 Hello to everyone and thank you for joining us today for this Capital Insider series where we are joined today by Surya Mantha who is leading United Switches here in India. It's a leading venture fund largely investing in early stage startups in technology with a big focus on health tech, on ed tech as well as big tech and also as I could tell logistics is a large part of their portfolio here in India. What is also good about United Switches is because they have a presence in the USA they are able to in fact ensure that there is a good cross-border moment of startups and they are able to find the resources, talent or any other health that they require from the US. So thank you very much for joining us Surya. We delighted to have you here for the Capital Insider series today and you know things have changed so dramatically. I mean these last six months have probably changed the entire landscape of how we looked at business. So particularly for you at United Switches, I mean the pre-pandemic and the mid- pandemic as we are sitting in currently, how are you looking at things differently? What kind of business trends is it that you are today seeing there in your own portfolio and also looking at particularly from a new startups perspective, new investments perspective, how is it that you're now evaluating startups differently? I mean how have your lints has changed? Sure, yeah thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. There are so many questions rolled into that one question so I hopefully I'll be able to answer each one of them in sequence. If I don't please remind me. So yeah so you know one other point that I would like to add to the introduction you gave to United's Ventures is two points actually. One is that in addition to being an early stage tech venture fund which is looking for great entrepreneurs and opportunities in the health tech, fintech, job tech, ed tech spaces. Another thing that is incredibly important to us and which is core to our thesis is that we look for companies that are going to make a difference, a positive difference into the lives of disadvantaged peoples, low income populations at scale. So we are in that sense, we have a laser like focus on on commercial returns, benchmark returns for our investors but at the same time it is critically important that these companies make a significant impact whether it is in terms of access to financial services or better healthcare or better livelihoods and hence better life outcomes that is critically important to us. The second piece that I wanted to say was yes United's benefits tremendously from having presence in the US. Two of our partners and a part of our team is there but an equally important part is that we are a member, we are in fact the founding member of the Capria network. Capria Ventures is a fund of funds founded by a couple of our partners, of our own partners who invest in the you know for-profit commercial but impact-oriented fund managers across emerging markets from Southeast Asia to Africa to South Asia to Turkey to many in Latin America. So there is a network of over 20-30 fund managers like United's who have the tremendous opportunity for cross pollination, for learning, for understanding deals, for sourcing deals, for taking companies you know introducing new markets to our own entrepreneurs or bringing companies from those markets into India. So that's a tremendous network that United's is also part of. Now coming to the to the pandemic, so one thing is clear I mean people you can call it a Black Swan event though it is not a Black Swan event by the strict definition of the term. Everybody knew that it was going to happen, this was going to happen sometime. Bill Gates had had given consistent and clear warnings for a lot of the period of time and over the last 10-12 years we've had several such things you know which were fortunately contained much faster like Ebola or SARS and so on. So but it is certainly true that an event a pandemic of this nature has not happened in the lives or careers of any of our entrepreneurs or any of our own lives as fund managers and professionals and I can probably wager a bet that it not happened in the in the lifetimes of any of the other portfolio managers or entrepreneurs in India, whether it is early stage or mid-stage. So this is trial by fire, this is the kind of thing that separates the men from the boys and the women from the bills right, though it is good to be young actually but in any case. So but so essentially you know that's when you look into the mirror and look at yourself and say okay what do I need to do to survive this, that is the first question you ask right and in our case in particular and I think this applies to many of the early stage funds our companies while you know our thesis that is that at some point in time you know over the next five, six, seven years they'll grow to be big valuable resilient robust companies they're all fairly early in their life cycle and have are constrained by the resources that they have. So the first thing that comes to mind is how am I going to survive this if I had no revenue how long is my runway if I had zero revenue that's the first plan and then you look at various scenarios of if I had if I got to 20 percent of my revenue if I get to 50 percent of my revenue and so on right then okay and and that that's a very sobering moment then you look at your costs okay what can I live with and what then it becomes like a household budget immediately right then you're saying okay what you know everything is up everything is up for discussion there is nothing there are no sacred costs right whether it is and when it comes to and this and and I'm proud to say that almost every single one of our entrepreneurs and I hope that that's the case with if you talk to any of the other venture funds stepped up to the plate and took the hard decisions and showed the leadership that would require right for instance you know if it is trying to trim the the payroll cost okay so now this is an opportunity to get any way you are planning to get let go of the bottom 10 percentile in terms of performance this is a good time to do it if you are instituting pay cuts then you lead by leadership you know through example it is the leadership team that takes the deepest cuts and then it's a graded