 Welcome to everyone to the Capital Insider series here today, Organized by Entrepreneur, as we delve today into the digital India's big promise and accessible opportunity in India. We joined by the startup veteran, Mr. T.V. Mohandas, who is the co-founder and chairman of Irene Capital, as also the chairman of Manipal Global Education. So of course, both as an investor and as a startup thought leader and a man with huge experience, understanding the startups as well as working closely with startups. He understands both sides of the coin, the entrepreneur's pain point, as well as the investor's growth metrics in today's, and particularly in today's discussion, we're going to connect the dots today between the sustainability while leveraging the larger digital opportunity for startups. So welcome, Mr. Pai, and it's wonderful to have you here joining us today as we sort of discuss with you further on how will digital India really fuel the opportunity for startup India as we go ahead. So let me start by asking you this, that while digitization will drive the economics for a lot of big tech companies today, there would be a lot of products, a lot of softwares they would have that they would offer particularly to the legacy businesses as well as large corporates who are looking to change. But what do you feel is the big opportunity for startups who are in particularly in enterprise tech space or B2B space who are looking to help in the digital transformation? So what are the sectors or trends you foresee over there? Well, if you're in the B2B space, I think legacy businesses are businesses with a non-digital in the real world. I've understood that they have to go digital. In fact, one of our companies Darwin Box said they had the best ever quarter last quarter, one. Then they said everybody in business wants to go digital. They're in the HR space. And third, they said we're getting many more meetings than earlier, we don't have to travel. And fourth, people are used to getting digital implementation done remotely. So I think the world has changed. There's enormous amount of interest today and people want good products to help them go digital, become more efficient, connect to customers and lower their costs. So I think the B2B space, there's an explosion of companies which are ready, which are already there, et cetera. B2C, you have seen that they've grown up two X to three X in the last seven, eight months, which has been remarkable. So I think B2B is also doing well. The key is, how can you implement your B2B software very fast, very easily? Do you have the APIs and others to take through people? Do you have a backend which can be very efficient to bring people on board? And will you make sure they see the results as early as possible? Everybody wants to be with the cloud architecture. They want to be with a good interface, API based. I think that's the key to success in this new world. Sure, sir. So while the opportunity is very big, but I also feel that today's large enterprises or even traditional businesses in India, they want to do digital transformation. That's for sure. And, but it's a major undertaking for them, so to say. So how would you invest them today to invest or advise them today to invest in all these digital change over that they want to do by improving their workflows or scaling their processes to become more digital? And particularly, how can startups work with these businesses, family businesses, manufacturing businesses today to help them ensure this change over happens smoothly for them? Well, when the lockdown happened, what really happened? Everything came to a standstill. Everything came to a standstill. The only thing that really worked were the digital companies who already had an interface with customers and who already had a backend of delivery. That means they had a backend supply chain, efficient supply chain, and they had a front end with a very digital and they grew with everybody turned on the digital tap and started interacting, correct? You saw the payments go up to $2.1 billion. You saw the e-commerce go up, et cetera. Now, what do you do with steel companies? What do you do with cement companies, et cetera? For all the cement companies and steel companies, the factories were shut down, everybody went home, and interaction with the customer supply chain came down. So what should they do? They should interact with a lot of their distributors and get them on board to be digital. So their people don't have to travel, the orders flow through, they know what is happening, all the information goes through. I think they've done it remarkably. For example, Havels made sure that they had their interaction with all their distribution chain digitally in a short period of time and everybody was helped to come on digital. So distribution chain should be digitized. And the distribution chain is in touch with consumers. And of course, so consumers who touch point, whose touch point is the distributor are able to interact because the distribution chain is smaller than dealing with the manufacturer. So your distribution chain should be done. Second thing is your support system like finance, HR, et cetera, people are all working from home. So you must make sure that everything that you do, you only got the work tools, the cybersecurity and everything to allow them to work from home and remotely connect. And it was done in most enterprises and people came along. And there are many startups who could help them, give them cybersecurity, give them the HR stuff, give them the finance stuff and make them work. Third, the actual production. Now much of the actual production is also automated today. Yes, a very large number of physical interfaces and there's a problem because the physical interfaces require a lot of people to come, et cetera. And we saw the car manufacturers, everybody put in social distancing, get people to work in shifts, start off with 25, 30%, 40% and make sure that they automate as much as possible. That I think is come back to normal. People are learned how to live with it with masking and social distancing. They're able to make sure that the infection doesn't spread and people are safe. And when they get infected, they got medical advice and they got medical access to help keep them alive and make sure they recover very rapidly because there are too many things, government will shut it down. We know that. And the next thing which is very important is that how is the consumer behavior? Now consumers are started buying goods and services from them physically. They don't have to go to the dealer. They interact with the dealer and the dealer distributes it and delivers to the doorstep and the finance and everything is fully automated. So the distribution chain is there for them. So manufacturing has got automated. People are learned to live. The back office functions are all at work from home. And this is how the new model is going to be. Yes, people are going to come to office. Many, many more will come. Maybe 60, 70% will come to office. 25 to 30%, 40% will always be work from home depending upon who you are and what you are. So work from home is going to be a new normal, not for 100%, for a very important different reason. 