1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mohit Gulati of ITI Growth Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do a couple of things. I’d like to understand what you have invested in that is interesting and reflective of how you think. Then we’ll also talk about the trends that you see in your deal flow. Let’s first start with your portfolio.

Mohit Gulati: A lot of people don’t have multiple ideologies with regards to investing. I have a simple ideology. We’re a country of 1.46 billion. I see us facing a massive job loss crisis in the coming years, so my core philosophy and ideology of investing has been job creation. Can I sustainably create jobs across my portfolio companies and give a sense of employment and livelihood to multiple families?

So I very proudly say that I  have employed over 125,000 Indians over the last four and a half years. This is across three of my large portfolio companies. One of them is BBG India, which is one of the largest manpower companies. It’s a fleet management company. They provide cleaning services across the length and breadth of the country.

The second one is Ecom Express, which is the largest e-commerce-dedicated logistics company in India. We deliver for Flipkart, Amazon, and every e-commerce store in India. We have 18,000 delivery boys there running across the length and breadth of the country. The third one is Grab which is the largest hyper-local food delivery provider in India.

All three of them are completely B2B. There’s no B2C angle to it. Whether you order parcels from Flipkart, Myntra, Jabong, Zomato, or FoodPanda, Ecom Express will deliver. If you land at the Delhi airport or the Mumbai Airport, it will be BVG boys who will be cleaning it.

Sramana Mitra: Very interesting. The other observation about India is cheap labor. I think ventures, ideas, and concepts that take advantage of the cheap labor that is all over India have a differentiation capability. I like the way you’re spinning it.

I want to now pursue the trends that you see in your deal flow in particular. I’m very curious about what other concepts you are seeing out there that have this kind of massive job creation potential and taking advantage of the labor cost of India.

Mohit Gulati: I think one of the key things that needs to be noticed is that from a global perspective, cost of labor in India is still cheap. But if you look at the average demographic of India, we’re a very, very young country, which is consuming the Internet like there’s no tomorrow.

When young people come online, they see what’s happening in the world. They see the world’s consumer brands. They see the world’s consumer cars and all sorts of random things. The aspirational values of younger generations are very high. This century, we will be the epitome of how much people are aspiring to make more money. It could be through cryptos. It could be through anything else.

Just the physical asset of owning a lot capital is very essential and by virtue of that, what’s happening is that the younger, so-called, cheaper labor also wants to educate itself and create a new crop of people who are job ready, and would like to be employed so they can make more money. So that they can buy that fancy car at some point of time that they desire for. So it’s a very different kind of twist.

All of us are striving to give as much employment as possible, but it’s not just about blue-collar employees. It’s also a lot of white-collar employees who are out there waiting to be given a chance to prove what their mantle is.

This segment is part 3 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mohit Gulati of ITI Growth Ventures
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