1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You said you invested in eight companies from the first fund and then continued to invest in those eight. Let’s talk about some of them. I want to get a flavor of the kinds of companies that drew your attention.

Mohanjit Jolly: We have a concentrated portfolio strategy. Most of the folks who you may have as guests on the show may do 20 to 40 investments per fund. In our case, the numbers are closer to 8 to 10. There is a method to that madness. To your question, the first fund was eight companies. Three of them were India-for-India. These are companies like Bluestone which is an omnichannel jewelry company.

We invested in Testbook which is an EdTech play for government exams. We felt that that was a sizeable market in India. Then the third company, which we ended up selling to Reliance, is called Now Floats. The idea was to go for small store owners and give them an incredibly easy way to get their businesses from pure offline into an online or omnichannel play.

Sramana Mitra: Now Float was in One Million by One Million a long time ago.

Mohanjit Jolly: We led their Series B and we played a critical part in getting that exit. That’s an interesting story of why we decided to sell at that point. Those three are more India-for-India stories. The remaining five are really India for the world. I’ll focus on three of those remaining five which may be familiar to the audience.

The first company is called Uniphore. Uniphore is a conversational AI platform that, most recently, raised $400 million led by NEA in their Series E. The idea is to go after large enterprises that have more than 500 call center operators. How do you leverage AI to remove humans from the loop and have that human be a higher value add later? Also, to be able to do it globally and have intent or emotional context in that conversation.

The company has done incredibly well. The interesting thing about that company is, they spent seven years in India perfecting the technology. They’re an India Private Limited. When John Chambers, the former CEO of Cisco, led the Series B back in 2016, his prerequisite was that the CEO had to move to Silicon Valley. Umesh then moved to Silicon Valley. The company flipped to a Delaware C-Corp. We invested back in 2018 in their Series C and they’ve raised two follow-on rounds since. That’s a company that has truly broken out and is valued at multiple billions of dollars.

The second one, which is really interesting, is a company called Servify. Servify is an insurtech play based out of Mumbai but is now present in 55 countries around the world. It’s a device lifecycle management software company. Whenever something goes wrong with your mobile phones, they are the go-to player for all of the major OEMs in India and many of the OEMs globally to manage the post-sales servicing and warranty.

Amazingly, here’s a company that’s still in India, but companies like Samsung and OnePlus have brought them to Europe. They run Apple’s and Samsung’s warranty servicing in India and other parts of the world.

The third one is another consumer play. It’s a company called FreshToHome. It’s a vertically-integrated fish, meat, and poultry company where the idea is to remove layers of complexity and middlemen and go from source to doorstep in 24 to 36 hours. It’s just absolutely remarkable. It’s domiciled in Singapore but started in India. It has extended into the Middle East. It’s a mix of enterprise, SaaS, consumer, India-for-India, and India-for-the-world.

That was the fund one blend. Then we raised the top-up fund to invest in these three companies – Uniphore, Servify, and FreshToHome. With fund two, the thesis has shifted slightly, which is to invest in companies that are building from India for the world. There isn’t necessarily an India-for-India component.

This segment is part 2 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar
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