1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What are you seeing in India? The first wave of Indian e-commerce or consumer brands served the higher end. Now the middle class is much more tuned into e-commerce. Everyone uses 10-minute services like Blinkit. What trends are you seeing in going down-market in e-commerce?

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Unfortunately, the media has framed entrepreneurship as financing. Entrepreneurship is customers, revenues, and profits. Financing is optional. Exit is optional. The media has completely confused entrepreneurs with this financing-centric narrative.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: You probably know this. In 1 Million by 1 Million, we have taken a different approach than the typical venture capital mantra of “blitzscale out of the gate, go big or go home.” We don’t believe in any of that. We do “bootstrap first, raise money later,” and that has produced a lot

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Okay. Let’s do a B2B case study. Mohanjit Jolly: Let’s do a B2B case. About a third of our portfolio consists of US Delaware companies that are building products from India. Chennai seems to be the hub for most of our enterprise companies.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Congratulations. Wonderful. Now, I have a question based on what you said, because I remember what you told me when we last spoke about your B2C investment thesis. Are you still thinking that the first five to ten million dollars of revenue in B2C brands in India are online only, and then they

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do a couple of case studies of what you have invested in. In that, please also talk about the sectors you’re interested in or business models, and where you have invested — sectors that work in your model.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How long do you think it will take for India to catch up? Mohanjit Jolly: The next year will be a challenging one. When the next bull run starts, India is going to be playing a pretty big role in the outcomes. I’m less interested in the term unicorn; I’m more interested in

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: One of my observations on Now Float is that selling to SMBs in India is hard. Mohanjit Jolly: That’s right. The dichotomy in India is – Indians love to be pampered as customers. Sramana Mitra: High-touch, low-value sales. Mohanjit Jolly: Exactly. They want the high touch but the unit economics don’t work. That

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