cut also for your most if you are giving them if you're if you're instituting a pay cut then are you compensating that through ESOPs this is a fantastic time to reward your employees through ESOPs because that goes towards building long-term value and it kind of shows who's in it for the long haul and who is not right then for instance all all vendor payments all arrangements with whether it is with your customers or vendors they are all up for discussion many of our B2B companies they they they complete they change to in many cases a prepay mode in many cases raising in voices twice a month and reducing payment terms from 60 days to 30 days right just just having a laser like focus on your cash and on your or your on your working capital so every business becomes a cash flow business and not a balance sheet but I mean not a P&L business right for a while so these are these are the things that you do immediately right and and say okay am I do I now have the length of runway where I can step back and look at my business as to how it has what can I now really do from a product strategy from an offering strategy go to market and so on perspective right now clearly if you are if you are in retail or or things that requires large physical gatherings of people right then that the problem becomes that much harder right even there there are examples actually of companies who have completely pivoted their business model and made things go totally digital there are a few a couple of examples I can give off in the US and so on but in the Indian context or in our context those are the most challenged companies right retail brick-and-mortar retail entertainment gyms and so on and so forth so and those companies whose business model has used technology as a way to reach customers they have a more inherently resilient and robust model when when when these kinds of disruptions happen right so that that is that's something that's applies across sectors across sectors whether it's an edtech it's entertainment it is e-commerce it is it is online sales what have you even in jobs earlier you know there is a there is a portfolio company of ours which is in the business it's a it's a fintech company it's an mvfc which gives loans to students and young professionals for job directed training courses classes right now and and they're of course agnostic about jobs whether it's a physical job or a or a online job now they pivoted and there was a lot of opportunity for what I call online for online online training online courses for online work right so every company there is another company of ours which is called Avigna which is sort of the the which has it's a gig black gig economy company where they have a platform a technology platform that takes the last mile work that large distributed companies have whether it is FMCG or new age companies for due diligence or mystery audits or revenue leakage or business development and so on or or retailer onboarding and so on and they take those projects and pass them out into smaller tasks and they have a distributed workforce at the other end that executes these tasks and and and you know the the the clients the corporates can rest assured that these projects are being done by one vendor at you know within budget and on time and so on so what they did was immediately because they saw a dip in their business obviously like anybody else but they came up with a covid compliance offering which is you know after the first month or two were over that hey I can use the same platform the same systems process technology and people combination to actually help large distributed corporations implement covid compliance among their employees right so basically these are two examples of innovation in your business model or in your product offering where you say okay the world's changed what can i do differently to to respond to that in addition to whatever cost measures and so on and so forth you've taken so basically every company some things are common to all companies they all have to do that the cost measures others depend on their context on their business and and and their inherent you know set of capabilities and they have to they look at the market and say how do I pivot what new offerings can I bring to the market that that work in this in the circumstances that I find myself and and the latter part is an ongoing journey okay so that's where that's I mean the last five months have been I must say probably the team at united's hasn't worked harder in their lives you know we've been uh shoulder to shoulder with our entrepreneurs helping them through this difficult journey but uh you know all of them most many most of them barring up one or two obviously who are struggling have have come out of it stronger because they realize that there was probably some bloat their costs could have been lower right but you don't realize in normal conditions it's only these kinds of things that that that help you really focus on things that matter and yeah it's it's it's still early I mean don't know how long this whole thing will last and maybe there's a new normal at least for the next year and a half to two years and I think entrepreneurs are adjusting to that adapting everything all their operations mindsets and all to to work in the new world sure no I think that's that's very valuable Surya what you've shared you know my something that and I mean you've given us a cross spectrum look at how you how are you dealing with your existing startups as well as you know how startups should largely think but from a pandemic's perspective and also from a perspective of the fact that you know we are in completely new environments today we're working from home we've not been used to it we've not been brought up with working from home as a culture so you I mean what is it and I I read you had once said that it's the founding team that counts the most you know so whenever you're looking at investing in any particular startup you look at more I mean well of course the idea is very important and what is it that they're trying to achieve to sort of bring a change is very important but also you look very closely at the founding team and you know what what perspective that the founders bring so particularly evaluating what the founders bring to the table how how is it I