100% of those who are able to work from home because 100% of people don't live in a house or have space in the house where they can have a home office. Because you've got a small house, a small room. You've got children screaming at the back end. I'm sorry, children shouting in the back end. Your family going around and everybody is disturbed. You go and get the silence. You don't get that concentration activity. People are fed up. People want to go to office. But Ritu, the senior people love it very much because earlier, before this work from home came, senior people didn't like work from home because for them, they want to see everybody in front of their eyes. They want to meet them, talk to them. They didn't like work from home. Now when they started work from home because of compulsion, they loved it because they don't have to travel to and fro. They don't have to go anywhere. They're in the comfort of the house. They get home for, they're taken care of and they have a lot of space in the house. The spouses work in one corner. They work in one corner and they are mostly empty nesters. If you're past 45, you're mostly an empty nester. The children are grown up. And all that has made sure that you're more comfortable. You don't want to go back. So the roles are now reversed. Younger people want to come. The older people don't want to come back. Senior people, but they will adjust to the new normal. So I think if you look at how the work has been distributed, all the startups who are in B2B can see where things are and go market to them. And today we learn from everybody that they're getting more time with the decision makers easily. And all decision makers want to touch base electronically. They decide electronically. They're in a hurry. And all CEOs and boards are very clear. Go digital immediately. Digital first, mobile first. That is a mandate from everybody because they find that they can get greater benefits. They can get access to information, et cetera. And all boards of listed companies and long listed companies when they meet, they ask you, how are you going digital? How is work from home? How is it working? What are the risk mitigation measures? Have you spent money? Have you invested? They're approving all the investments. So the world has changed. And this is how you must interact. But the key thing is you must remember that users have different levels of sophistication and users have different level of ease of use. So when you sell, you should make sure you tell them not how great your product is but how well this will work for them and how easy it's to implement and how you train the people and reduce the pain. Because earlier they used to talk to you, make you come, make you sign a 500 page document and all that, which most of them signed blindly anyway. And never took care of the risk. Well, they're actually very eager. And most of the B2B startup we are interested in told us that they're getting better meetings, deal culture is happening faster. They all want to go digital. They're winning this, they're implementing, they're working. But the key is to look at it from the customer point of view, not your point of view. Very many startups make a mistake of presenting how great a company they are, what great technology, how it works. But as a user, what am I interested in? How can I use it fast? How can I make it work fast? How useful it is to me? How can I train my people? And how it'll benefit me? I'm not concerned about what, how great you are, right? Another mistake was not made. So I think this is what we should look at and work. Sure. So Mr. Pai, you just talked about the digitization of the distribution system. And I was just yesterday, I was reading this report about social commerce becoming as high as 28 billion, probably a few years down the line by maybe 2025. So do you see the digitization of the distribution system will be the outcome of this growth? How do you see the entire structure changing for social commerce to become that big? Well, I think social commerce is the interaction with people, right? So wherever there's people interaction, social commerce will come in and mostly it is the distribution and supply chain. Now that is getting fully automated. And there are so many apps, there's so much of software available there. See, Ritu, the good thing you must understand is enterprise are finding that there are a lot of good apps, a lot of young companies who can come and help them. They never knew there's so many of them in the company intents. They don't have to go to the big legacy technology players who charge your arm and leg and make it very complex because with cloud, you don't require you set up a data center. It's all available. With the SaaS model, you don't have to pay so much of offering money. You can pay monthly subscription based upon use. And all the startups are charging very low money. I hope they charge more. They don't need to make money. Their investors are not subsidizing all these enterprises because they want to capture territory. But I think the key is the method of selling, the method of pricing, everything is gone the consumer way, right? When everything is gone, the consumer way is up to you to make use of it. So I think the competitive intensity has gone up. So social commerce is going up, but don't get carried away by all those numbers by consultants. We have the same set of four or five consultants, write the same set of reports for all things. If you add up all the business from everybody, it's about three to four times India's GDP. But the fact is, fact remains, opportunity is big. How big is for you to discover and put into play? Beyond a billion dollars business for anybody, whether it's a billion, a hundred billion, or 20 billion, 30 billion, all you're interested in, am I making the sale? Am I getting the money? Now, because so many people are selling and the startups haven't learned how to sell because the culture for them is an engineering culture, not a sales culture. You ought to develop a sales culture. You must learn that the only person who gives money to you is the customer, and the customer must pay for it, correct? You sell Steve, they're the customer to buy, the customer has to pay, and you're going to charge the customer. You're not going to be, what do you call it, very kind to him, kind to the customer, you're going to make them pay. What are the market price? Because when the market comes down, they're not going to give you higher prices, correct? So you had to make sure that you were able to sell and you should not use price as a first step. You should use the ease of use, the benefits, and how quickly you can do it at the first step, and then the price. Don't discount too much, give them greater service, handle them, make them feel comfortable, and charge them what you think is the right price because I think it's important for people to understand this because once you have an installed base and you charge them, it's very difficult to raise the price. Very, very difficult to raise the price. You can't raise the price. I agree. And if you give it, it's absolutely difficult to ask people to pay for it. Yeah, I mean, Indians are not used to paying so much for technology, whereas in America and other places, they know how to sell and they pay for value. In India, they still don't pay for value except you're a big MNC, you come and wear the flag and all some people get impressed and pay a lot of money. But even though they sign on the contract, they may not pay the money at all in the end, they may pay a little bit of it and stop or whatever it is. So I think you must price it properly and make sure that you evolve the customer. So how do you think the startups should, in India particularly, they should change the narrative to be able to sort of go from, my product is that great to, this is how I can make your company great. So what do they need to do to sort of get those customers? Well, I think they need to have a cultural change. They need to create a marketing and sales strategy. A marketing strategy to make, improve the brand and make them attractive by talking to people like you, writing articles in your media and other places and creating excitement using social media, blah, blah, blah to create a full factor. Then create a sales team to have a push factor. And for all of them, we tell them very clearly that you've got to invest more in the marketing and sales, not in discounting prices and giving away things free and say, uncle use it now and pay me later. That's not gonna work, but who's gonna give you money? After all, very soon in SaaS companies and all the startup people are