Mark Phillips, Founder and Managing Partner at 11 Tribes Ventures, discusses a non-Unicorn chasing investment thesis.
Sramana Mitra: You can’t have everything. You have to choose. What year does that bring us up to? Gaurav Rewari: In early 2000, I decided to do another startup in the consumer space. It was a company called FirstRain, named after the Indian monsoon season. I have memories of staring out at torrential rain and
I have never seen a company raise so much money from so many angels. It is far from standard practice in the industry, but Manmeet did it! Find out how… Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from and where were you raised? Give me the back story of
Sramana Mitra: What I see is that the bigger disruption is in looking for systematic ways of being able to compensate influencers. Reed Berglund: That’s one way of looking at it, absolutely. If you examine the initial goal for these influencers on these platforms, they were free platforms. They went on from a hobby standpoint.
Sramana: What you describe about the call center and the home delivery service is OK for India. In countries that have low-cost labor, there are more opportunities for mixing high tech efficiencies with high-touch customer service. That becomes harder in countries where labor is more expensive. It is an interesting model. Phanindra Sama: It can
Sramana: What percentage of the bus operators ticket business do you have now? Phanindra Sama: We are at 1% of total business. We have 70% of the automated bus ticket business.
Sramana: How did you achieve an industry-leading conversion rate? Phanindra Sama: We have taken our analysis down to fine details. We have a specific orientation for the bus on the entry page.
Sramana: How many customers does redBus have today? Phanindra Sama: We sell about 200,000 seats per month at this point. Sramana: How many seats were you selling when you met the journalist? Phanindra Sama: At that time we were selling 10 to 15 seats per month. It was enough to keep our allocations from the