mean what qualities of founders is it that you have found coming out during this pandemic and I mean how are you trying to work with particularly your own portfolio founders to make sure that they they not just resilient I think but they're able to sort of hold on I mean you know things are falling apart for everybody I mean for your founders pretty much for every startup founder today and just to sort of first have the you know the patience to say that look I'm gonna put everything together is really hard and particularly our founders are so young so how how is it that you know what qualities are there that you look at in the founders during that early days of actually investing in them which now you feel are sort of because you did it at that time is now coming to fruition it's now sort of showing its best phase right you know a terrific point see I mean we all talk about these qualities and it is only not very often more simply that those qualities get tested right and this is this is a god couldn't have sent a harder test I think almost every quality of every entrepreneur of every portfolio has got tested simultaneously right so it's it's the it's the same thing that there are a few things about the founders and there are a few things inherent in the about the business model that they have if they're really dependent on their company strategy is irrevocably attached to physicality to people coming in then even your strongest founder will will not be able to do much you may do something else you may say I will do something else right but so barring that barring that it is the same qualities it is it is clearly you know intelligence and capabilities at table states right if you are slow if you're dull you will not be able to respond to it second two most important things is one is willingness to listen and agility and the ability to respond fast and third is a is an is a very interesting mix of urgency with calm so there has to be a sense of urgency right but at the same time you know not not radiating anxiety but doing it from a sense of calm however anxious you may feel at night as an entrepreneur you may not go to bed but with your team with your investor and with your and particularly with with the junior and mid-level teams projecting a sense of confidence and calm that we will get through this right and then with entrepreneurs with investors and advisors the the willingness to learn to listen and incorporate ideas you know council advice and so on and check the ego at the door sure that those those are huge qualities right because obviously when somebody has has undertaken an entrepreneurial journey they have crossed a certain threshold of off-risk taking ability passion and and being self-motivated and so on and so forth but there are these there and there are these other qualities right a certain level of humility ability to listen you know uh and all of those that those get tested needs a lot plus plus urgency agility right i mean you are you you the ability to deal with uh take decisions without having all the information sure and pretty much here you have very little you don't know how tomorrow will be right with lockdowns you know it is like wakamoli i mean we had a we have a driver service company where if Bangalore is open today Mumbai is locked down tomorrow if Delhi opens Hyderabad gets locked down right so so you have to have the ability to to deal with that i totally agree with you i mean you know we i mean the severity of the storm is such that you don't know how to so it has to be managed in patches really as you said yeah so if you have a widespread sort of customers even if it's a digital business it becomes as much difficult because you're not able to service some customers exactly and and your business model goes for a toss in that exactly yeah so you know another another important area that i would love to know from you is that particularly i read that these are the three sectors that you sort of always looked at at unites ventures is fintech, edtech and health tech and i do feel that there has been some good movement which has happened in these sectors particularly if you look at edtech that's been the longest challenge for educational technology companies was the adoption of technology at the teacher's level to be able to broadcast it to the children and now suddenly the pandemic just made it happen yeah yeah i mean you know particularly from these sectors perspective all the three health tech i mean health has certainly become you know the number one priority today so how is it that you're now evaluating startups for investments i mean you know considering that it's a good place to be in these these three sectors so within this what i mean what what particularly you see is going to be more suitable for making an investment in so let's very interesting so let's take edtech as an example see we were one of the early investors in edtech and we have a real star in our portfolio called q-math and q-math was actually very interestingly had a very physical business model they would supply technology content process expertise and all of that to stay at home moms who would then get you know the neighborhood kids and teach them math at the k6 levels and clearly the pandemic changed all of that overnight right and they were able to move all their teachers online within a month so without missing a heartbeat they went back to their original level of business but more interestingly uh they took their best teachers and went international and they are growing they've grown exponentially international and with much you know uh because it's all online and uh you know a good teacher if she's uh teaching math in an innovative way to a kid in her neighborhood she can do that to a kid in Cincinnati or Seattle or or Birmingham or wherever right so they the last eight months their growth literally has been scorching sure so so so right right so we were fortunate you know we were one of the pioneers in edtech early on and now we we our thinking has moved a little uh from edtech to what we call more job tech where the education educational content or training content or what or assessment content leads to a very tangible outcome immediately right gets a job or gets a better income or or or so on and so forth so in fact uh so that's something uh we feel