looking at multiple of sales, not multiple of losses, correct? Those days are going because today, all the venture capitalists and everybody who invests lot of money, who has got a lot of money to burn and become much more careful, they're looking at winners and they're waiting for the winners to come. They're not waiting for you to lose more money and go to them and ask for money. So money is in short supply except for the winners. We are very clearly, the last six months are shown who are the winners, who are the has beens. So there is a turn that's going to happen. And if you want to win, you got to make sure that you're able to create a good revenue stream and a good ARR and that will demonstrate how good it is and you're able to pull it off and have, leave frugally, not overspend. So you, because investment you got to make is in sales and marketing. I think, you know, many of the founders in B2B don't invest adequately in sales and marketing with all of them are started by good engineers. They think the product itself will sell. The product itself will sell when it is free in a B2C where the lot of people can use it and they can go from product to product, right? And B2C, the game is to get as many installed as possible as many monthly active users possible and then monetize. People understand that in B2B, that's not the model. B2B, you actually have to sell, make them use it and they have to pay for it. And everybody is going to look at you and the multiple of revenue, not a multiple of losses or multiple of eyeballs. So B2B is very different from B2C. No, I agree, but you're the chairman of Manipal Education and today we see White Hat Jr. being very aggressive with their sales and that's sort of also getting them into trouble. No, the misleading says that, I mean, they're clearly misselling. I mean, you can't tell a six-year-old kid, oh, you're going to be like a CEO of Sundar Pichai or you're going to be somebody else who's going to be big. Remember, there is only one Bill Gates in the world. There's only one Sundar Pichai. Everybody cannot be a Sundar Pichai, everybody cannot be that. You can aspire to be, but you're not going to be. So let's be very clear, the chance occurrence and it happened because of circumstances and there are very, very good coders. It's not necessary that you are the only best coder in the world. And when you've got 10 kids who are very, very good at top of the pyramid, yes, they could be good coders. When you've got thousands and thousands, everybody is not going to be a great coder. It's going to become a commodity. You can't miss sell. I think there have been a lot of miss selling that's happening and I think they're regretting it because people are going after them because you miss sell and put this dollar sign in front of their eyes of the parents and then you tell your kid, I'll make you a superstar. Every kid is not going to become a superstar. I mean, learning coding, doing coding is extremely hard work. That's why they're so few successful tech entrepreneurs. There are millions of people, but very few successful tech entrepreneurs and great techies, right? Sure. So, you know, I mean, how do you see you work so closely with the government of India and you work in their policy framework. So how do you think the government is going to be actively involved in creating opportunities for startups, particularly to do collaborations with government organizations, particularly the public sector units or even established businesses in India to sort of help them digitize seamlessly, profitably. Well, the government has a vision of digitizing Prime Minister Modi has given the digital India. So that's a mandate and everybody's trying to digitize. The key is how do they work with people? Now, government is stuck in processes. They have to go to a tender bidder and all that mess. They have to take the lowest and all that. Of course, you've got the World Bank thing where you give more marks for quality and less marks for the price and they're very scared to deal with smaller companies. But luckily for us, the Metis has, and Nithya Yoga has made sure that in all government contracts, they remove the condition of a prior experience. They remove the condition of certain revenues being there. They remove the condition of having so many installs and they also open to startups. And if you're not open to startups, you can go to the government portal and put it up and everybody has to go there and you can compete, you get a chance. Is it working? It's working much better than it did earlier because remember in all governments, consultants have rid the system. The big consultants come together and rid the system by putting in barriers. You've got to have 200 crore investing. You've got to have so many, who's going to have it? We don't get an opportunity. How are you going to get there? Government has tried to remove that. In many cases they removed it. But they're still there, you've got to fight it out, expose them, write in the media that this is unfair, tweet to Ravishankar Prasad and Metis and all that and break it down. Because those are barriers put up by these consultants and then they get their own clients to bid and then go consult for them and tell them how to win the deal. I mean, there is no Chinese wall in many of the things. This is the total abuser system and everybody is part of the gravy train. Everybody there is part of the gravy train. We know that happening in a very big way for the last 20 years. We've seen that happening even when we are selling in the services companies. We saw all the big MNCs used to come, corrupt the entire system and put up barriers. And a very easy way to get the barriers, get the consultant to put up a qualification barriers knowing very well only they will qualify. And some of them have been done very, very openly. So I think the key is because of social media, you have to expose everybody and win it through and defy the battle and hopefully you'll get it. So it's much more open today than otherwise. So the private sector is also much more open. In private sector is not like the government, they're willing to sign up, they're willing to do things. So you must go sell. That's why you must invest in good marketing sales people. And the best way to invest in marketing sales people is to hide the people who have got the Rolodex. I don't know whether young people understand what are the Rolodex now is the old marketing term. It is a container where you have the cards of all the people you've met and who may can call up and send an email and will respond to you, right? That's the Rolodex. So you've got to get people who have been selling and everybody else. You can't pick a marketing MBA, go and sell because nobody knows him, nobody will open the door, you'll not do that. You've got to pick people who already build the relationship, who can call up people who know the market, get them from the big tech companies, get them from otherwise, that's why you need to spend money on that. And once you attract them and give them option, many of them will come. And then you don't have to do this. I remember a conversation I had with a very big CEO of a very, very big European bank. When I met him and said, hey, we want to work with you, want to do this. He said, Mohan, do one thing, find out who is the best guy who's selling in this business, who has done the most sets, offer him 25% more and grab him and ask him to go sell. That's the only way to sell. He said, whenever you go to a new market, you find out who are the best guys, pay them more, get them on board and we are in business. Because you know, things guys, all the startups hire a rookie. One of the founders said, I'll do marketing. I mean, nobody knows you, man. Nobody knows who you are, what you are and all that. And you go before a big company and you do blah, blah, blah, blah, you don't know what to talk, you don't know what to do. You're not gonna