1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Vikas Choudhury of Pivot Ventures (Part 5)

Vikas Choudhury: Another investment is a cloud kitchen. It’s a company called Inner Chef run by someone I know. That company was riding on the wave of logistics and delivery, which was designed for the e-commerce ecosystem.

As you know, food delivery is becoming very large across the world. A lot of marketplaces have come up in India. Inner Chef has also diversified into local fast food. A lot of millennials today are eating 30 meals a month outside of their homes, which is a huge shift in consumer behavior across the country.

They also diversified to healthy food bars. There is a part of the population that cares about healthy food. These are two interesting examples of how we look at our investments in the Indian market.

Sramana Mitra: My last question is about the data explosion that is happening in India. Is there a large developer network of entrepreneurs who are developing on top of the Jio platform and building apps on top of that?

Vikas Choudhury: Absolutely. I think there is a heightened understanding of the opportunity that lies ahead of digital India. We are still scratching the tip of the iceberg. You just have the foundation layer in India.

Data consumption has grown from 155th in the world to being number one in the world, which means that hundreds of millions of consumers have come on-board and experienced data for the first time in the country. We now have an opportunity to build value-added products on top of that ecosystem.

There is clearly a developer community. It’s coupled with the fact that you have such rich and readily available tools and technologies that you can use to quickly string together apps for end consumers.

The combination of the maturity of the development lifecycle as well as consumers who are willing to experiment has given growth to a lot of early-stage young developers who are building apps by the dozen.

Sramana Mitra: How many entrepreneurs are building on the Jio data platform?

Vikas Choudhury: It has two aspects. A large part of our platform is the smartphone ecosystem, which has hundreds of millions of smatphones. We have 500 million smartphones or feature phones in this country.

Android is 95% of the market. That’s where the bulk of the development is. We also have a feature phone platform that is Jio-owned. It’s called KaiOS. That’s an app store that we control. We have hundreds of apps in the pipeline that goes after the Indian mass market. The number is large.

Sramana Mitra: Have you funded anything from that?

Vikas Choudhury: No, that is not something that I would actually do. That would be a conflict of interest. 

Sramana Mitra: Is there anything else you want to add to this conversation?

Vikas Choudhury: I am extremely optimistic about where the Indian economy is heading – the growth that lies ahead of us, the non-linear adoption of digital products and services in the country, and a lot more money coming into both the investing side of the ecosystem.

India has become one of the hottest markets today, opening up the consumer wallet in terms of what they’re willing to spend. In the next five years, you would see ten more unicorns and ten more Flipkarts. You’ll see hundreds of brands being built. I think we are here to support that.

Sramana Mitra: Fantastic. Thank you for your time. 

This segment is part 5 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Vikas Choudhury of Pivot Ventures
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