uh is a sector where particularly in India where we have one million kids coming into the job market every month and that's going to continue for the next 20 years right just just just wrap your head around that problem I think uh one of the probably biggest challenges in India is creation of jobs and not just creation of jobs second is matching supply with demand and uh decreasing the employability gap because of our fairly variable quality of our education system uh way too many kids come out of college with degrees even engineering degrees without the skills required to to uh do their job in fact just yesterday we announced a an investment in a company called Masai school like the Masai driver for Africa where they have a seven month long boot camp like approach to programming uh and software engineering and they take kids from you know second to tier two tier three colleges engineering colleges some dropouts and almost many of them have no background in computer science they just give them a test in math and logical reasoning and through a mastery based progression strategy after seven uh months of this course curriculum most of them get employed not in you know IT services but actually in serious product development jobs and in startups and serious companies right they were largely online delivery was online they had offline centers in Patna and in Bangalore for because there's always a value to kids meeting bonding informal sessions you know there's all of that value they had to go fully online so one of the things that they have to figure out and which are figuring out as they go is is making sure that the student engagement student satisfaction learning outcomes or learning the the rate of learning they do not get uh impacted by going purely online so you have to obviously anything that can be delivered online is going to benefit it i mean it's not a profound statement it's not a key insight it is if we are seeing that i'm sitting here you know we are we are we are doing this interview on video where all of us have been on five zoom calls five to six hours a day for the last five months right doctor uh we've done doctor consultations on on video who would have thought in India that you do doctor consult we've been trying to do that for years and this pandemic has compressed behavioral changes into a matter of months right now since you mentioned this i mean what what i mean particularly i was going to ask you about telemedicine becoming a very important area and then e-pharmacies you know we've seen so much sort of back and forth moment and corporate interest and you know consolidation and acquisitions happening over there so particularly from a health care perspective i would say e-commerce has sort of made a huge comeback i i would never have imagined health and e-commerce being so you know hand in glove with each other so yeah really what what movement do you see within health tech health tech is very interesting uh it is obviously i mean e-pharmacy was something that had attracted a lot of investor interest and also three four scaled up players have emerged over the last five years right so e-pharmacy is certainly uh something that that is scaling up very fast but what is interesting to me is that for some reason um India being as big a market as it is and uh and and honestly our health care if you go beyond the top metros is so patchy and so poor that we have not seen many many more large companies scaling up uh in the health care space whether it is electronic health records or tele medicine or or what have you uh apps for mental health apps for women's health apps for diabetes control you know and not just just apps that people can use but with proper business sound business models for which people will pay right so it it remains uh it is i think the opportunity is there uh it is a bit of mystery to to us uh as well i mean the only things that have have uh uh uh scaled in india from an investor perspective of brick and mortar hospitals okay and that's a very different couple you know they don't they're they're in the in the delivery you know brick and mortar delivery space right whether it is a multi-specialty tertiary hospitals or or single specialty chains and so on and e-pharmacy but the rest of health care rest of health care has has not seen huge opportunities huge companies being built everybody believes everybody believes that this is one of those disruptive moments that uh uh the pandemic will change behaviors will throw up opportunities uh in the health check space as well if i had the answer to exactly where it will show up i wouldn't be sitting here but we are thinking we are all thinking very hard we are all putting on our thinking caps and i'm not the only one i'm sure every guy in every early stage fund is saying okay where is where is that opportunity which is gonna be the the next you know big thing in health tech because we've seen for instance practice practice there was a lot of initial uh a lot of money has gone into practice and they did a recent round at a big with a big with a big haircut so the problem the issue in india is you need to have your revenue model very clear because indians are very very value conscious it is very difficult to part an indian from his money very very difficult right so it is very easy for him to get used to a free service him or her so i really admire companies that are able on day one to get an indian consumer to say this is interesting i'll actually pay money for it and i salute such an entrepreneur so i it's gonna happen in health check it will i don't have a very specific pieces as to where it will emerge which two three areas it will emerge but emerge they will intelligence i can tell you that sure and also just to touch on what you mentioned about the other area sorry the other area that is that is largely untouched by technology and innovation is hospital management hospital management hospital procurement a lot of those things and there's a lot of corruption and so on and so forth you know incentives or incentives over there so there is that whole area of bringing efficiency to hospitals of various sizes uh is we'll see a lot of innovation and the third area that will see a lot of innovation is insurance tech india is very under penetrated when it comes to insurance cost of