Roundtable Recap: March 28 – Large, Open Opportunities for Indian Entrepreneurs

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Hemant Mohapatra, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, India. Hemant talked about some of the large open opportunities in the Indian market that are of interest to him.

Overland Bound
As for entrepreneur pitches, up first we had Michael Murguia from Dublin, California, Overland Bound, an adventure travel app that is already monetizing through an annual subscription.

Kulfy App
Then, Basanth Valeti from New York, New York, pitched Kulfy App, a personalized gif platform, that is also monetizing through corporate events.

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435th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With David Lambert, Right Side Capital Management

David Lambert, Managing Director at Right Side Capital Management, a firm that invests small chunks of capital in capital efficient ventures. The firm is very much in line with the Bootstrapping to Exit philosophy we’ve been discussing.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Yash Hemaraj of Arka Venture Labs (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Before we move to the entrepreneurial discussions, could you talk a little bit about the three venture funds that have put Arka Ventures together. What do you envision would be their roles in follow-on financing in the companies that come into Arka?

Yash Hemaraj: We wanted to make this an open and powerful platform for our founders. Again, when you’re building enterprise companies or B2B-focused companies, it’s never a one-stage game. You have to build companies in stages. We wanted to partner with the folks who are united in this mission of providing an open and collaborative partner platform for all Indian entrepreneurs and helping them scale into the global markets. >>>

187th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Mark Selcow, Costanoa Ventures

Mark Selcow, General Partner at Costanoa Ventures, talks about the firm’s primarily B-to-B investment thesis and strong penchant for investing in companies that have grown up outside the Bay Area.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Yash Hemaraj of Arka Venture Labs (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: If you get carried away and raise huge amounts of money, you better have a strategy of doing something that is going to get you to the right exit because all these investors also need exits and you need exits. This is a very complex set of strategic moves that you’re going to have to think through. I think raising lots of capital is something that you should be very careful about. Frankly, I have constantly pushed Freshworks on this topic.

If you read my personal coverage of Freshworks through the last decade, you will see that I’m constantly holding them publicly accountable for raising so much money and not hitting profitability. This year they have hit profitability, which is a great milestone. The reason Freshworks is important is because this is the first company out of India to be able to do stuff at scale. >>>

188th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Harald Nieder, Redalpine Venture Partners

Harald Nieder, Partner at Redalpine Venture Partners, an European firm primarily focused on Germany and Switzerland.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Yash Hemaraj of Arka Venture Labs (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: In the last 30 days, we’ve done story after story analyzing what’s happening on the acquisition side of B2B SaaS. I think one of the things that’s very attractive about Arka is that you’re not chasing unicorns and I’ll let you elaborate on that.

Yash Hemaraj: You’re right on the point that a lot of companies, especially in the B2B side, get acquired for anywhere from $50 million to $100 million according to some statistics published very recently. That’s the opportunity where if you’ve taken in $50 million into your company, there’s no way you can sell the company for $50 million and everybody is happy about it. >>>

189th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Arihant Patni, Ideaspring Capital

Arihant Patni is Managing Director at Ideaspring Capital, a fund focused on enterprise companies born in India and selling to the global market.

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