1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Suresh Shanmugham of Saama Capital (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Your primary business is in the small investment area. You have a $100 million fund and you’re doing Series A and pre-Series A. What is your current e-commerce strategy in terms of early-stage investments?

Suresh Shanmugham: From our standpoint, we are certainly open to looking at e-commerce opportunities. I don’t think there is much of an opportunity in horizontal plays. That game is over. There are opportunities in vertical categories that we will continue to look at. I don’t think we have a particular sector.

Our only remaining e-commerce investment is a company called BlueStone, which is in jewelry. We were a Series A investor there. That company continues to grow and develop. The market size for something like that is fairly huge. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With SC Moatti of Mighty Capital (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How does this audience stay engaged with you? You have this other platform that is adjacent to your fund activities. Is that a community? Is that a newsletter?

SC Moatti: If you go to our website, you’ll see that we have a number of online programs with videos, podcasts, and blog articles. Our website gets several hundreds of thousands of unique visitors every month. We have a number of offline programs in the major tech hubs. Every month in every city that we are present, we get anywhere from 100 to 300 people who get together to learn from a C-level person, to network, and to talk about what it takes to build a great product.

Sramana Mitra: I understand the model. Let’s do some case studies. Tell us about your portfolio. What have you >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Suresh Shanmugham of Saama Capital (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: That company has gone in a different direction since then. Why don’t you talk about what you see in that situation? That would give us a good segue into a trend discussion on Indian e-commerce, especially given the shifts that are happening there. What is your current analysis of the Indian e-commerce market?

Suresh Shanmugham: It’s been three years since we exited Snapdeal. We had a great opportunity to provide returns to our investors. The company had performed very well ahead of what we had underwritten to. The market really getting frothy on the e-commerce front with the type of funding activity and the valuations being discussed. Several folks were interested in our position. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With SC Moatti of Mighty Capital (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 SC Moatti was recorded in May 2018.

SC Moatti, Managing Partner at Mighty Capital, discusses Whales, Dolphins, and more. A wonderful conversation full of wisdom and pragmatism.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as talk a little bit about Mighty Capital. How big is the fund? What kind of investments do you like to make? What check sizes do you like to write? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Steve Beck of Serra Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How did that happen? How did they find you? How did you find them?

Steve Beck: I built a company with some guys called C2B Technologies. We sold it to a company called Inktomi in 1999. We had a great exit. We started a little venture firm. One of the companies we began to help was called BioSpace. There was a lady there that we really liked. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Suresh Shanmugham of Saama Capital (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I understand that in 2007, it was betting on Vijay as the entrepreneur. How long did you stay in that company? Did you seek an exit somewhere along the way? What has been your evolution with that company?

Suresh Shanmugham: We have exited a good portion of our position. The company split into three different pieces. We had ownership in all three pieces as a result. What we did was, we sold off the piece that contained the payments business. We maintained ownership in one of the other entities, which is Paytm Mall. We remain invested although we’ve monetized a substantial portion of our investment.

Sramana Mitra: Aside from Paytm, what other companies have you invested in? Please focus the >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Steve Beck of Serra Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What do you need in terms of metrics? Let’s talk about B2B SaaS. Are you looking for a million dollar ARR? Are you looking for paying customers but not yet velocity? What is the comfort zone?

Steve Beck: We hear these types of things all the time. What we’re looking for are some of the obvious things. One is a big total addressable market that’s waiting for disruption. We’re looking for an executive team and a founding group that we really believe in. We know that many of the companies that we invest in are going to end up doing something a little different than what their initial thesis is. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Suresh Shanmugham of Saama Capital (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 Suresh Shanmugham was recorded in May 2018.

Suresh Shanmugham, Managing Partner at Saama Capital, talks about the Indian venture capital eco-system, trends, exits, and his firm’s investment strategy.

Sramana Mitra: What we’re going to do is get to know you and help our entrepreneurs, in particular, get to know how you think about investments. Tell us about your fund. Tell us about what your investment focus is. >>>