1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Biplab Adhya and Venu Pemmaraju of Wipro Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: The question I’m asking is a little bit beyond what you just answered. Let us say we have a company that we want to send to you for investment. This company already has product-market fit. It is already deployed in major customers. It’s understood that it fits your stage requirement and validation requirement. Beyond that, how much of your decision making is going to be predicated on the fact that this product can be brought to market leveraging Wipro’s channel?

Biplab Adhya: That plays a very strong role. At the same time, we also have to consider quite a few issues as well. The first one would be who are the other co-investors in the company. Does this company have institutional investors who have the ability to support his company going forward? That is a very important consideration.

This is born out of the fact that as strategic investors, it’s quite possible that the company may change its product. We may change our strategy. It’s important that the company has investors who can support it regardless of the future directions of either us or the company. Second, the fact that they have been able to sell to some of these major customers is a necessary condition.

What we also need is how this fits with our go-to market initiatives. Is this an important segment? Is this something that our customers really need? Are there groups within Wipro who are willing to support it and take it to market actively? What are the price points for a solution like this? All of those considerations go in before we decide whether this is a good investment candidate or not. It doesn’t mean that it’s not a good company. It’s just whether it makes sense for us.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s double-click down on that. Let’s say we have a company that has a B2B enterprise software focus. It already has existing customers. It has institutional investors. At that point, what B2B industry sectors are you interested in? What kind of pricing or deal sizes are you interested in? Can you elaborate on what you are looking for?

Biplab Adhya: We are looking for technologies that play across the enterprise technology stack. We’re looking for companies with innovative solutions across the enterprise technology stack. That is because Wipro serves Fortune 1000 corporations across the stack. That means cloud infrastructure, SaaS applications, cyber security, IoT, and Big Data.

Sramana Mitra: Vertical and horizontal across the stack and you’re looking for companies that are catering to Fortune 1000.

Biplab Adhya: That is correct. If you look at our portfolio, it is primarily horizontal-oriented companies though they have applications that are specific to different verticals. We have really not done an investment in a specific vertical domain, which might happen in the next couple of years as well.

This segment is part 2 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Biplab Adhya and Venu Pemmaraju of Wipro Ventures
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