29:21)7. The importance of bringing on the right set of investors for a deep tech startup (34:28)8. Advice to young first time deep tech founders (38:19)9. The role an early-stage VC plays in building portfolios to reach later-stage (42:50)10. How do we enable more investors to enter the deep tech investing world (45:08)11. The role of the Indian govt in propelling the deep tech ecosystem (48:57)

Sunit Gajbhiye is the Co-Founder, Business Head at Financepeer. Prior to this he was Product Manager at EdgeVerve, Infosys. Sunit is an IIM and VJTI alumnus with 6+ years of experience in Business Operations and Product Management.Financepeer, a Series B fintech startup backed by Aavishkaar Capital, QED Investors, 9Unicorn and Earlsfield Capital. The startup provides the entire year fee collection upfront to the School at the beginning of the year and collects fees from parents in monthly instalments that too at Zero Additional cost. Financepeer is spread across 60+ cities with over 6000+ school/ Institute partnerships. The Startup has so far impacted more than 15 lakh families by providing them no-cost-fee financing.Financepeer's peer-to-peer lending platform connects individual borrowers to lenders digitally. It uses an algorithm that quantifies risk from credit and non-credit bureau channels by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI).In this episode we will cover:1. Brief overview of Financepeer2. Structuring the fundraise (2:30)3. How to best leverage the angel network (6:30)4. Thinking through the seed stage fundraise and deployment of capital (8:18)5. Managing relationships with investors (11:05)6. Exit conversations (secondaries) and alignment (20:01)7. When to raise Series A (21:50)8. Why now and how much to raise (26:35)

Swati Khanna is the VP of Human Capital at Sequoia India where she plays a vital role in supporting portfolio startups in attracting and retaining top talent required to build the country’s next big unicorns. Prior to joining Sequoia, Swati founded Meyrahkee, a talent advisory firm focussed on helping companies with talent solutions, and spent four years at Accel as a Talent Partner, helping Accel’s portfolio companies from inception through the growth stage. Swati has a solid reputation for being a top talent recruiter and was recognized as one of India’s Top 40 Social Recruiters in 2017.In this episode, we will cover:1. Human capital in the context of the venture 2. Thinking about talent acquisition at various growth cycles of a startup 3. State of the industry right now with respect to talent acquisition 4. How should founders position themselves and their startups to attract the best talent 5. How to develop culture within a startup 6. How does Sequoia help young founders attract top talent 7. Talent management 8. Addressing diversity in today’s climate 9. What is the day to day of a VP of a Human capital 10. Advice to fund managers who are building out or looking to build human capital 11. How does Sequoia look at human capital with a 5-year lens 12. Productizing human capital

Varun Alagh is the CEO and co-founder of D2C unicorn, MamaEarth, a personal care brand that specializes in baby and toddler products. Varun is a master marketer having worked for the world’s most valuable brands Coca-Cola as well as its Diets and Lights portfolio for India and South West Asia (Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka). Before this role, he worked with Diageo and managed World's No.1 spirits brand Smirnoff for India. Prior to his stint with Unilever he was in sales for 3 years managing an 800 crore in more than 20 categories spread across home care, personal care & foods.In this episode, we will cover:1. How do you build purpose driven brands in India 3:502. Building a voice over time 14:543. As an entrepreneur, how does one find purpose? 24:404. How do investors react to purpose 29:415. What does it mean to be a unicorn startup today? 31:536. What excites Varun about Indian consumers and what does he still not understand about them 34:30

Radhesh is amongst the most seasoned B2B investors in India who brings with him rich operational experience in the enterprise technology space. He is Founder and Managing Partner at Suvan Ventures, a B2B focused cross-border fund. Before Suvan Ventures, he was Managing Partner of Arka Venture Labs which was created in 2018 August with the objective of investing and mentoring B2B companies between India and US corridor. The fund has made 27 investments with 4 exits and 9 uprounds (from the likes of Sequoia, B Capital, Nexus, Lightspeed, Matrix, Facebook). Prior to Arka Venture Labs, Radhesh had an 18 years long stint in IBM with strong technical, sales, and business development experience in various divisions of IBM. In his last assignment there, Radhesh was heading the Startup initiative of IBM India and South Asia. In this episode, we will cover:1. How did Radhesh get started into the world of SaaS investing (2:19)2. How do you evaluate SaaS startups at the pre-seed and seed stage? (11:40)3. Building value into a SaaS business in the early-days (16:12)4. Best branding practices for early-stage SaaS startups (22:14)5. Rise of vertical SaaS in India (29:11)6. Why do VCs love vertical SaaS (37:18)7. Evaluating market sizes SaaS (40:01)8. Important of nailing the Pricing within SaaS (44:45)9. How does Suvan Ventures plan to add value to its portfolio (53:18)10. Advice to founders building from day 1 for the globe (57:00)

Pranav Marwah is the Director of Investments at the Marwah Family Office, who are investors in a number of funds and startups. He looks after cross-vertical day-to-day operations, group strategy & growth, and group company investment portfolios. Today, the group companies business interests are diversified across real estate, hospitality, sport, and investments across other asset classes. He’s also the CEO of one of India’s leading startup incubators, thinQbate. In this episode we will cover:Pranav’s thoughts on sustainability within venture capital (3:00)Gauging global trends to build an India focused thesis (10:10)Why did the family office decide to enter venture capital (16:00)How does the family office evaluate and measure impact (35:00)Taking a ten year lens at Indian venture (33:47)Advice to emerging fund managers, especially when approaching family offices (51:30)

Ravi Saxena is the Managing Director and CEO of Wonderchef, one of India’s premium brand of healthy and innovative kitchen appliances. Armed with an MBA degree from IIM Ahmedabad, Ravi began his professional career when he joined VIP Luggage as the Brand Manager for soft luggage business. His brand Skybags had been stagnant for the past many years and was a poor cousin to the main business of moulded luggage. Coming with fresh ideas, a research-based approach (branded ‘theoretical’ until proven right), and boundless enthusiasm, there was a path-breaking decision that he took which changed the course of the brand forever and it sky-rocketed over the next few years to become the mainstay of the organization.He devoted a lot of years in spearheading and managing several brands and diverse businesses by launching as many as twelve new businesses were to name a few were VIP Luggage, Sodexo India. Ravi joined Landmark Group to head their hospitality business and launched many new brands in India and abroad like – CityMax Hotels, Gloria Jean’s Coffees, Fun City gaming zones, Yellow Chilli restaurants with Chef Sanjeev Kapoor and Polynation Food Courts.In this episode, we will learn:1. Learnings from operating Wonderchef during the pandemic months (2:55)2. Maintaining efficiencies in the supply chain during the pandemic (9:50)3. Is the Indian consumer spoilt? (15:14)4. How should D2C brands sell quality, durability and ensure conversions at scale? (28:17)5. Consumer patterns and behavior in middle India (36:12)6. The playbook for taking offline retail businesses online (44:44)7. What role do VCs play in helping D2C companies scale at various stages (51:45)8. What about Indian consumers and their behavioral patterns still surprises Ravi (1:06:52)