win the deal. And you won't tell him, uncle, look at this, my tech is so beautiful, look at this, blah, blah, blah. That doesn't work. All right, the selling language, the real thing has to be done. But the best way is to get people who have done it before, who have sold enterprise products, selling to enterprise is not in itself. It's not easy, it's not in itself. Absolutely, yeah. So do you think the narrative moves from marketing to sales for startups? And therefore they should be putting more money in getting good sales people on board instead of just burning a lot of money on social media? Yes, I think so because you know, when they go to social media, they're feeding the big monopolies and the big beast. They feed Facebook, they feed Twitter, they feed Google. You gotta understand, even the Google said, I'm going to get you everything. Google will only put people who pay them the most money, right? I mean, you come up in the list, the fellow who pays more money comes up first. That's a very manipulative technology that they're using for marketing. Nobody's doing your favor. Google is a business to make obscene amounts of money. Facebook is the best obscene amount of money. Who pays more, they put them first. And the thing that anybody who goes there and Google's will get this name first and they'll go to them, right? So you gotta be very smart to know how the algorithm work, what works and how it is too. So the way to do it is yes, you are on digital media. You should be in the media. You should be on Twitter and tweet about your product. Yes, you gotta have publicity. You gotta talk to people like you to write nice articles about them and there are a lot of these digital media who can write and spend some money. I don't know why they're not, you know, you're advertising on your media more and you know, your story and all the digital media more, which I've got so many eyeballs, advertise there, spend a little bit of money because by supporting them, you are enhancing your digital footprint, correct? Instead of feeding the big bees who are monopolies, right? Because you have your own network, you have your own constituency and if you become a very big distributor, people will have an alternative. They must do that. And then they must do cold calling, cold calling, sending emails to senior people, calling them up and speaking to them. People still use telephones in this country, senior people do and write them letters to and give them some brochures, go to big events that people come, interest themselves. Selling is an art. Selling cannot be done by everybody. Marketing can be done by- Like I can tell you that you're the first person who said it in the entire pandemic. I've spoken to so many people, but you're the first one who's come out right and said that, you know, step up the sales. No, no, because, you know, marketing can be done by a lot of bright people who don't know how to talk or mumble, right? Because they have to create creative, they have to think strategy, they have to distribute, it's like a set of location. But selling is actually one-on-one, selling is an art. It's very frustrating. You need to have perseverance, energy, optimism, and for enterprise, a long lead cycle. Whereas B2C, you put up a thing and something, it takes off and all, everybody will download, you get your, I've done it myself. B2B, you're dealing one-on-one and you've got to try it out. You require patience, you require perseverance, you require connections, you require follow-up. You need to understand, you've got to be extremely polite. People may argue about you, throw you out of the office. You've got to keep coming back and say, kick me more, kick me more and willing. You know, it's a very difficult job. It's not an easy job for everybody. And you know, fortunately, a lot of people have the inclination for sales. The light meeting people, the light taking of the challenge, they are aggressive and quite by nature. Aggressive means they got the energy to do it again and again and again. We see, we're all built very differently. You can't have an introvert or the salesperson, it's got to be an extrovert, correct? In America, and I'll tell you, if you don't have the culture of sales, if you get an American today and ask him to sell that $25 stuff for $100, they'll sell it for $100 and make the client feel very, very happy, they've got a great deal. An Indian will sell a $100 stuff for $25 to a client and feel sorry for the customer. You don't feel sorry for the customer, you feel sorry for yourself first. Because you're not making the kind of money you should be making. Only you feel sorry for yourself, you get more energy. Hey, let me try, let me do it, right? So you've got to be very careful that culture or selling is a very different outgoing culture. You've got to be positive, people will push you around, people will abuse you, people will throw you, you've still got to keep coming back. You've got to, you know, earlier you used to have dinners and take people out and all that, blah, blah, blah, to create the social thing, though you should know how to make conversation so they keep people happy to create mind recall. It's a very difficult business. So you've got to get the strength people to do it. And if you're in a hurry, get people who've done it before, pay them more money and do it, and they'll be much more productive. They'll be much more productive. And legacy companies have got a lot of them. For example, it Infosys, when we were growing first in the 1980s, we took the best people from Hindustan, Lever and all the FNCJ companies because they were the brightest of the lot. They knew how to talk, they had body, they had gravitas, they had body language, and they could sing, they could do everything else. And they were very good. And they could be send them to the US and they all work because they could connect with customer. They knew how to connect. We didn't have to train them. We didn't pick rookies from IAMs and say, hey, go and work. It's not going to work. So do you feel that particularly people in sales roles who might have lost jobs in the traditional sectors or even large corporates, they are likely to find more jobs in the startups? Yeah, they should. They should target them and pick them. But you've got to be careful that you don't get people who are not done well. Sure. So how do you feel the overall, the promo collective ecosystem for interview of digital mobilization that needs to take place? What new work opportunities do you see happening for India's workforce? Well, you know, I'll tell you there are two kinds of workforce. The young people, 22 to 28, who are all brought up in the digital world. They're mobile first, digital first, they think very differently. And people who worked in the earlier legacy world, they think differently, right? I mean, you talk to a young 15-year-old person. I mean, they think very differently, right? They're all about apps, about connectivity. They go to their handle device. They know how to buy stuff. They know how to do stuff. They know where the deals are. My younger son, you know, when he was in college, he was so proud. He earned two and a half, three lakh rupees by getting cash back from everybody. He had no loyalty. Who gave him more cash back? He took the money and people, Paytm and others were giving dollars of cash because the Chinese had poured money and they were giving it away. It was a very good thing to do. So everybody got cash back. This back is a great thing. And young kids made the most of it, right? They got so many things. They made so much of money. They got deep discount. Because all these beaters, we thought that they're giving more and more discounts, et cetera. I remember one day, there was a great deal of excitement in the office because everybody was trying to buy iMacs and Apple, this one, you know, laptops and everything. I said, why? Oh, this is giving us a 20% discount. And there's