1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: With Krishnakumar Natarajan, Co-Founder of Mela Ventures (Part 1)

Krishnakumar Natarajan, Co-founder at Mela Ventures, discusses his firm’s AI investment thesis.

Sramana Mitra: Today, we are going to start the conversation with Krishnakumar Natarajan, KK for short, co-founder of Mela Ventures. I’ve known KK for a very long time, and he’s been here on this particular platform also once or twice.

Welcome, KK. It’s great to catch up. I’m looking forward to exchanging notes on what’s happening in our universe right now.

Krishnakumar Natarajan: Absolutely. Sramana, it’s really a pleasure to be back on this platform and, once again, I’d like to acknowledge the outstanding work you are doing in helping young entrepreneurs get to the next stage.

I think the zero to one [million] stage is probably the most difficult one and people need all the knowledge and experience to transition that.

Sramana Mitra: Thank you. Thank you KK, for your supportive comments.

A few months ago, or midsummer this year, we started a series that is specifically focused on unpacking the AI startup trends, and, in particular, from the perspective of investors on this platform. We are inviting investors to come and talk about their investment thesis and how they are thinking about AI investments.

KK, that’s what we are going to focus on today specifically. So, let’s start with a bit of a general overview on how you are thinking about AI.

Krishnakumar Natarajan: Unlike other technologies which have come in earlier, starting maybe from the smartphone revolution to the digital transformation, I think the transition to AI is real. The other sense which I’m getting is that this is unlike other earlier technology trends, which took a certain time lag to get to mainstream. If the smartphone revolution took eight years to get to mainstream, the digital transmission probably took five years. I think the time cycles are shortening, and adoption of AI is going to happen probably in a much shorter time span.

If you look at enterprise SaaS products, people started building them even before all this noise about AI started. As investors, when we look at these companies to invest, one of the key questions we ask them is, “If you want to stay in business, not even thrive, but you want to stay in business, what is your thought process in terms of integrating AI into your whole product cycle lab?”

That becomes a very key criteria, because today, we see a lot of entrepreneurs who build a very thin veneer of what they call AI. It is often more of a front end or an initial play in terms of AI, but is it deep enough to create high quality data, run the right models to get value, and continuously help improve inferences? AI should not be a thin layer on top of the enterprise SaaS product but a key foundational layer.

As investors, we are keen to see how entrepreneurs plan for this. It will take time, but at least our entrepreneurs are thinking about a roadmap for that; and we want to understand their roadmap and game plan for implementing AI.

This segment is part 1 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: With Krishnakumar Natarajan, Co-Founder of Mela Ventures
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