1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Vikas Choudhury of Pivot Ventures (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 Vikas Choudhury was recorded in May 2019.

Vikas Choudhury is Managing Partner at Pivot Ventures and President at Reliance Jio. He is one of the earliest Angel investors in India and invested in early successes like InMobi and Myntra. We discuss the evolution of the Indian startup and venture capital industry.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to both your activities.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sateesh Andra of Endiya Partners (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: If you look at your last 12 months of deal flow, what do you see as standout trends in the Indian market? What do you see as interesting?

Sateesh Andra: We look for B2B companies that are in cyber security, semiconductors, digital health, and medical devices. Our investment approach is about 15 investments in a fund over a three-year cycle. You’re looking at five investments in any year.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sateesh Andra of Endiya Partners (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Abhishek, you wanted to talk about one of your companies that already had an exit.

Abhishek Srivastava: This is a company called Shield Square, a cyber security company. They had built a cloud-based, real-time bot intervention solution. All online digital asset, whether it’s e-commerce, travel site, or financial services, have been constantly facing issues around content scraping or some kind of form spamming.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sateesh Andra of Endiya Partners (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Do you want to talk about any other company?

Sateesh Andra: I’ll switch to an India team company. Abhishek managed the company. He had an exit in the first three years. It was a cyber security company that’s selling in Europe, US, and India.

But there’s this India-themed FinTech company called Kissht. They enable purchase financing for buying a mobile phone or a laptop. They can buy now and pay later.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sateesh Andra of Endiya Partners (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: As you probably know, my background is in computer architecture. I was in the parallel computing part of MIT’s projects back in the mid-90s.

Funding for chip companies has gone down tremendously. Almost no one in the Indian venture ecosystem is willing or equipped to do chips. I’m actually thrilled to hear that you are willing and equipped to do early-stage investments. Congratulations on that.

Tell me a little bit about this company. How does the follow-on funding happen? Were any of your colleagues in India willing to fund the chip company, or did you raise the follow-on funding in Silicon Valley?

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sateesh Andra of Endiya Partners (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start talking about Endiya Partners. How big is the fund? What is your preference in terms of where you want to invest in? What kind of stage?

Sateesh Andra: Our fund is around 175 crores. We’ve made 12 investments.

Sramana Mitra: That’s about $35 million.

Sateesh Andra: Yes. In the early days, there were accelerators, incubators, and angel investors. There weren’t any seed-stage VC fund. Angels used to do the early stages.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sateesh Andra of Endiya 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 Sateesh Andra was recorded in April 2019.

Endiya Partners’ founding team – Managing Director Sateesh Andra, Managing Director Dr. Ramesh Byrapaneni, Director Abhishek Srivastava – talk about their Seed and Pre-Series A VC fund focused on India.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by each of you taking turns to introduce yourselves, your background, and how you see the India venture opportunity. Let’s start with you Sateesh.

A Vision India 2020 Experience: Brijrama Palace, Varanasi

We spent six days in August 2018 at Brijrama Palace, a heritage hotel in Varanasi, and loved every moment of it. With me were my elderly parents. I am an experienced traveler. Thus, this review and its tone of effusive affection come from the heart, a rare level of endorsement that I don’t give out that easily.

Upon arrival, we were greeted warmly by the hotel’s airport team. And from then on, the entire team showered upon us continuous personalized attention, utmost hospitality, and pampering.

The approach to Brijrama is tricky and spectacular. We were picked up by a car from the airport, and then transferred to a boat. The boat ride to the palace is a stunning introduction to Varanasi. If this is your first time, you’d be instantly captivated. If you’ve been there before, you know what I am talking about.

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