a company in Delhi. I mean, you buy from Apple at 100 and give it at 80. You can sell the whole world, man. You can sell it to the whole world. Everybody will cure because they know it's an Apple product. You're getting it cheaper than Apple. And 20% is a good deal. Everybody uncle will buy it. Then you've got GMB. Some great thing called GMB and say, hey, hey, we did it. Yeah, we lost a billion dollars, but we did it, did it. Next day, what happened? Somebody gives 25% discount, we'll sell. It's a race to the bottom, right? Yeah, true. It's a race to the bottom. Well, many have done it just to get more and more people to come to the portal so they can cross-sell, do everything. Well, I don't want to comment on the strategy whether it's good or bad or whatever it is. But it is what it is. And I think many of them have been successful in blowing up that money, but getting a lot of eyeballs and they've been successful in doing that, which is good news. But I think B2B is not like that. B2B is very, very different. So B2B and B2C are two different things, but B2C gets more valuation. Because you can show growth, you can show great eyeballs, you can show great connectivity, but you've got to be extremely careful because there's a lot of competition and now investors are getting smarter. But I mean, overall, don't you feel, I mean, from what the trends that I have been seeing for unicorns are actually being built and faster than they were being built back in 2011, 2012 in e-commerce. We've seen Sass and those artificial intelligence, those companies becoming and growing much faster, much sooner. Well, some of them are growing much faster, much sooner because I think there's a much more concentration of capital coming in. So they're able to really spend on marketing and grow. And there's a greater attraction for users of the technology because everybody wants to digitize. So the market is moving in your favor. When the market moves in the favor, when you've got capital that's called, you know, you're going to do better. You've got to do all the right things and you do things much, much better. They've been unicorns in two years, three years, four years, right? I'll leave you to take a lot of time. So they've been unicorns two years, three years, three, four years, but you've got to make sure that you stick to the narrow path and you don't miss the opportunity. And don't believe that you're the greatest, greatest company since creation, right? It's a commodity market. You're still not the numero you know. Yes, you've grown up, but be careful, get more and more customers because B2B is a very sticky business. B2C is not so sticky. Yeah, yeah. In my view, B2B is very sticky because once people use the software, they install it, they can't easily change because change involves buying something else. The bigger worry for me is that, you know, would they be able to service? Because you know, if you see a startup growing to a unicorn in three years, their own sustainability might get challenged because eventually any kind of B2B business requires service to be provided to the customer, you know, whatever software you give or anything. Yeah, Ritu, I totally agree. That's why they got to build the organization. I mean, get good HR people from the software service companies, the BPO companies will build the organization. We have grown 30, 40% will know how to handle growth. You may be growing 80, 90% get there. Yes. They know how to look into the two or three years future. They know how to hide past, they know how to empower them, put them in place, blah, blah, blah. Remember, if you're a BPO company in this country, you are like an airport terminal. People came in, people went. The key is to keep them together in the terminal, giving them all the goodies and the shops to make sure they stay as long as possible because you were having attrition of 45, 50, 60%, right? And you were handling that, you know, how to handle that, you know, how to handle growth. Correct? Yeah, that's true. So get people, get good people. See, you've got to build the team. HR is extremely important. Technology is important, HR is important, sales and marketing is important, finance is important. So what you're doing in 10 years, you've got to do in three years. So the key thing is to plan for it, build capacity, use the capital to build capacity, get good leaders and to do it and to understand your own inadequacies. Many of them is started by first time people who just started a company who never worked before, who never grown a company, who never know many things. They must learn. And that's why the investors who invest in them should guide them, talk to them and they must listen to the investors and get people better than them and come in the background and handle what they're comfortable and let others run the show, but remain in charge. So I think, you know, I say, growing up thanks for a lot of these people too, too much of stress, too much of growth, you must set aside ego. But remember, at the end of the day, you know, you want a lot of the stock, you want to benefit the most if you let somebody else run for you. If you get a good CEO, you can do things much better for you and you want most of the stock. Man, you are going to be walking to the bank and counting all the cash, not the CEO. The CEO is going to get a little bit of options and a little bit of cash and, you know, he may be happy, but you are going to be the happiest. Why should you be the CEO and say, hey, I'm the founder, I want to be the CEO. I want to be the biggest guy. I didn't know somebody who's much better and they do a greater job, you benefit the most. So this little piece of understanding has to come to people. Sure, particularly startup founders from the look of it. When you grow, because, you know, you've got to understand your own inadequacies, your own inability to handle growth. It's not easy. I mean, one can be a good engineer, but not necessarily the best thing. I've seen in my career, people who are heroes become zeros in three years. Because they were heroes handling X, when X become three X in three years, four years, they're out of place because they're not, they don't grow at the same pace the company grows. This is the problem with a lot of startups. 18, 90% of people don't grow at the pace the company grows. So when you hire a person, you must make sure that the person of the capacity to handle the same assignment at 10 X the scale. Because you could be 10 X in three, four years. Totally, yeah. And if you think the person is- So where are you putting your bets on? What kind of tech companies are you betting on right now? Particularly for 2021, is it B2B or B2C, you see more action happening? I think we got, see, we got three kind of companies, B2C, PureTech and B2B. PureTech like cloud and others, and B2B and B2B2C. We are putting 20, 25% into B2C, but B2C is brutal. You require more and more capital. B2B success depends on the ability to get more and more capital, how you're going to spend time raising more capital. Whereas B2B product creation, marketing are the key and it's a long-term game. You have to wait patiently four to five years, but this COVID has given a win in the sales. And then you've got the PureTech companies using great technology in the cloud, in AI and others. Well, you've got to find out how people are going to use that and all that. So we've got a location between all of them and we are, we are doing, we have an allocation but we are not so, you know, so rigid. All right, we take it case to case, but at the end of the day as venture capitalists, we want to make a lot of money. So we are not very rigid. We feel the company is good in a particular place. You invest in the company. For example, we invested in a company called Mitro. Mitro is a fantastic company with great tech and they're growing very fast. They got 35 million downloads, blah, blah, blah. And now everything is slow down, but