 So, very good afternoon to all of you and we're delighted to have Sanjay Nath here with us from Bloom Ventures who is really going to tell us more about how technology is changing and how as a VC they are focusing on new tech startups and new tech ideas going forward. What is more interesting about 2020 and particularly this COVID times is that while technology and digital was already there amongst us, but it has sort of firmly put its ground forward now saying that if you really want to be in business, technology has to be either part of it or you have to be really in a technology business in some way or the other. And I mean honestly had it not been for video conferencing and had it not been for technology all around us, our children would not have got educated, they would have actually been sitting doing nothing for the last three months, we would not have been able to talk to our teams, we would not have been able to conduct any kind of business. So it's really thanks to technology that we have been able to continue at least to a very large extent business as usual, which would really not have been possible otherwise. So thank you for joining us today Sanjay. This is going to be a great talk and I would love to hear some of the ideas that you have. At Entrepreneur we continue to look and seek for more business opportunities that are coming up, new startup ideas, plans, what founders are thinking, how technology companies are enabling themselves to a new COVID world, post COVID world that is of course that we would like to see this ending very quickly. So let me start by asking you this, there has been a lot of change in consumer in societies at large, not just consumer behavior but societies have changed because of the pandemic and a lot of change has been triggered in people, it has been about people's consumption or people's comfort. Now given all of this, at Bloom Ventures how do you see things changing for you? What kind of new startup ideas, what kind of new technology ideas is it that you are now looking at with the change of society patterns or change of consumption or the entire mindset of the consumer going ahead? Sure. Ritu, first of all thanks for having me on and for having Bloom Ventures on and hope everyone in the audience is well and safe. You know just a couple of points before we dive in, A, this is not only a startup ecosystem phenomenon, it's not only India, it's global, it's a global pandemic. So one caveat I'll say is that we are all learning, those changes that are taking place are happening every day. I mean we have passed the lockdown sort of four in some cities in India getting into five and also globally, I talk to my global friends and this is global number one. So of course wish everyone safe and well. The second point is that as a digital VC we are actually backing companies for the long term but 10 to 12 we are horizon so this year would be obviously defined as like a COVID year or almost like a lockdown year or a washout. So I think we've got to be careful to see we don't just come in for something that is just going to be around this period but they have to obviously last post. Having said that, you know you talked about societies right, so if you look at I'll give you some examples if you look at we've got Danzo right which does delivery, we've got milk basket in Delhi and they are certainly seeing tailwinds in the sense that I think if you look at our favorite restaurants and food while a lot of restaurants are open but only for delivery right, you're seeing that consumer behavior shift where you know all of us have learned maybe cooking skills that we've never learned before or had to do household all of us right before and after the panel for example but I think so delivery is clearly one you know one aspect where people say I still want my you know favorite food and I you know here now alcohol is also opening up again. The other tailwind aspect is look at education right I mean for all of us who are children we are now each on our virtual classrooms literally I mean I studied as let's say the kids are somewhere else and head tech is certainly taken off in terms of a tailwind and it's interesting that it'll probably continue for a while I mean we've heard of you know Stanford a couple of years ago through edX making their you know classrooms live but I think now that seemed like wow only they can do it but now everybody's doing it right distance learning virtual so head tech is another behavior that's changing and you look at healthcare in terms of telemedicine right where you know calling our doctors on video or a Skype and really deciding I think one way the one paradigm is for startups you are product to the customer is it a painkiller to use that sort of doctor energy is it a painkiller or a vitamin right a vitamin is great but if you don't take it okay you might feel a little weaker but if it's painkiller you'll have that pain for a while so I think today that must have is much more important than the nice to have it's always important but today it's been brought to the fore so I think you know I think it's helpful for startups to think about what are the tailwinds and headwinds in fact there are always tailwinds and headwinds is just where the balance is more but it's also important for founders and I think I'm also saying is that don't think of it as a fan right and say that okay okay opportunistically like some it said that everybody started a grocery service that everybody's getting into it that's also again you're gonna have a period of overcrowding over investment and you know again you'll have debts there in that sense figuratively speaking so I think it's important to really build for the