1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Anirudh Suri of India Internet Fund (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like the original business model probably had a low TAM. Turning it into a financial institution opens up a much bigger TAM, right?

Anirudh Suri: The initial focus in the Indian market is on affordable housing institutions and micro-financing institutions. Very quickly, they realized that just providing them credit scores was not going to be very profitable in the long run.

Sramana Mitra: You want to talk about any other company in your portfolio?

Anirudh Suri: Another company that is very interesting is a company called Tookitaki. They have pivoted over time. They >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Yanev Suissa of SineWave Ventures (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: This is your first fund, right?

Yanev Suissa: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Have you had any exits yet?

Yanev Suissa: No, we’ve been investing for about a year.

Sramana Mitra: Next question is about unicorn mania. How does a seed investor protect themselves in the event that there is huge amount of capital being raised? You said that you follow through in your investments, but how far can you go with that given that the trend right now is raising huge amounts of money. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Anirudh Suri of India Internet Fund (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Anirudh Suri was recorded in December 2017. 

Anirudh Suri, Founding Partner at India Internet Fund, talks about the funding trends in the Indian startup market.

Sramana Mitra: Help us introduce you to our audience. Tell us about your fund and investment focus. How big is the fund? What size investments do you make?

Anirudh Suri: We are an early stage seed to Series A fund. We invest primarily in technology-based ventures. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Yanev Suissa of SineWave Ventures (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: In this continuum of de-risking, where are you playing?

Yanev Suissa: All of these things are reasonable factors that any VCs would look at including us. But to build an investment thesis of only investing if certain factors exist is not logical.

We invest whether you have revenue or not, whether you have built the technology or not. It depends. If you’re a brilliant engineer in a space that you have expertise in and have worked in and we have either an existing relationship or a faith in your >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Eva Ho of Fika Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How do you process the current investment climate where capital is moving further and further upstream with all these larger funds wanting to invest in much larger Series A deals, how does a seed investor or entrepreneur mitigate the Series A gap? There’s clearly a Series A gap. 50,000 to 70,000 seed-stage investments and only 1,200 to 1,500 Series A’s. How do you view that phenomenon?

Eva Ho: This is a real challenge. It’s a great question. I don’t have all the answers to this. We’re watching the market dynamics change on a month-to-month and year-to-year basis. When we started Susa five years ago, the seed market was quite different. We were able to get into deals easier. Back then, we weren’t writing large checks. We were writing checks for about $250,000. We could get >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Yanev Suissa of SineWave Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: There are plenty of VCs focusing heavily on revenue numbers in the seed stage right now.

Yanev Suissa: I remember I qualified it as who I know and who I respect.

Sramana Mitra: I think I’d beg to differ there. There’re plenty of good VCs who are also focusing on revenue numbers at the seed stage partly because there is a lot of bootstrapping going on. People are doing so because they can and because they’re getting access to deals. They are making a lot of progress on their own getting into serious ARR numbers before coming into financing. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Eva Ho of Fika Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: In the 1,500 deals that you’ve seen this year, is this a trend that there are a lot of archaic industries getting heavy infusion in machine learning and artificial intelligence, and you’re seeing entrepreneurs emerge in those categories.

Eva Ho: Absolutely. When we were working on Factual in 2007, we were pitching big data and APIs to the larger Fortune 500. A lot of them were scratching their heads and not really seeing its importance. We’re early in trying to deliver the message of systemizing your data, having data as a core component in determining product opportunities, and basically affecting every function that you have. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Yanev Suissa of SineWave Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: That was my conclusion when you prefaced the conversation that you are focusing on these government networks. You have a special unfair advantage in government relationships. I guess I’m a little bit thrown off by your comment that very niche funds is not where your bet is, which is a contrary to what you’re saying.

Yanev Suissa: Absolutely not. That would be 100% of a wrong impression. So let me explain who our strategic network is. The strategic network that we work with is an ecosystem of partners, investors, and people >>>