Nicholas Fok from Erez Capital discusses his firm’s investment thesis.
>>>Sramana Mitra: Okay. And what are you seeing in your deal flow? We’ve talked about what you’re investing in, what trends are you picking up from your deal flow, whether it’s Indian deal flow or US deal flow? What are you picking up?
>>>Sramana Mitra: And what is the AI angle in this? How are they using AI?
>>>Sramana Mitra: So, let’s talk about the type of AI companies that you are investing in. We could do some case studies first of what you have invested in, and if you could share with us in what stage and state you encountered these companies and what is it about them that made you write the checks?
>>>Sramana Mitra: Let me ask you what you are seeing and how you’re processing this exception, which is usage-based pricing, right? SaaS became so popular because it was subscription pricing, and subscription business models are very attractive to investors, whether it’s public market investors or private market investors. It’s extremely popular because of its predictability and the fact that it’s recurring.
>>>Manu Rekhi, Managing Director at Inventus Capital Partners, discusses his firm’s AI investment thesis.
>>>Sramana Mitra: I see. I’m going to go a little bit to a 30,000-foot level and ask you to comment on what else you’re seeing in India that we should keep in our vision, in terms of trends or developments or concerns. What’s going on?
>>>Sramana Mitra: Interesting. I gave a talk recently at Kellogg about Indian startups: Past, Present, and Future. The recording will be available soon. We’ll publish it and you can take a look. One of the things I said is that India has this background in the services industry; the services industry came out of low-end services, BPO, et cetera. But now with human-in-the loop AI services, wherever there is a do-it-for-me scenario, this is actually to India’s advantage, especially if the services can be done from India.
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