long term and think about you ask a good question that what customer behaviors are going to change both on the enterprise side and on the consumer side irreversibly not just during COVID so you know I mean as you mentioned probably grocery everybody thought of it as an opportunity and then a lot of people right from you know the matter to then so everybody's jumped into it but do you think it's only like a short-term kind of you know sort of say getting over or withering out the storm and then everybody is going to go back to what is it that they really belong yeah well you know let's take a step back I mean I'm not a healthcare expert but you know till the actual vaccine is out right and we know our own see them in student who has been doing great work Mr. Kurnalama speaking till the vaccine is out it's all speculation and wishful thinking and hoping for the best right now one of the best months that vaccine is out and we all in a inoculated then hopefully the whole real estate restaurant and I would say the consumer industry will come back to normal right so in one sense I think that delivery option at home in a sense I mean let's talk about the future of work right I think that's a good example to talk about we've got tap chief in our own portfolio we have frag that has for students I think the concept of the office itself has not is going to change has changed look at tech giants and pioneers like Facebook and Google they've made work for more optional for the end of the year not at the end of the month the end of the year we're not even to the second half of the year and these these are from Silicon Valley which means that now people are saying okay you know I can order home I can also work from home now that has product but these are also opportunities for using tools like of course we are on zoom you've got go-to meeting you've got air meet there's going to be whiteboarding tools again that's an opportunity you know coming up from a sort of negative situation so lots of ancillary option is will come up but this very clear enterprise behavior is going to move more and more towards the cloud you know less away from on-premise which means how we sell to them is also going to change you know we have portfolio companies at Silicon Valley that are basically selling by zoom and and email because earlier only the salesperson was remote now assuming you know I see you setting your living room the customer the CEO setting is living room right so there's that feeling of equalization so certainly behavior is changing and some of the behavior may be some permanence some may be temporary but I think startups should certainly think you want question I'll leave with before the next your next question is I think startups I would say think about how your customers business is changing sure then you can adapt to how you're going to change to them right what what is your how's your customers won't business changing what are they thinking about inside in their borders absolutely I completely agree with you there you know now so bloom ventures I know has been formed very interestingly I mean I remember I've been following the fund for the last almost I think six years now and what I have seen is that you've sort of gone into the space which is really not really the early or the angel space and it's not really the late-stage space either and then you also look at ideas which are not that mainstream at that point of time when you invest in them but they are likely to become mainstream so now given the fact that we are sitting on today where you know as you yourself said the things have changed and people are now selling on Zoom or some other channels how is it that you see things changing I mean you know as a fund what is your direction gonna be what technology trends are you looking at as we sit at work from home to invest in the future no it's interesting you know and half just we're often you know we always talk about you know those VCs those VCs being different and now that you know we become like a pre-series a funded quite a social you know people are saying see I told you that one day you would also become a VC right in one sense but you know I will say that early stages are a DNA right we like to work with founders we like to actually roll up our sleeves and look at them free idea stage whether it is free MEP poster maybe the whole idea is that you're helping shape and influence and suggest the business I think now the bar for entrepreneurship and founders has become much higher post COVID right which means if you look at it you can call it like a fat engagement pipe which means it is a investor's market all our pipeline is very strong right I mean we've got like the number of pictures you become quite a large team I lose contact with the number of LinkedIn messages which is which means that we're all generally in the industry is examining proposed as much more but the time to closure is much longer and the percentage of closure is also much smaller right because so one is that the bar is higher in one sense to your point I think about why we moved up you know I think it's a function of scale also where you see the factors that today companies want to think about going global from day one or your obviously has his had its own issues but you know I didn't speak it was pretty amazing to see right if a case study at Harvard Business School the international expansion you know we have other companies and so for that you need a little extra capital right because you've got to break through those markets and higher so I would say it's logical now having said that we have our provincial apps which has kept us very true to early rules it does enterprise B2B