insurance is high fraud is high there is not a lot of technology there so in fact we have a company in that space so another third area where i believe there would be a lot of innovation is in uh using data machine learning yeah all of these things will use that is in short insurance tech so telemedicine hospital efficiency and productivity management insurance tech all of these are are are ripe for for innovation and destruction totally you know you also mentioned about edtech and i mean you know the fact that you know you've invested in messiah school which is also into coding and helping as you said children in in hinterlands to actually you know get into a more employable skill i mean do you think at some point of time you mentioned about hospitals having problems but i also feel the same problems exist with Indian universities you know wherein we get a degree but it's not essentially an employable degree at all so i mean do you think that at some point of time we've already seen national education policy which is quite disruptive it's you know we all need the school is only going to be till class 11 now and then you and that too you're going to have a lot of skills which are going to be now dealt with at the school level only so do you think the college particularly the degrees that we have in india they might get disrupted and people might not want to go to you know for your course unless they have something very specific in mind and they might want to actually take this one year course and get into a workforce it might happen you're absolutely right barring barring the top few universities in the private public sector and the private sector the new exciting new entrants like ashoka kriya flame and so on sistea and so on and then the old faithfuls like the ii t's and the and the and the big spelani's of the world and presidencies and stephens of the world you know education in this country is is is so man i mean there is really kids just spent three years i mean they make great friends they have fun uh and they waste their time right which is fine which is fine as a life experience but they're not getting the skills they're not getting the skills right and this i'm talking about even the better colleges but if you go go into the beyond the top 20 cities the education system is is abysmal right so the importance of skills over degree that that phenomenon is going to only strengthen there is no question about that in fact as i told you may at least a few of my high school grads are dropouts yeah i mean right and in fact one of the founders is himself one of the founders is himself a dropout from ii t so so you know the uh importance of skills and ability to perform and deliver over degrees and pedigrees you're seeing that in the in the in the us as well and and and there will be another phenomenon that's on the rise is evaluation of of candidates not through their resume but through their ability to to actually perform particularly in programming engineering software engineering jobs and so on you you you can do that you don't have to do that through through just the resume because many of them they need just like an artist has a has a as a portfolio these young guys in software engineering and software they have programs at the post to get up okay and they they get fan following based on the quality and and and efficiency and the difficulty levels of their of the work that they have done so you're absolutely right that we are we are we are gonna see a lot of that and we will also see a lot of online certifications that will come up which may not be your traditional degree degree granting institutions whether that is in programming whether it's in design whether it's in marketing whether it is in soft skills you know my good friend Pramat Sinha has just launched a harappa dot iron which is basically leadership skills he's he's distilled his 30 years of corporate experience as well as experience starting the isb and ashoka university into into an online offering right so you will see we will see a lot of that absolutely no question about that sure totally agree so we've also got some questions pouring in surya which i think we should take up so you know if we can please give the audio to Doreen LeWang is Doreen there go ahead yes yes i'm just looking for fundraising and the in my pandemic through and all during my during my this time i have a lot of problem for manufacturing also unable to and even during this time how can i just come up beyond this pandemic to overcome this situation that is the man i just want to know the like my question is this how to overcome my pandemic this pandemic issue see i i mean that that's the question on the minds of almost every entrepreneur the point is i don't i will not be able to unfortunately give you a very specific answer because i do not have know the nature of your business and if it is a look if it's a manufacturing business in the small medium sector then the government has several programs for loans that will to tide you over you know this difficult period see investors particularly equity investors will look for companies that can grow big and deliver the kinds of returns that they have promised their own investors right so not every company is is investable is equity private equity or venture investable and which is fine not every company needs to be in fact many india in many companies in india it's a debt they are there they need debt right so i don't know the nature of your specific problem in terms of what you do and and and your own issues where the issues are whether it is working capital or or your you know you're just basically demand has collapsed or what's going on so but but you need to the probably government programs you can access debt and and look at various explore that because this now is unless you have a really strong post pandemic story uh investors equity investors will be very shy of writing checks we've got another question which says tourism and hospitality industries need to give a complete makeover 3d and virtual reality is something we're looking at last geo meet they have proposed some good plan but how can small-scale business do that makeover good question good question i i i can imagine the users of 3d virtual reality augmented reality for say training for telemedicine uh for you