they're still growing and they've got fantastic technology, a great team. And we're very happy with what they have done because they're going to win the battle to be the next social media giant because they got capability, great products, everything. And of course the upsurge happened when the Chinese were banned. Now they're stabilizing. So they will stabilize, they will grow up again. So I think, you know, you pick the winners and you stay with them. But the biggest thing is you must mentor them. They require a lot of mentoring. They require mentoring for strategy, for execution, for hiring people, et cetera. You know, we got a company called Better Place. Better Place is a fantastic company, the largest blue collar workforce company with a SaaS platform. They're doing extremely well. They just raise capital and they're going to get more capital soon. They're India's largest. They use this COVID time to reconfigure their business, get on more scale, get on more people on board, reconnect with the customers. Now everybody is hiring. They're doing extremely well. So you have to mentor them. You have to spend time with them, put the building blocks, create the organization chart, the network, and keep talking. So you know, I mean, you know, while as an investor, you've got such sharp lenses to sort of understand. Most importantly, which is the most, you know, the most, I would say the most problematic area in this whole situation, which is to mentor and sort of re-mentor the startup time and again. Now if, you know, let's say if the India's old wealth were to sort of look at investing themselves in startups to help them grow, to help them multiply, what do you think, how do you think one, it can happen best? And secondly, you know, what is it particularly, you know, so if somebody's built a large company, let's say maybe even 30 years ago, 40 years ago, how can the best mentor or what capabilities can they bring to the startups if they're working with them closely? Look, I would like to tell all these people with big family money, people who sold their companies who got cash, don't try to start a fund, hide somebody and run it yourself. Yeah. Because running a fund requires a particular kind of person who will fees that he's gonna get the carry and the carry takes a lot of time to get money, you know, they need to have the passion, energy to last it out to the eight or 10 year holding. And if you think you've got a money and you can hire a manager, pay money and give a little bit of carry and hope it'll work for you, it's not gonna work. But every good manager wants to run his one fund, right? That's the thing for them, they don't want to work for yours. So what you need to do if you got money is to invest in five to 10 funds, pick up the funds, talk to a lot of funds, ask them to come and present to the funds that you are, you know, well, people who are confident, people who can raise money, people who are good at it. But across a lot of funds, act like a fund of funds, invest in eight to 10 funds and you know, they will meet you, ask them to meet you quarterly, look at all the companies, pick up some of those companies and then to tell them you want to talk to them, mentor them, give them experience, share your ideas and work with them. I'm sure those who are investing companies when they see a good person will want to work with you. We want to talk to you, we want to learn because they eager to get your experience and help them out. And when they grow, invest in them directly because you know where they are, what they are, et cetera. If you think you're going to search and do everything, it's going to be difficult. For example, we learn 14 funds. We got 250, 275 companies invested, $450 million invested between all of them. We are putting $150 million, right? Baiju was a company, he put in the first check seven, eight years ago. All right, we farm easy, we put in nearly the first check. So we got a lot of these winners, but you know, we believe that even though we are good at picking, we rather work through many funds because we'll have so many fund managers working for you. They're going to do everything and you pick the best that is there and you put in more money and follow on some others where you get good opportunities once they come to a certain size. Because the initial stages require a lot of hard work. Not everybody is going to be a winner. But if you put in funds, you've got education at the fund level. Then you diversify when you get the best companies to come. They'll all come to you because they're anyway good to raise capital. So you've got the money, they'll come to you but you've got to be communicative. We get 3,000 companies visiting our office every year, 3,000. All right, we've got a small team of people who create a software to make sure which to talk to, what to do, everything. They become experts. Not all young people but they become experts using technology they can find out. And remember if you're a legacy player with a lot of money because sold a company and you've got ancestral wealth, how to connect with young people is difficult. Even for me, even though I've been in technology for the greater part of my life, connecting with young people is difficult because many of them will not open their mouth. They will not talk to you openly. They're sometimes shy. It takes a lot of time. They feel intimidated, right? So if you think that you're going to run everything, you're going to do everything, it's difficult. So go through this method but invest here. This is going to be the growth area. These are going to be the winners. Like the US has got 250 unicorns. India has got 41 unicorns. We'll have 100 unicorns by 2025, maybe 150. Right. Maybe 150 by 2025. So pick the winners, invest in them, hang on and you'll make a lot of money and you'll be very exciting for you. Sure. So we've also got some questions coming from our audience, Mr. Pai. Let me ask you this. So Rani is that, what is your view on the government's current and sudden change stance on the online gaming industry? You know, online gaming is flirting with illegality and money. Okay, betting and giving money and all kind of stuff which is at the borderline of the law. They need to be careful. And their revenue model is very clear. You can download a game, you can play the game and they make money or they sell you coins, they sell you this, they sell you that, all kind of stuff, right? And they allow you to bet on winners and all kind of stuff, which is part of the game. We don't have a regulatory regime for that. We don't have anything else. So what I would like them is create a code of conduct, socialize the idea with government, social idea with a lot of people because if a lot of people lose money or something happened, they go complain. Government is going to come to the rescue. They don't care for you. So government doesn't understand this business. They don't understand it. And you've got to be careful in what you do because some of these games are habit-forming. You have the POG as whatever it is, right? Which is habit-forming, young people's food, they did all kind of stuff there. And that can lead to very adverse circumstances. So you've got to play it very carefully and work on that and make sure it happens. And also, Vithu, you've got to form a group to protect your tough. Yes, I've got a little technical glitch from Mr. Pai's side right now. We'll just join us online. A very interesting discussion on the online gaming industry and particularly how it's going to come under regulation as are various other industries as well in the coming times. In the meantime, please share your questions. Any questions that you have to ask Mr. Pai, please let us know. Please put them either on Facebook where this program is going on live or you can, if you're there with us on Zoom, please put it over there so that we can actually go out and ask these questions from him as we wait for him to return back. Oh, yeah, no, great. So I'm saying that you need to connect, you need to do many things and you've got to work to it. And for God's sake, join together to protect your tough. Don't allow the Chinese apps to come through some other country because globally, companies want to tackle this market. This is your market. Work together to protect your market. Well, should we shut out others? I don't want to talk about it. Shut out the Chinese, definitely, where Chinese won't allow you to come to their market. Should shut out others from Europe and others. Look at how, whether you can go to the market, whether you're open, but try to protect your home tough. See, Ritu, you must understand one thing. Just like you protect your physical territory, you must protect your digital territory. Right, absolutely. I mean, digital territory belongs to us. Why should we hand it over to the Chinese? 