acceleration and you know we selectively will look at you know we've always thought about having a scout program and a scout check you know like some other VCs do but the fact is that even if you don't invest as early as we do we like to track companies early and we like to be helpful early on right so we we do mentoring and we we like to get involved sure so I mean you've also sort of had this opportunity fund that you launch just just prior to the pandemic really I mean I think and you also mentioned that you know a lot of this fund would actually be directed to your existing portfolio company and you know and some of the existing portfolio companies particularly I've been following the progress of one Academy you know because I mean do you how has your strategy changed in house are you still looking to do that or are you because I mean if I were to really see I've also seen how how much of a platform like online events or just online conferencing become such a big platform I mean while it's not as if it was not there earlier it was around but the whole usage and the whole and I mean I think going forward we will see a lot of different kind of usage happening over here where people will not just talk but people will be able to engage with a lot of other people that they want to across the world so I mean how do you see your opportunity fund panning out now once I mean I think we're open really so how do you see things yeah well you know the premise of setting up an opportunity fund and you know there are a couple of other funds that have also done that in the valley and South East Asia also it's popular the premise of that is basically to support your winners right and to not just winners but provide more support for your portfolio companies so we have gone deeper in investment and broader on the platform and I'll explain that right deep on the investment is simple right in consumer company like an academy or you would say that's done so a spinny the factors that could build a brand you need to raise capital right because you have to acquire those customers you have to get known and typically consumer companies raise more of course I think good behavior that the COVID situation will force is much more attention to the bottom line to part the profitability and basically positive economic side which is good which is a positive change across the industry so I think the option fund is very simple you want to support your companies they've always thought of blooming helpful and you go deeper in capital but we've also expanded on the platform side so you probably know that we have a large platform team as well right so we have a shared services affiliate team called constellation which basically helps finance and accounting we have passion connect that actually helps with hiring like we hires and which is outside of room then within the blue team the platform team we have we have a you know we have a resource that helps them with business development we have another resource that actually helps them fundraising then we have community we have operation so there's an investment team and a platform team and the idea is that you can we don't believe you can just help in just terms of giving them more capital but the idea of the option fund and room is scale in terms of the platform right can you help them in ways outside the boardroom outside the quality board meeting right and based beyond this capital and strategic advice so kind of like a first-round model or like Andrews and Horowitz right where you're it's almost like your company and you're helping your startup founders on multiple elements not just and I mean the fact now that you mentioned the startup founders and you know how much is it that you're doing for them how are you today I mean helping the startup founders on another level which is really I would say on a level where they are today extremely stressed out they feel that you know things around them are not working or as planned I'm sure everybody set up their targets in January 2020 for what they were looking to achieve this year for most of us it's not going that way so what is it that you're telling them right now so that they're able to plan themselves better how are you asking them to repurpose their business I know you mentioned about grocery being one of the areas for a lot of consumer tech companies but I mean you know on an emotional level on a personal level how is it that you're asking them to deal with the teams how you're asking them to deal with you know their customers how to engage better with them and largely what kind of leadership skills do they need to invite today in order to be able to survive this and sail through the pandemic that's a great question actually that gets to the heart of the situation and because they're still not out of the situation so what we did I think in general the best practice and a principle we've seen is that the best founders and the best CEOs or the leaders which is very easy to say difficult to do is that you can communicate and over communicate all kinds of news bad news and good news also share I think a lot of us I mean what are the reasons you as well human beings at the end of the day right we some it's very difficult to share because people feel that's a sign of weakness we share right if you show your vulnerability a few things we did we went we got very very soon in the crisis we actually met a lot of experts not experts but but successful CEOs who went through multiple crises and actually shared their own experiences what mistakes they made right right from the dot-com the bust to 9-11 to the financial downturn to of course to y2k right and that gave founders you know a lot of short