know uh all manner of educational training and so on purposes to give give a feeling of of of of being in the situation but uh and for gaming certainly gaming very important very critical uh but i don't know that they can you quickly so quickly innovate and and replace you know tourism uh regular tourism with virtual reality it will be hard i don't think that the experience will be close to it i would love to be wrong maybe in certain in certain uh very specialized situations like uh uh say going to a museum now you know the metropolitan in new york uh are the our own national museum in delhi uh uh of the salarjan museum in hydrabad may be able to come up with an online experience which is very rich right uh but those are very specialized niche applications uh but but the experience of going to banaras or or istanbul or wherever your heart wishes to take you is not going to be replicated by augmented reality or going to masai mara uh i i i i i mean it sounds a bit naive just because there is augmented reality doesn't mean that the world will fit neatly into it at least over the next two three years i think a lot more technology innovation user experience innovation needs to be done but there are clearly niche applications which which will benefit from sure we have another question from madhukar if we can give him the audio please um in the meantime as he comes on you know there's another question which says that what are the biggest hurdles you think the because of the pandemic uh the hurdles have come in people management in the work from home systems do you think hr tech software's will be able to cross these hurdles good question see one of the the things that a few things that we've we've seen in our own work is is uh uh we've all at least uh early stage or any investment firm or any company we've been working harder than ever and particularly early stage because our portfolio it consists of young companies with limited amounts of cash and and uh you know they they can just go belly up quite fast they don't have the resilience of large corporations with huge you know cash balances and so on uh so but everybody has delivered but what it does lead to is is uh fatigue okay a few things happen the uh the boundary between work and non-work vanishes unless you have really really disciplined so two things we've done as a firm is that Tuesday before lunch and Fridays after lunch there are no meetings no calls so that you can do your own work so you have to create me time okay second every week there is a compulsory video social so typically most calls what we do are audio calls so so how do you keep a sense of coherence a sense of you know it's been five months since I have seen my colleagues honestly in person we went we as a firm went into lockdown into virtual mode March 15th today is August 20th or 24th or whatever it is right over five months that that that particularly for for many people can be fairly uh disorienting a sense of belonging can go away I mean in fact one one colleague a young colleague of mine said I've been in this room this room is where I sleep where I do everything and where I work it's just this room so then work non-work boundary is is is non-existent right so these issues of of fatigue of exhaustion of getting away from work of being staying mentally healthy all of these things become very critical right we are a small firm but how do large companies where there is distributed project management how do they how will they deal with this over a period of time I mean so many IT companies are saying that till the end of this year you pretty much work from home right and then there is a matter of productivity right while people are some people have said that I'm working harder but I'm not as productive right so there is clearly role for technology that that makes processes more streamlined and to to help with this but but this is is certainly again a very rich area for innovation and disruption is how do you make distributed teams working online together for extended periods of time productive engaged mentally fit and healthy and with a sense of identity with and and and and loyalty or commitment to the company the fact that I work for ex I you know as opposed to you know I'm a freelancer or which is also fun there is a whole freelance way of life but if you're an employee of a company how do you feel that I'm still an employee of that company how do you keep that engagement so I do expect to see interesting innovation there but this is not an easy problem to solve these are all all fairly challenging nuanced problems and they also have cultural contexts what works in the US may or may not work in India right unlike unlike swiggy unlike say a restaurant delivery or taking a shared cab which is a similar experience there's not a whole lot different here or there maybe payment modes are different or there they pay with credit cards here we pay with whatever you know pay tm and so on but these things that involve psychology and and and so on and so forth they have to be very nuanced and specific to specific context sure yeah totally agree um you know madhukar if you would like to ask your question now unmute yourself please first can you unmute and ask your question madhukar okay so there is another question which is from nara kalyani who's asking how can he a social helping idea be a good idea for business do you think there can be a conflict in that in that session how can it be good how can it be possible without good marketing but the validation of the idea is there so I think I I'm not sure I understand the question I think the asking is that if it is a socially I mean if it's a social idea how is it how can it really sort of translate into business no you have to there there is no sacrifice I mean you find it may it may be positively impacting you know either through access as I said improving incomes or or improving access to health care financial services getting a job or and so on but if you are providing a service if that service is valuable then somebody should be willing to pay for it and you should be able to deliver that service at a cost that is less than what the customer is willing to pay for it that is where the proof of the pudding lies that IE in other terms in jargon it needs to have healthy unit economics that is the