1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Andrus Oks, Founding Partner of Tera Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How do the Estonian culture and entrepreneurial momentum play into your investment strategy? Are you looking for people to have developer shops in Estonia or some kind of backend in Estonia? Andrus Oks: Estonia is very special. To put in context, it is a small country with a population of 1.3 million. We

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Andrus Oks, Founding Partner of Tera Ventures (Part 1)

Andrus Oks is Founding Partner at Tera Ventures, based in Estonia. We have a great discussion on entrepreneurship in the Baltic and Scandinavian countries in particular. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as Tera Ventures. Andrus Oks: I’m one of the founding partners of Tera Ventures. Tera is an

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Krishnakumar Natarajan, Co-Founder of Mela Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: The ecosystem has come together for sure. I’m a big fan of capital-efficient startups and fundamentals-oriented startups. In January, we analyzed 20 Indian unicorns. I didn’t consider two as overvalued. The rest were dramatically overvalued. That means that people are investing in the future and expecting that the valuation is going to get

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Krishnakumar Natarajan, Co-Founder of Mela Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Does your thesis also translate into FinTech? FinTech has a big B2B element to it and there is a lot going on. India is a very big FinTech market. Krishnakumar Natarajan: You’re absolutely right. Fintech is becoming a very large market in India. The public digital infrastructure to support FinTech in India is

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Krishnakumar Natarajan, Co-Founder of Mela Ventures (Part 1)

Krishnakumar Natarajan, Co-founder of Mela Ventures and former CEO of Mindtree, discusses the Indian Venture ecosystem. Sramana Mitra: I’m looking forward to catching up with you. We haven’t talked in a while, but we have followed each other’s work for a long time. Catch me up on Mela Ventures.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rahul Chandra, Managing Director at Arkam Ventures (Part 4)

Rahul Chandra: I very strong selection criteria that have a lot to do with growth. Growth is a big factor. Let’s say I’m part of a micro-finance investment cap table. My response is, in India, if you’re not doing things with the right scale, it’s not going to mean anything. It’s a lot like how

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Gans Subramanian, Managing Partner at Hourglass Venture Partners (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do a couple of examples to illustrate what you’re saying with some more visceral understanding. Pre-seed is a very interesting field of investment. There aren’t that many pre-seed funds. Gans Subramanian: There’s another company in the cybersecurity space. These founders have a clear view of the problem. They are technical founders and

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rahul Chandra, Managing Director at Arkam Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How many of those 11 investments are in EdTech? Rahul Chandra: Just one so far. Sramana Mitra: Do you want to talk about that? Rahul Chandra: We have not announced this one, but I can talk about it. The premise is similar to what I’d said. There is a two-dimensional, non-interactive nature to

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