is that okay this is not just me right because the CEO job is very lonely people say all right only I'm getting hit and then suddenly you say no there are 20 other portfolio company CEOs that are going through the same thing the second thing we did was we organized these cohorts we actually club startups together and said okay series V series funded startups consumer high consumer spend V2B and and got CEOs and CEOs to CEOs to share right how they are thinking so I'll share with you I mean these are boom funded companies where it's painful so imagine early stage startups that are not even raised funding how painful it's going to be right I'm sure but it's always painful right just the degree of pain and how you can alleviate it so basically you know there was a lot of powerful sharing I mean deep sharing like okay instead of layoffs one of the CEOs take pay cut then how much should you take the pay cut so you do you do your pay cuts right for example the lowest runs on the ladder you don't lay them off or you don't do pay cuts at all and the CEOs let's say the 50% I mean just as an example right that showed that you're taking that pain from the top and that sharing very early after the crisis it was very helpful I think our portfolio and we ran almost three four sessions he said I ran almost a session every day getting these outside experts it like on a regular basis and I think that helped just the sharing help and alleviate the pain that we're all going through this together that sense of empathy developed right now now moving this to a business side because ultimately it's all about finance so the one thing we advise is that the only control variable you can control is your costs right you can't control when the customer is going to pay you if you're gonna customers at all so cut your costs immediately cut non-essentials you know maybe let office fees go or negotiate rent you know you cut your zoom from hundred license to 20 license or whatever right everything and lent in the runway so then you have time and you're not under pressure that I've got to raise money I've got to raise money right just lend it if you have six months I've lent it up 12 months so these are some things both on the soft and the hard side we found and but that sharing I think was very helpful sure I completely agree and you also mentioned that you know the very very early stage startups they might not make out of this at all so I mean you know what kind of I mean collaboration or any kind of strategy you can give to them to be able to you know so that they just don't die I mean it's very easy to weather away right now and nobody is going to sort of blame you for it but is there some way they can make out of it no I mean there's no there's no formula or panacea and that's it but just a couple of like first principles right I think one is if you're on the B2B side I'll just segregate because there are lots of B2B businesses also I would say it's really important to reduce the churn and keep your customers close right your your enterprise sales because at this time I think you know more from I mean we like to say more from sales mode to empathize mode right relationship manager mode this is think of this the existing customer relationship as a relationship you've got to maintain that you've got to grow that you've got to protect that new business development have somebody else in the team look at because if you try to do everything and your churn is very high then it's a big problem because new business or I mean new business development people take your calls but it'll take long to convert so that's why I think the second aspect is again like I said you know cut your non-essential cost which is very important and think of the positive side of the silver lining right for example I think you know tailwinds I mean people talk a lot about this they can be a tailwind for the entire industry for example edtech is an example I mean for edtech this is we have fantastic tailwind all virtual all online but they can also be tailwinds within within a business right so just for example like say for a locus right locus does route optimization now it's got a customer that is like a grofers or big basket now for big bastard grofers now delivery itself is very important yeah right or the safety of that delivery how long it takes where does it go from which is always important in normal times but normal times is how quickly can you deliver your incentive right now the writer intensive is safety right so then think about the tailwinds within your industry within your customers right so I think it's also time for customers to step back and say you know how is my for entrepreneurs to say how is my customer's business going to change what is the future like of healthcare like telemedicine for example right what was cool now now becomes very important so I think I think you just have to be uh adjust and be dynamic but cutting cost is important because it gives you the leeway to not rush into desperate or foolish decisions or be pressured by investors giving you a bad deal and then you won't take it because you have only three months of cash if you've cut costs and and lend in your runway then you can think a little with a clearer head sure you know now Sanjay in today's time if a startup is looking and I mean let's say a very very early stage startup is looking to raise capital what kind of projections will you look at from the startup I mean given the fact that it's hard to predict what business will look like or how consumers will come to happen for the business in in the coming months so on what pieces are you on what parametrics are you gonna sort of say that okay this is they look promising