Eva Yazhari, General Partner at Beyond Capital Ventures, discusses Impact Investing in Africa and India. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself and Beyond Capital Ventures. Tell us a bit about your background and what you’re trying to do with Beyond Capital.
Sramana Mitra: You said many times that the ecosystem is still immature. Can you underscore the points where you see the Indian ecosystem needing maturity? Dr. Aniruddha Malpani: Sometimes, it’s the unrealistic expectation on the part of entrepreneurs partly because they don’t understand the grind that startups need to go through. A lot of the
Sramana Mitra: It’s wonderful to exchange notes. There are a couple of things you’ve said that I want to underscore. One is the importance of failure. The Indian ecosystem didn’t accept failures for a long time. It’s a cultural change where it’s okay to fail. You’re not penalized. A very long time ago when I
Sramana Mitra: Let’s take those two sectors – SaaS and the fintech sectors. In SaaS, the metric is MRR. Do you have a particular metric that you measure by when you’re doing your SaaS investments? Dr. Aniruddha Malpani: No, numbers can be easily gamed, and they are often not necessarily representative. As long as the
Sramana Mitra: One of the observations I have about the global startup ecosystem is this position of looking for paying customers is not at all unusual. I would say the vast majority of investors are looking for paying customers at this point. It has become so much easier to bootstrap companies. There’s a lot of
Dr. Aniruddha Malpani, Founder of Malpani Ventures, is an active angel investor in Indian startups for the past decade. Wonderful conversation. Sramana Mitra: Let’s catch up a bit on what has been going on in our collective universe and how you see the world based on all these years of observing the ecosystem. How do
Sramana Mitra: In smaller acquisitions, what role does valuation play? Seong Kim: It really depends on why you’re acquiring the business and what you’re ascribing the value of the business to. The role of valuation is always prevalent and important. The needle gets moved by the conviction that an acquirer is able to build around
Sramana Mitra: What have you disclosed on the valuation on this most recent acquisition? In general, how do you think about valuation? How does valuation play into your acquisition decision? Seong Kim: The valuation of this deal was approximately $436 million. This is based in London and Madrid. It’s definitely a key factor that impacts