1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sasha Mirchandani, Managing Director at Kae Capital 2020 (Part 4)

Sasha Mirchandani: We have a company called Wysa, a mental health chatbox based out of Bangalore. The bulk of their opportunities is in the North American market. Post-COVID, we have all seen the value of taking care of people’s mental health. It’s a major problem, but it’s a stigma, which is unfortunate.

Wysa has done a phenomenal job of helping people in duress. As we go, we’re becoming a US business. We’ve got primarily most of these in Northern Europe, the US, and across Asia.

We’re building global businesses sitting out of Bombay or in Bangalore. These entrepreneurs understand the global mindset, which is quite encouraging. Even though they’re going to move it to Boston, they’re going to run it from Bangalore if they wanted to.

Sramana Mitra: Freshworks has mostly run out of Chennai.

Sasha Mirchandani: All these years, it’s just run out of Chennai. It’s an incredible business.

Sramana Mitra: Speaking of B2B, you mentioned the rise of the Indian SMEs as a customer base which took a little while. One of the issues has been that it takes high-touch selling and customer support to sell to these SMEs in India, and the unit economics become challenging.

How is that changing? Are people willing to buy based on phone calls and online interactions now? How is the technology adoption in the Indian B2B customer base changing?

Sasha Mirchandani: It’s changed dramatically. We know one company that has scaled up across different verticals in the B2B SME space in India. Some of these companies are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In the last three to five years, there’s been a lot of user behavior change and a lot of leadership change where decision makers in the SMEs are now the second generation. They understand tech; they see the value of tech even in a Kirana store.

When I went to my Kirana store next door to my house, the young man I met spoke public English. He wants to evolve and he wants to become part of the ecosystem. We have people open to change, which is most important. Then you have the entrepreneurs who are ready to give that solution the perfect stock. 

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about your fund. It’s been a while, so give us a little update on where you are. What funds do you have right now? What is the fund size? What are the highlights of the portfolio?

Sasha Mirchandani: We are a classic early-stage seed and venture capital fund. We invest $700,000 to a million dollars. We take a board seat and then we invest a couple more millions in the series A and B.

At best, we invest $4 million or $5 million in one company. We never start with more than a million dollars. We may invest a million and a half at best. We manage a little less than $100 million over the course of all our funds. We generally partner with bigger firms like Sequoia or whoever we work with in a series A, B, and C. That’s how we work.

This segment is part 4 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sasha Mirchandani, Managing Director at Kae Capital 2020
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