and we can invest in them yeah no I think there are two things it's a it's a tough question which is why I think uh you know for new companies all VCs and investors are taking their time right for example if it was taking let's say six three months to look at something it's probably gonna take four to five months maybe even six I think it starts with the thought process right that painkiller I'll use that painkiller versus let's take an example like let's say let's actually take let's say uh let's say a tech let's say a tech now you've got schools reopening supposedly reopening in June but Bombay is it badly uh bank rules opened up I think I don't know how Delhi is I think Delhi is better than Bombay but schools are supposed to reopen but let's say they don't reopen right now the startup is in a tech saying that you know I'm going to let's create a like a WhatsApp like interface and I'm going to enable these teachers now a big problem for schools is they that the schools themselves are not set up for virtual environment forget the students students may have a laptop and a wifi and a living room and a router but what if the school itself is on what are the teachers are not so let's say there's a software solution that enables that for example now that is very interesting right because you're basically uh or like this air meet this video conference tool or like a whiteboarding like how do how do we whiteboard it's so difficult when we all can't get together right now you know we're sitting here on zoom and I can share my screen but if there's a whiteboarding tool that is very interesting because that might take off even more now you know everybody has a need for that so I'm saying how's the startup thinking about that pain point for the customer and where can you show some proof traction you know we realize that also and we're not going to look for some massive traction but is that a really different me you know versus everybody doing grocery of course grocery is important but why are you the best right you know how are you going to compete with the swiggy zone so I actually think if you think about it with who JD.com in China and Airbnb and uh Uber also all started after the downturns JD was started after the SARS downturn right because because malls were closed and he said I'll set up an online store because uh people weren't going there so you know an entrepreneurship is all about that right so it's going to be painful but there will be some new options that come up yeah absolutely agree with you but now that you mentioned you've touched upon retail a bit in fact we're getting questions uh some one question that has come from one of our attendees that uh they have a restaurant so does it make sense for them to go into a dark kitchen model and you know save on all the physical costs which is rare in labor and so on yeah so I mean if what what would be your advice to a conventional business how can they sort of make that change or change sure yeah I'm not you know we don't typically invest in the space I'm not expert but I do have used for example I've talked to uh some founders who run some of these coffee shops and again I think looking at the page in the sector so while without being descriptive with this advice I would say um obviously delivery is going to take off like for example if somebody delivers produces great coffee coffee beans delivered or the actual coffee being delivered it's a great idea uh you know right here in Bombay I've seen pictures of this nice South Indian dive cafe Matunga that opened and it has these fiberglass barriers for them it works well because for fast food you're in and out in five minutes versus the fine Danny you're coming there for the experience the fine dining will be hit more in terms of the restaurants because you're coming there for the experience not just for the food right in a in a dupe here in and out but I think the dark kitchens also make sense uh because we're seeing actually a search of cloud kitchen proposals yes right uh because people are getting tired right of obviously of cooking at home and then ordering from sweet games no matter all the time and say wow this is something you let me try it uh and look at it right I mean home chefs may take off right delivery will again take off so I think there'll be a lot of inter uh inter and intercity all this stuff to be delivered right yeah so I think it's interesting for delivery but yes I think that's not a bad idea uh but but I'm sure it'll come back I'm sure it's going to come back right I mean basically it's going out and all this is a very important part of what we do and again I think when the vaccine is closer where there's there are more health uh sort of the flags off it'll come back yeah I agree with you you know somebody's also asked about hospitality and mobility how are these sectors going to get impacted hospitality and mobility are two very different sectors uh unfortunately hospitality is a bit immobile at the moment yeah um yeah I mean uh you look at everything from I if I if I look at airlines to hotels uh you know somebody like me who travels every week uh uh you know I miss that it is tough because they're the hardest hit uh and they're looking at ancillaries for example uh you know maybe taking advanced bookings or online discovery of experiences uh different models uh I think mobility has come back you know we had you know bike which was shut for a couple of months because the the government ever downs come back actually I think cycle cycling is very interesting because it's non-invasive you're alone you have a mask versus a pillion rider or a uber car because you're traveling with somebody else in a cycle it's open air and