60% of the apps were Chinese. Why did we hand it over? Don't hand it over to them. The government did a good thing by banning the Chinese apps. I support that for a very important reason. The Chinese don't allow you to come inside. They have this great firewall. They kick you out and they censor you. They control you. Why should we allow them to come? You can work with the free market economy like other economies who allow you to come and start anything else, correct? And you can compete with them, but you can't compete with the Chinese. So I think, you know, what is happening here. So learn how to make sure that you get a reasonable share of your home market. We've got another question, sir. Again, you know, do you feel that the changes in the farm laws are correct? And what opportunities does it open for agri-startups? You know, I feel the farm laws are very correct for a very important reason. What do the farm laws do? They don't change any existing practice. MSP has not changed. Nothing is changed. And they're only giving the farmer the freedom to sell where he wants, when he wants at whatever price. He's not preventing them from going to the Monday and selling it through the same middleman, paying the same commission, getting the same MSP and government is committed to MSP for a simple reason. Government has a commitment to feed 80 crore people with almost free rations. That's not going to go away. So they have to get the things to MSP, correct? Now, this agitation is a political agitation driven by certain political parties and the left. The left, right, left and all these radical elements that tried the CAA didn't work. Even the CAA, what did the CAA do? Before CAA, there's a citizenship law that remains as it is. Nothing has changed. All the CAA did was to say, if you belong to this particular category, you've come to India before 31st December, 2014, you are in India today, we'll give citizenship. It did not say we'll not give citizenship to others. So people could have a fake narrative. The same thing they're doing in the farm bill. And as far as startups are concerned, the farm bill will empower the farmer to sell where he wants, what he wants. And of course, there are some rules for the game. You have to pay the farmer within 24, 48 hours. You can't cheat the farmer. You've got to have the contract. Follow the rules and do it. For example, Avishkar has done very well. Ibono has done very well. So our big basket has done very well. Grokeverse has done very well. They all set up networks. They all got people in North India and South India that are doing well. So AgriTechs will be a growth area. I've been talking to government, to telling them to Nitya Ayog that we should have Nabbar create a 5,000 crore fund and invest in startups in AgriTech area. Because all the AgriTechs who work with farmers, increase farmers income by 20, 30%. They have held the farmer to great short, create a supply chain and they go to the farmer's doorstep. They take the goods, pay them on time and they sell and make losses and subsidize the farmer and the consumer. That's great news because they got capital but they're doing a good job. So I think we should encourage them. And if we do that, there'll be more competition. There'll be more intensity and government should put in money there. I've been talking to them for the last one year to do that. I hope they do it now. That would certainly be a big help. Somebody needs to even guide the farmers. If they want to go and sell outside then create avenues for them to be able to do it. It's happening, Ritu. It's happening in Delhi. There's so many places where they kill the farmer for his organization. They created places where they can come and everything to come. You see the problem is wheat and rice are very different because they're procured by the government. Now the startups are working in fruits and vegetables. They're working in the area of milk. They're working in the area of, animal husbandry, fish and meat, fishing and meat because they're outside the MSP. There's a free market there. They're working in those areas. And there's a lot of money to be made by creating efficiency in the supply chain and creating branding and giving the consumer a good thing. Sure. So sir, we have another question right here by Mritinjay. He's asking, how can storefront enablers succeed in this time? Folks like Bikai, Tukan, Shopify, et cetera are suddenly in red ocean. What do you think should be the strategy to sell to SMBs, SMBs because they still think a lot about shelling out investment money? I think you've got to create a variable pricing model because people are hesitant to put money down for anything. If you create a business process innovation where it is variable pricing, where you get a small part of what they sell and they clearly know that if they don't sell then you don't get your money and you're able to take some risk and keep the cost of your product down and help them, then it's going to work. See, the important thing is to gain that trust. Many of the SMBs are all fed up with people coming, selling something and disappearing. They want to know what is your stake in the game? How are you going to handle them? How are you going to sell? It's a very expensive proposal. By winning the trust and working there is a long hard battle, battle, you'll be able to do that. Sure, sir. Because they've got to see the benefit. They don't have lots of money to risk and everything, they're very careful, right? Maybe some of them have been bitten badly. Again, it comes down to your original point of sales and service by startups which needs to notch up. So there's another question from Sharif who says that how the data residential policies are going to affect the online business? I think it's going to be very positive because globally every citizen in every country is concerned about the data of the citizens because the data is getting consolidated in the digital monopolies and the digital monopolies are misusing the data. They're getting psychometric profile. They're trying to give to a fake narrative. They're pushing things they want you to do. They want to control your mind and change your behavior. And everybody is happy with it because nobody knew about it. Now they know about it because the US election we've seen how they were anti-Trump. I'm not pro-Trump or anti-Trump, but they should not interfere in politics. That is the kiss of death because now they're going to get it back. They're all ganging all the politicians of the gang up to beat them up and break them up in using monopoly laws because you can't go after them. That is their territory. Don't take sides. They're taking sides. Even in India, some of the media is taking sides and it's going to be tough because you've got to be independent and give everybody an opportunity. Don't get into politics. If you get into politics you'll be, you have to play that game very differently and you'll get hurt, right? So I think it's important that by DISA residency law is a way of protecting