03Nov 2020 by ankur No Comments
Is your belief in meritocracy the reason for your failure?
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As a pre-seed/seed stage startup investor, the most frequent gripe I hear from Indian founders is that they had a better product, competent team & better numbers, yet the investors funded their competitors. This makes them confused & dejected, and they lose faith in VCs & angels. A fair number of founders have remarked to me that “VCs are dumb”.

My honest answer to this is that the competition is simply selling a “better story”. But the founders are never satisfied with this response. And I believe the problem stems from a belief in pure meritocracy.

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26Oct 2020 by ankur No Comments
Failure: Y Combinator
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To all those founders who haven’t received an interview call from YC today & are feeling rejected, don’t feel down & dejected. Thousands of founders have been in the same place as you, before they figured it out & made their venture into a big success. Some of the more successful founders in our portfolio have been there as well.

It reminds me of my own experience ~7 years ago, when we pitched the idea of Globevestor to YC. We sat in Paul’s living room, being interviewed by the trio of Paul, Jessica & Sam. You couldn’t get more YC than that! Our pitch was that the time for India was here & we were on a cusp of a big shift in early-stage ecosystem in India. But none of them even knew about Flipkart or Inmobi, the two unicorns we had then.

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05Aug 2020 by ankur No Comments
News: Springboard raises $31M Series B
News: Springboard raises $31M Series B
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Springboard, one of our portfolio startups, today announced their $31M Series B funding led by Telstra. With this, Springboard has raised over $50 million till date.

Started in 2013 by our long-time friends, Parul Gupta and Gautam Tambay, Springboard is building a new-age university with a focus on upskilling professionals. It matches each student 1:1 with a personalized mentor, alongside a core curriculum and project work. They’ve witnessed 330% student enrollment growth from June 2019 to June 2020. It’s a rocket ship!

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02Jul 2020 by ankur No Comments
News: Flintobox raises $7.2M pre-Series B round
News: Flintobox raises $7.2M pre-Series B round
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Flintobox, another portfolio firm of ours, today announced the closure of its $7.2M (INR 50 Cr) pre-Series B round led by Lightbox.

We first backed Flintobox by leading their pre-seed round when they were fresh out of the GSF accelerator. As users of their products, we had high conviction that this team would create a large company in the early learning space. Since then, we’ve led or participated in three of their funding rounds, while they’ve grown their top line 100x!

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20Sep 2019 by ankur No Comments
News: Digi-Prex raises $5.5M seed from Khosla Ventures, SV Angel & others
News: Digi-Prex raises $5.5M seed from Khosla Ventures, SV Angel & others
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We recently participated in the seed round of Digi-Prex, as it graduated from Y Combinator’s most recent batch. The company raised it from a group of highly-influential investors that include YC, Khosla, SV Angel and the likes.

Digi-Prex runs an eponymous online subscription pharmacy in Hyderabad and serves patients with chronic diseases. Patients share their prescription with Digi-Prex through WhatsApp and the startup’s workers then deliver the medication to them on a recurring cycle. Digi-Prex also helps patients better track when they need a new supply of medicine, and checks if they are seeing improvements. The startup has amassed thousands of customers in Hyderabad.

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18May 2019 by ankur No Comments
5 Key things investors look for in a startup
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A few days ago, I did a session at InstaOffice for entrepreneurs, trying to de-mystify startup investors and their thought process. I really enjoyed the event as it was very interactive, with lots of questions from entrepreneurs in the audience.

One key topic of the discussion was the key things investors look for in a startup. Over time, I’ve realized that things investors take for granted often comes as news to entrepreneurs, such as this. InstaOffice team did a brief video on this topic to go along with the talk, which is the focus video of this post.

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06Dec 2017 by ankur No Comments
What can one make of the early-stage funding implosion?
What can one make of the early-stage funding implosion?
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There’s consensus now that seed to pre-Series A funding environment isn’t rebounding. In fact, 2017 has been worse than 2013/2012 globally, and trending back to 2014 levels for India.

There are no indicators that next 6 months will be drastically different. It doesn’t help that there’s too much noise in every sector, including AI, fintech, SaaS, etc. which leads to higher burden of proof for startups. Moreover, every investor is currently distracted by shiny new objects of blockchain & crypto, due to strong bull runs there.

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12Nov 2017 by ankur No Comments
Why do investors ask startup founders for stock vesting/ restrictions?
Why do investors ask startup founders for stock vesting/ restrictions?
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A majority of founders today seem to be comfortable with stock vesting provisions in termsheets. However, still encounter a few (usually first-time) founders who see vesting as investor tactic to gain more control. Some feel they’re being forced to ‘earn’ ownership in their own ventures.

This interpretation of vesting is harmful. Investors invest in the mid-long term future potential of a startup, and the team sticking around to achieve its ambitions is key. A non-executive founder (w/o day-to-day role) is as good as dead equity. If a founder leaves, it’s a big blow to the execution ability of a team.

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