uh you're breathing the clean air and and on a positive side if you look at deli's probably had never had cleaner than ever before yes correct the equality in brexit qi but it's going to be tough and I think the entrepreneurs have to look within that right within mobility what will change so it's a great option I think for the government to look at bicycle lanes yeah um public transportation might get hit a bit because you know I think sentiment is going to be to avoid that right to avoid that so there may be barriers they may be I think social distancing uh that's going to become the norm but different aspects may change within mobility hospitality I think would take some time to come back it's going to be tough yeah I mean I mean I meant I meant uh travel and tourism and hotels and and airlines yes of course I mean I mean for us I mean as a media probably mice we don't know when will it come back because that's that's one of the areas where we get people to meet each other in network with each other so yeah so I'll give you I'll give you an example I'll give you an example and I'm happy to make this intro there's this very innovative startup that I just met last week I mean when I met by zoom and what they've come up with this it's a AR VR tool actually move for industrial but they they some of the conferences are using them because you create these outtiles of Ritu and Sanjay and and you're essentially uh you know in that conference room you have a jet pack you can actually fly in the air and you can whiteboard you can actually conduct sessions and while that is you know it was cute it is quite interesting because you know we are part of the departmental network and the others everything is moving to virtual so uh uh I'm quite sure that you know touch would be all come back and be all safe and you start your events again but we always might have a virtual option for people to dive in right and for that there are tools around that so you I think I think once it comes back it may be one of the biggest industries to innovate for because advertisers and companies are willing to spend and they just that they do it in a different way and I think technology may have a very interesting role to play in that because people are really going to say if I for three months uh uh if I have not moved from Gurgaon to Noida right then why would I get on a plane and go to Bangalore right for this yeah so so uh that might also be a technology might have a lot of big opportunity inside my source sure and you know I mean now that you've mentioned about this platform I know Hikland is doing something similar they they're building like a roadblocks for adults where and you know essentially uh people can be going out doing social stuff and yeah so I mean that now that you mentioned a use case for mice also this might just become the the way of doing business but you know let me just I mean that you say it I know if our e-commerce companies for the last five or seven years they've uh sort of just to get to closer to the customer they've done what you call these digital models physical and digital models do you think that's likely to change they're not going to sort of invest and they put some significant investment in opening stores and experience centers so do you think that is likely to change in the coming times that's a good question see I think the ones where it was uh for for it depends on for what they set up the physical ones I think if it is a it was a flagship store uh then I don't think it's as much an issue right because most of but having said that of course I think the proportion of online sales will definitely go up uh um and as long as you have not overspent and you know just burnt a lot of cash and setting up like 20 stores in every city it's fine if you're one flagship store it's fine because when things come back there is a certain branding and goodwill associated with that right uh but but I'll give an example look at like a spinning right I use car marketplace or look at cars now of course if it's the top if it's india one and if they're like duty cars then you know you want to have a flagship store but I see even in luxury cars I've seen that the end-to-end experience can be done online right because you know what that car is like and if you look at spinning very interestingly which does use cars um in china what we've seen is that uh we just heard that if this this covid is actually there's a spike in private car ownership right because people are saying I don't want to take the risk of you know just changing the Uber, Ola driver every day uh and you know self-driving is a pain uh but I don't mind buying the second second and cheaper car yeah so uh first time uh first time car usage of second hand cars will will take off is a positive thing because it might create uh I mean pollution problems obviously because there may be more cars on the road uh but uh you know there are those levels so I think uh I think it depends but the proportion of digital physical will definitely change in fact I mean that's an interesting example to bring in geo geo sorry to bring yeah that's right yeah so I mean particularly from geo I mean you know if you've seen I mean while the whole pandemic thing and they've gone out and raised about 12 billion dollars so I mean honestly what they're looking to build is a digital model really you know where and they're already an existing uh you know inventory of physical stores that exist which is close to neighborhoods and everything and they're going to add a digital layer to it and make it easy for them to be able to communicate with their customers and social commerce particularly from where what I'm seeing of this is like