consumers. Why should all our data reside in America? Your research in America is available to the American government, the National Security Agency of America, the courts of America. Who's going to protect us? Where data is there, all we have is a contract. And the contract with the Google or Apple is one sided. Everything in their favor. Nobody has read the contract in India. We all blindly sign. The data goes, everybody can use. Who's going to protect the data? So in a data residency law, but all our data is available here. Tomorrow there's a misuse of data. The data is sold. Something is done. We can always go to the government. The government phase go to the court and the Supreme Court of India has heard that data is a part of right to privacy, which is a part of right to life. Under Article 19 is protectors. So government has to have a data residency law because if that data is in law, how can they protect us? How can they make sure they have access to data? I remember many of these payment people were getting the data outside and storing outside. RBI came down and told them, we want your data to be here. We want unqualified access. We want to access independently, but I do it. They all protested. They're much not the key and all that, but RBI is very insistent today. All of payments data, whether you have foreign providers, Indian, are in India. They're subject to RBI regulations. RBI will protect you. RBI may be a bit slow, but they will always protect. It's your government, your country, your courts. Your rights can be enforced here. So data residency law is very good. It'll keep our data here and government will come with norms to allow Indian companies to use it. It'll not go to the global monopolies outside. So it'll create a level playing field for Indian startups. We're almost at the end of our time, but I'll take this one very quick question, where Dave is asking, do you think Indian companies coming up together to put up their own app store is a good idea? So- I think it's a very good idea for a very important reason because the app store has become a non-competitive edge. First of all, you are in a flat form where some may allow you free. Some say they give me 30%, 20%, 30%. They can turn it off. They can shut it down. You have no rights. You have no rights, correct? And they don't care a damn about you because they've got hundreds of them. All they're doing it, giving access to everybody. That's why I want Geo to come with an app store. And Geo is an Indian company. They will not shut it off very easily, right? They're all in India. I want companies like Patreon and us to come with an app store so that you know, and see, we need some kind of Indian nationalism. Let's be very clear. It's not about competition. It's not about free trade. Because they don't play fair. They don't care a damn about you. They'll give it to you free. When they are hooked, they will manipulate. They will do everything. They have done it. They shut you off, right? For no reason. Then they come with some norms. They lay down the norms, send you a contract, say sign. Once you're overly exposed, you are dependent on them. You have to sign blindly. It's a very uncompetitive, unfriendly move. You might think it's friendly because you get it free. You can upload and everything. Then another thing which is important, that you get hooked on to their technology. All of them have got proprietary technology. You get hooked on to their technology and that's a hook you cannot get by. How can you ship tomorrow? So we need, like we had containerization in the cloud. Earlier, you went to a cloud provider. You depend on the cloud provider. You can't get out easily. Now you've got technology called containerization, where you create a container on a cloud and tomorrow you want to ship to take the container and shift it to another cloud provider. Cloud only becomes a platform and a utility. So we need that kind of utility for an app store. Maybe the technology come, then you can ship. The technology doesn't come, you can ship. Maybe by law, you must create a utility like container where you bought an app store. Everything is within that app store in a container. Tomorrow they play dirty. You can ship it across at your option to somebody else and tell everybody and try to work. So I think this app store business is very good. There has to be more competition because if in the iOS system, you can't get out. iOS is the proprietary system of Apple, right? To be in the app store, you've got to follow iOS. You've got to follow their rules. You've got to listen to them. You are not bargaining power. You're not bargaining power. I hope the US government breaks it up. It's anti-competitive, right? You get on to your Facebook, get on to Google. It's very anti-competitive. Google now says, we'll charge you for Gmail. We'll charge you for this, blah, blah, blah. Google Maps is all free. Now they're beginning to charge. And tomorrow they can charge whatever they want because you're so dependent on that. Once you build a business model of that, how do you shift? So I think, you know, Ritu, governments all of the world should declare some of them public utilities. Let me give you the example of electricity. When electricity first came, private companies did it in the US. They provided electricity. Very soon, government decided that electricity is a public utility. Public utility means every member of the public should have access to it. You can't shut it off. They must of course pay for it. You can't charge what you want. It must be regulated. And they had a regulator and they created the public utility. They did the same for telecom. Because telecom, they said, everybody should get access if the part of the global network is a part of what you should get. You can't kick anybody out. You can't charge more. You've got to do it in the regulator. Now, even for data and these platforms and app platform, you need to have a regulatory authority declare them a utility under the law. I want Twitter to be declared a utility because Twitter can shut you off. You have a million followers tomorrow. They shut you off because some media somewhere far away, things are doing something wrong. We're very subjective. And there's no right of appeal. They just shut you off. Then say, do what you want. Then what do you do? Go behind them. So you are shut off from your connections. So I think government all of us should declare them a public utility because they understand the concept of public utility and say that these are all the obligations. These are all your rights and they've got to be regulations. So nobody gets off. Everybody gets in. Of course, if you're abusive and everything, they can go after you, give you a notice, you have a right of appeal, blah, blah, blah. But there has to be a process which is very fair done independently. So you're not subject to very arbitrary actions. Sure, sir. No, I think that was a great candid conversation that you sort of gave and I think some absolutely valuable and totally unavailable sort of advice that you've given to startups today. It truly has its weight, worth and goal. So to say if startups are able to follow it and able to put it to use in their own organizations, they would be much bigger, much faster. And they would be, of course, more stable and sustainable in the times to come. So thank you very much for joining us today, sir. And if anybody, I'm getting a lot of questions here, where they want to pitch your arena capital for their startups. So if you want to advise them, how is the best way to reach out to you, you can let them know otherwise, please. Okay, but otherwise, please keep on, this chat will be live on Facebook for a number of days. So therefore, please put your questions over there. We request Mr. Pai's team to kindly sort of help us over here to answer these questions for you. Thank you very much, Mr. Pai, for joining. It was wonderful speaking to you today.