fundamental premise behind for-profit impact investing is that you should be able to provide a service for which somebody is willing to pay so the beneficiary see look in the world there are there is a whole cross-section of needs at the lowest rung of the pyramid there is not enough money to make to create profitable profitable businesses so there is a strong role for the government for philanthropy and so on for grant based NGO based offerings okay where the beneficiaries are essentially recipients of grants of help you go to the next layer above where you have the aspirational hundreds of millions of people honestly beyond the first hundred and fifty million in India who all want to improve their life they all have some income 20, 25, 30, 15,000 a month or 20,000 a month they want to be customers the moment somebody is a customer he can demand better service there is a dignity in being a customer as opposed to being a recipient of a grant so you your your if your service or offering is targeting that segment then you need to to have a value proposition where the customer is willing to pay that money to you on the other hand if your business your idea your social idea is looking at improving the lot of people who are at even a much slower level who can't afford to pay for it then the then the way you get that service to them is a different model then you work through grants then you write that you are not building a for-profit profitable business that can scale by attracting investors so there are different models for different strata of of of society in the in the socio-economic pyramid am i making sense to you you're making sense to me for sure okay so there is somebody who's asked us on facebook Shalabh Dhingra who's saying what is the scope of domain specific edtech solutions say for example only for hospitality and all something else i mean if it is a large domain i i prefer horizontals because you know then they they are inherently a little more robust if one sector goes down the other can right so if it is a design skills marketing skills software engineering and programs their data analysis and and and those are applicable across uh oh nara kalyani likes my explanation you're most welcome uh um so yeah but but if you are if you are if you've taken a very large uh uh segments i mean verticals then obviously the uh that's fine uh and clearly hospitality requires a lot of help at this point so uh you know if you have uh innovative interesting ideas that could help that sector then more power to you don't don't get into markets that are that are are very small because they are if they are smaller small niche markets then you have to make sure that you have you you you assume get a get to a leadership position so for that your your uh offering has to be that much more compelling from a value or a cost perspective and uh also if you're going to get into markets that are winner take all and and which will largely be be uh propelled by the momentum of capital then be very careful it right so my my counsel to to kids to people who are building real businesses uh is to ensure that you have sound unit economics sure i think we'll take one question from uh you know that has come in from again from facebook which says that you know that the covid has given a death knell to the gym culture but fitness is very important so do you think four startups are going to come in or like fitness apps to keep track on users health i mean this i would love to know because you know i know initially we had these iot products these watches which would help us track our you know our body and how we were exercising and they were quite a rich and they still are to a large extent but i mean do you think we need more products like these in order to be able to now probably do it at home i mean do it in our own times so how do you think things might change in that direction you know this is a this is a very relevant and question to in my own life and both my wife and i go to a used to go to a trainer a local specialized gym our daughter used to go to cult fit which is our cult fit or one of those i think it's that that network see what a trainer does is by having a routine he or she motivates you okay and plus also that trainer has the ability to fine tune and and and create the program suited to your needs and your progress and your problems on an ongoing basis the both of these aspects are very important even if if let's say that the personal trainer bit maybe if it's expensive for people but the motivation it is very important when you paid money to go to a gym at a certain appointed hour you will and there is a day you go there right you can do a lot i mean in theory you can actually buy weights you can buy all the some of that equipment and do all of that shit at home right there is nothing stopping you from doing it it is the fact is that unless you are so inherently motivated and the sad thing is most people are not they require external products whether in terms of paying a trainer or the trainer sort of thing or the gym saying that you better show up on this day or whatever right so how do you simulate that through an app to get the same level of motivation so that you don't fall by the wayside after after you know a few sessions or a month or a couple of months that to me is is a very important the efficacy of the training it's not so difficult i think it can that can be done what will require a lot more thinking is how do you complete the feedback loop how does the trainer if there is a trainer at the other end of the app in real time watching your progress how do they see whether how you are doing in terms of a muscle strength this that in the other and accordingly you know fine-tune the the training schedule and regimen right if if somebody can really solve for the motive motivation problem the rest of the things can can can i think fall in place quite well there is motivation and and also the the fact that you go to a gym there are other people over there you know there is a sense of shared pain so so there are all those aspects which are which seem trivial they're not trivial they're just not trivial sitting in your house in your room you'd probably much rather switch on Netflix and stuff your face with chips then switch on this app and and start roll on the yoga