the the blow up of social commerce so what what do you think I mean or what what are you thinking that geo is going to do which is so interesting in order to bring this digital together yeah no I think what is I mean certainly a landmark deal you know only somebody like him I could I could pull it off I think what's it it's an interesting is this accelerated uh digital move uh to the fore uh of of you had uh you had this fragmented kirana tech right uh all the shopkeepers who you know maybe never never use desktops and suddenly everything is available on the mobile right today or mobile so computer you have apps today like hatha book and things like that we have our own love locale which is earlier empani that is catering to that uh uh and and you know read Hoffman right the founder of linkedin basically says that you know you can have an average an average product with a great distribution platform is better than a great product with a poor distribution platform right what it's basically done is it's just given this massive distribution platform to be able to reach you know beyond the metros into india 2.0 and india 3.0 uh and it's brought digital to the forefront right where where uh I think shopkeepers and all the merchants are really thinking about the digital as a delivery channel as a fintech channel to accept payments uh and uh um uh you know it's it's just got digital to the fore are my colleague sajit bhai is written extensively about this because he covers the space absolutely social commerce we call little black book in delhi right which uh which does content is built a great community online offline but it also does social commerce um I was really amazed to see the number of if you look at the rise of organic right organic chips or everything I mean today there are amazing on the social side there are sanitary pads for women organic sanitary pads you know there is a market for everything and I think it's wonderful where this distribution platform can put all these products in the hands of uh you know the user so I'd imagine I mean what is it who is not a digital business today right everybody's a tech business you cannot you cannot not ignore it so I think it's just but reliance reliance is put india on the map again in that sense but I mean do you feel that human capital of india is ready to sort of and I mean this is a question that somebody's asked on facebook which where they say that do you think the talent is ready to perform online and be able to monetize it uh to that extent that they've been able to do in physical environments the great question so um so a couple of things if you think about if you go back to outsourcing right I mean what is outsourcing I'm joking but it was like work from home version 1.0 right or work from office I think our indias and we'll always be yeah I think we are the world's talent hub right uh if you look at everything everybody from sundar at google to satya at microsoft right I mean some of the top we know this some of the top CEOs are indians right but most of the time they've always going abroad uh this is the and I when I say banglore I mean india but this is a fantastic option for banglore uh to basically the whole future of work right people are really thinking that like somebody tweeted right I think anand mind you I tweeted or he tweeted there was a tweet that said that uh if google is and I'm saying this is a politically correct way if google and facebook are going to have everybody working from home then you need to pay engineer 250 000 and sit in north carolina or virginia when equal quality work can be done from banglore or godam right what is mckinsey's knowledge center the same thing I mean mckinsey's been doing this for 20 years uh it's not new right it's just that uh we're calling it work from home now so I think it's a fantastic option for the in fact I think the option for human capital is even more because the new the globally distributed organization is going to say okay our customers here see where even where the sales need to be even sales may be remote so why does tech have to be there there's no there's no reason for tech to be on-premise it could be anyway so tap chief for example one of our companies it is basically a future of a platform that has uh knowledge workers right uh on one side and enterprises on the other and uh like what elan started doing so this is not new but I think this is a very interesting tail even optionary for india's talent so I actually I think the human capital side is the biggest optionary the re-skilling I would encourage younger founders to think about or founders or even students right to think about and what are the skills of the future um you know the waste universities uh I have a teenage uh a teenage son we're doing virtual webinars every other day uh they're all uh Ritu the universities are coming and marketing to you that's right normally you have to go and visit I want to go to deli I want to go to London and you have to go the university is the thing sign up for a webinar they're pitching to you yeah that's right so it's a very interesting option yeah I can tell you I have a young daughter about uh eight and ten and there was a coding school which has sent me about 15 messages just to come and take a coding trial class you know so it's it's to that extent when and you know it might just the kids might just hook up to it I mean I've been trying to figure out how to get my kids to at least learn some basic coding and absolutely in fact in fact you know everything silver lining right I mean this is a great option for all of us to learn and spend time it's reading a book or learning a new skill I mean the number of bachelors that have