1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How long do you think it will take for India to catch up?

Mohanjit Jolly: The next year will be a challenging one. When the next bull run starts, India is going to be playing a pretty big role in the outcomes. I’m less interested in the term unicorn; I’m more interested in the underlying value that these companies are providing.

On the vitamin to cancer drug spectrum, if you are closer to the cancer drug, you’re going to have that customer for a long time. Whether the market values you a 30x multiple or 10x multiple, you are going to create value downstream. There are situations where companies raise $25 million just to say that they raised at a billion dollars pre. It makes zero sense. It’s not going to be a long time. You will start to see it happening in India.

Sramana Mitra: I have one last question. What is your sense of the broader Indian geography? There is a talent war. Recently, there’ve been quite a bit of layoffs. In general, there’s a talent war. It’s a booming market in general. How do you see the rest of India from a talent pool perspective? Are you seeing companies start leveraging the broader talent pool of India?

Mohanjit Jolly: The short answer is yes. We are not very IIT-heavy. Not very many entrepreneurs are from IIT. The other thing is, there isn’t a Bangalore-heavy center of excellence presence either. We have a few that have a presence in Bangalore. Chennai has become a real hub.

Sramana Mitra: That’s because of Freshworks I think.

Mohanjit Jolly: Especially in fund two, we have three or four companies that are Chennai-centric. I need to find out why that is the case. Then we have Kerala. There’re some interesting companies developing there. It’s a really interesting opportunity for a public-private partnership to emerge. If the state government takes a little bit of a progressive step, I think they can attract this startup. You can leverage that to build up that talent pool in your geographies.

Having said that, we are seeing companies that have a presence in Jaipur and other parts of India. Now it is a trend. Because of this hiccup in the market, there is a sense of loyalty that starts to percolate. Employees are not looking at island-hopping for 20% increments. There’s going to be a little bit of a mindset shift. I don’t think it’s going to counter the talent war completely, but it will help.

We are seeing an emergence in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. It’s an opportunity for the private and public sectors to band together to build that foundation. The third thing is, we are seeing companies that have centers of excellence and development in other cities which I had not seen during my early tenure.

Sramana Mitra: From the point of view of 1M1M, our strategy is to train these entrepreneurs who are coming out of those other cities as well. We have an amazing team in Chandigarh. You were talking about the public-private partnership. I think some of the secrets to making this happen is just training these entrepreneurs and giving them access.

Mohanjit Jolly: It’s very interesting you brought up Chandigarh. One of the people I admire is a gentleman named Jay Chaudhry who’s the CEO of Z Scalar and is arguably the most incredible success story. He set up his development center in Chandigarh. He didn’t go to Bangalore or Delhi. He said that was one of the smartest things he did. As a result, he got that engine cranking. That led to others popping up as well.

Sramana Mitra: That’s what Sridhar did with Zoho in Chennai. It was a great conversation. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar
1 2 3 4 5