mat and start doing exercise that's just human nature and other than the this may work for the really disciplined five percent how do you get the other 45 50 percent do this i think that that if someone cracks that nut i think that'll be very interesting the rest of the stuff i think can be dealt with so let me ask you a question which may sound very philosophical but i think you know we at some point of time i think the humanity needs to answer it at least in the next year or so we're going digital very fast whether it's education fitness uh we you know watching movies everything i mean you know and practically we are like almost 16 hours in front of a screen give or take particularly in the times that we are currently but do you feel that it will take at least a generation or two before we learn and i mean learn to imbibe um you know remote remote and probably digital culture of learning performing productivity um uh you know being able to give our best through the digital way and being responsible enough you know we used to be office culture where people were right in front of us and we could tell them that okay no look ready you're not going right there let's let's try to work it out like that now i mean i don't know what this person is you know it is one of my people sometimes i don't know what they're thinking they can't help my office door to say no but you know i i have this problem just help me out here so do you think it's going to take that and i mean for even for let's say even an edtech for teachers teachers were not ready to teach students online students were not ready to learn online so i mean you know by the time real outcomes will come out of all of this right now we are still in the infrastructural mode of it you know infrastructure is getting created but at some point of time there is going to be uh you know result orientation that we will all have so how do you think we can sort of speed it up how can how do you think we can ensure that we are able to get results out of it sooner so so uh my own thinking is that um see we are now at a point where the pendulum has swung to the extreme end the other end where we are sort of prisoners in our own within our own four walls those can afford to be right many uh so schools and colleges and you know so many universities in the us even in india are doing complete online sessions for the next semester i think that you know we are inherently social creatures we like physicality we like touch we like people you know we like to go out and and and walk in the park or or eat in restaurants or go to mess so i think there will be a vaccine uh uh you know there there clearly uh i mean in fact i was watching a a i saw a photograph of uh some water body i think it was a seashore or somewhere with chock a block with people and and it said this was in Wuhan they were they had a post pandemic party and and because the fear of the virus has largely gone in Wuhan so this will happen over the next year you know so the the the world will come back to a point where uh it's not going to be all digital for for ever and ever right there will there we will figure out a lot of of uh as individuals as families as corporations large and small and large medium and small companies as neighborhood businesses community figure out a way to incorporate digital more integrally into the way we do things right but it is not going to be all it feels that way now but a year and a half year two years on there are people will go out people will be back to what we're doing and i hope so there will be a vaccine there will be immunity it will hopefully uh uh you know get to the point where it becomes like a more virulent form of a cold virus what i i do hope i don't know i mean we have not shown the ability to learn that lesson is to be more respectful of nature and less wasteful in our consumption and in our our really this it's huge destructive waste with the environment so this this is yet another this is one thing you know that small virus failed the entire world and brought it to its knees for a few months now man humans have a have a fairly deep sense of arrogance uh that god made all of this for us so whether that whether we learn this lesson in a for for the long haul or we'll go back to our usual ways two three years from now i don't know i hope that we will and we are less destructive of the surroundings around us but uh do your question everything's not going to be purely digital it will become more important clearly uh uh as i said many behaviors got accelerated people will innovate to make it more sustainable more productive uh uh and not just you're doing it because you have to do it there is no other way of doing it uh so it will become one of the another important channel of how we do things right uh but it's not going to become the only way i i i don't think so i don't hold uh such a pessimistic view of i think uh we do we as you said we do like things in physical format and touch and feel uh you know as humans and i think hope that continues and comes back soon as we know i think after few months started missing it quite a bit yeah but you know thank you so much surya for taking making time for us and talking to entrepreneur india here today uh for all our pleasure who were there today and asking questions thank you for you know keep it up in fact in fact you have more questions we are on facebook live with this talk keep on posting your questions we're going to ask surya or his team to answer some specific questions that you are likely to ask and uh surya hopefully next time when we meet it will not be over a screen but in person and when we can actually handshake and really talk about and show things to each other that you know and i mean you know given the fact that i think this person was a gentleman was not able to ask his question but i mean really i mean how how is it that somebody has a product to show to you how is he going to show you exactly oh yeah yeah you're exactly right so i mean you know things need to change and eventually we need to come into a physical way of doing things and hopefully we keep on bringing and educating you all our viewers at entrepreneur india through this channel and thank you surya for making time today and thank you thank you so much my pleasure indeed take care be safe take care