1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Nandini Mansinghka of Mumbai Angels Network (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 Nandini Mansinghka was recorded in January 2019.

Nandini Mansinghka is CEO and Managing Director at Mumbai Angels Network, one of the oldest angel networks in India.

Sramana Mitra: Nandini Mansinghka, from Mumbai Angels Network, has been a very early entrant into the Indian entrepreneurship financing ecosystem. She’s a big influencer at a big high impact player in the Indian ecosystem. I’m thrilled to catch up after so many years. Nandini and I last saw each other in person back in 2011 when I was doing a workshop in Mumbai. I will let you introduce yourself and the work of Mumbai Angels Network as a starter and then we’ll dive into the details. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Preeti Rathi of Ignition Partners (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: If an entrepreneur takes $6.5 million in seed, how much ownership does he have left in the company?

Preeti Rathi: Entrepreneurs have to be careful about making sure that they manage the valuation from that perspective. It isn’t really a good idea to give up so much of the company that it actually will make rates for the next round really difficult. Because if the entrepreneurs don’t really have enough skin in the game, the VC’s also don’t really want to invest in the next round. So if you’re taking in so much money early on, you better have an idea that will lead to higher cap and higher valuation so that money doesn’t lead to really giving up ownership completely. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Preeti Rathi of Ignition Partners (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me a little bit about trends that you see in your deal flow. So if you look back on the last 12 or 18 months of deal flow, what are the highlights?

Preeti Rathi: When I think about that, one thing that I’ve seen is this winner-take-all phenomenon that we’re observing. Earlier, it used to be a trend only on the consumer side. Increasingly, it’s true even on the enterprise side. Because of that, too much money is chasing a few deals whereas a lot of deals end up starving. That’s one thing we’ve seen. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Preeti Rathi of Ignition Partners (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Are all the names that you rattled off seed investments?

Preeti Rathi: Yes, most of them. We’re seed investors in Splunk and DocuSign. Not everyone of them is a seed investment. Like I said, we partner. Series A is a very good place for us to start with as well. If it’s something we’re absolutely drooling over, we’ll start a partnership with a company at series B. But primarily we’re early stage investors where we say we want to spend time helping you build a company. So seed and series A is where we focus.

Sramana Mitra: This probably is going to be hard for you to answer but I’m curious. Your partner from Ignition who invested in DocuSign or Docker or one of those companies that have really taken off, what did they see at the seed stage to make that bet? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Preeti Rathi of Ignition Partners (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What about geography? What’s comfortable?

Preeti Rathi: From a geography perspective, we’re really focused on companies right here in the US. Given our model of working hand in hand with our portfolio companies, we basically will wear whatever hat our portfolio companies require us to wear. You need help with strategy, we’ll do that with you. It’s really important that the company is not too far off from a geography perspective. So, we’re primarily focused on the US.

Sramana Mitra: But US is big territory. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Preeti Rathi of Ignition Partners (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 Preeti Rathi was recorded in January 2019.

Preeti Rathi, Partner at Ignition Partners, discusses the changing dynamics of seed investing.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a bit about yourself as well as acquaint our audience with Ignition Partners. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ondrej Bartos of Credo Ventures (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: But that’s not the basis of the Indian BPO industry. Indian BPO industry has to do exactly what you’re doing with technology – to automate how to outsource all these routine mundane tasks.

Ondrej Bartos: I do agree. Also, BPO is already not among the top verticals that UiPath is going after. But I still believe that it’s an interesting proposition to the BPO industry as well.

Sramana Mitra: I have a lot of thoughts on this because I’ve long believed that the entire BPO industry is going to disappear because of automation. I think UiPath is a very good example of a company that’s going to enable that transition. Sooner or later it will happen. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ondrej Bartos of Credo Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What’s been UiPath’s strategy? Have they set up in Silicon Valley very early on? What is their geographical location and headquarters? How was the company’s run from a scaling perspective?

Ondrej Bartos: The truth is that they started expanding fairly early on. They started with two territories. One is the US. It’s not the Silicon Valley but New York. It’s the East Coast. For a company like UiPath, it may make sense because they focus on the big Fortune 500 companies as potential customers. The East Coast is a good option. >>>