1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Dr. Aniruddha Malpani, Founder of Malpani Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: One of the observations I have about the global startup ecosystem is this position of looking for paying customers is not at all unusual. I would say the vast majority of investors are looking for paying customers at this point. It has become so much easier to bootstrap companies. There’s a lot of methodology and knowledge about how to bootstrap a company.

The point that you’re making of wanting to see validated companies that already have product-market fit and customers does not come to anybody as a surprise at this stage of the game.

What sized checks are we talking about? When you say paying customers, are you talking about a certain MRR?

Dr. Aniruddha Malpani: I do my check sizes in Indian Rupees, which is why we talk about check sizes between one and two crores. If I’m not making a mistake, that roughly translates to about $200,000. We’re comfortable with being the only person who’s writing the check. We’re not looking for someone else to lead it. You’ll be quite surprised. The way the startup ecosystem in India has been built up, a lot of entrepreneurs think that the first thing you want to do is prepare a business plan and send it out to investors with the hope that they’re going to fund you.

Sramana Mitra: This has been my beef for many years. I try to teach the entrepreneurship ecosystem that this doesn’t work.

Dr. Aniruddha Malpani: They don’t want to listen. So much of the startup media are funded by VCs. A lot of it are PRs that are issued by VCs.

Sramana Mitra: It corrupts the young entrepreneur mindset. What about sector? You are a doctor. Is healthcare part of your thesis?

Dr. Aniruddha Malpani: The nice thing about being an angel is you can invest in any sector you want. You’re not answerable to LPs about what to invest in. If the entrepreneur comes up with something interesting, we invest. We’ve invested in fintech, healthcare, education. My soft spot is the social impact startups.

Because I’m a physician, I’m very reluctant to invest in healthcare companies because I know how messed up the entire healthcare system is. I’m pretty skeptical about a lot of that stuff. We have healthcare investments. In fact, one of them is someone you know. This is an app for autistic kids made by Ajit Narayanan. I’m a frugal investor. I don’t think the B2C space is right for us. The amount of money you need in order to create a brand is enormous.

Sramana Mitra: B2B SaaS is a good space for you.

Dr. Aniruddha Malpani: Absolutely. You often learn a lot more from the entrepreneurs who are operating in domains which I know very little about. I don’t want to just measure my return on investment. I learned so much more about a lot of this stuff. For example, the fintech space. A lot of it is stuff I don’t understand.

Sramana Mitra: We have a lot happening in fintech. We have very interesting fintech stuff in our portfolio that we’re going to soon raise money for.

Dr. Aniruddha Malpani: Right. But I have skin in the game. When you have skin in the game as an investor, you need to learn and figure out what’s happening.

This segment is part 2 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Dr. Aniruddha Malpani, Founder of Malpani Ventures
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