learned cooking who who in normal times they never would or a great time to learn a new skill like coding in this time which in normal time they're spending like two three hours with the computer never will so there's a huge positive side to this yeah absolutely so there's like another question we've got very macro question though from her shadow who's saying that how do you think india is going to perform economically in the coming days I mean you know what is our economics going to look like no I think you know this is a tough problem to solve you know we are still in the stages of lockdown but we have a billion people and I think we are the least socially distanced and their propensity for it just culturally it's very difficult to keep all of us apart I think the growth rate was revised a bit right I mean I don't know the exact numbers but I know we were not at six maybe very low now but the factors I think digital can play a huge role if you look at all the fintech side all the innovation with everything from the ROGSE2 app to UPI and to you know all the developments with fintech I think a big enabler we are very bullish on agritech for example which is one of India's largest I mean our core agrarian economy that Gandhi ji was also very proud about how do you know fintech and mobile how do you put power in the hands of the farmers there's going to be disruption the global supply chain and logistics but the fact is that everything from you know we've actually invested in a robotics company that basically helps farmers track their crops you know better you know which are which have high yield and so you also got the marrying of high tech and agri today so I think overall we'll do fine obviously there's not a short term pain and there's social pain also but again I don't want to make any political comments look at the rest of the mess of the world I think we're not too bad right if you see what's happening there happening in the western world I think you know we have everybody at least thinking about this a country like Singapore which has five million people have struggled to deal with this has not come out of it five million people versus 1.3 billion people of course there's pain but I mean you know each state is bigger than you know almost the whole of Europe put together right so it's a massive massive problem we have to deal with yeah but you know the the downside also of having this human capital is that in particularly what we've seen in India with a lot of people who lost their jobs and there is a big amount of unemployment today so do you think for them today because now they're out of jobs and it's quite likely that at least some correction happens in the economy it will not be possible to find a viable job again so do you think it's a good time for them to do a startup or do you think this should one should still wait and watch I think it depends it's a it's a very personal I think you're talking about young you're talking about young professionals who are yeah I mean you know I think honestly for senior professionals it's going to be a bigger challenge people who've been working for 15 16 with the big sort of package that they always had well let me yeah go ahead I would say you know running a startup is one of the most difficult things even when things are going well a series you you may be a CEO of a series C funded startup I always feel the more money you have the more problems you have right your series C funded startups you have to deal you have to lay off 300 people if you know if you're if you're I mean you have different problems of scale the problems don't go away I think it all depends on what problem you're solving right I would say I'd never think of you know advising people and saying become a startup founder it's like what problem are you solving and if you have a problem the whole startup forms around you I would when I say wait and watch I think it's good to discover it depends what the person wants to do you know one thing I would say to audiences is people feel that if they have to get involved in a startup they have to start something on their own and that's not true at all there are so many ways to dabble in it to deepen it right somebody's father uncle may become an angel investor you can join a startup you can mentor a startup you can consult with startup you can become a vendor there are so many ways to get involved I don't think it would mean oh you have to be the founder and CEO and have a tag right I think that's very important and and even worse sometimes I think oh I have to get VC funded not at all right I think find a problem and if you have enough customers everything else follows so I'm away from tags and things like this you know you know suddenly from 20 years ago with startup founders if you're a startup founder it would be difficult to get married because your father loved you know what what the hell you're doing to suddenly it became extremely fashionable to say you're a startup founder so I think it is more about the problem that is yeah so we've got some questions Amanasi can we give audio to Neeraj Gupta would that be possible or I can just read out his question otherwise okay so Sanjay is basically asking I mean you know if you were to choose between health thing and ed tech what are you likely to choose as an investor or as a no it's a difficult I won't say it's a one size fits all certainly ed tech has tailwinds now right but remember that means everybody in ed tech is also going after that right so somebody who is you might think of doing something and somebody who has $15 million in funding may also have the same idea so because it's a tailwind doesn't mean that you're going to be successful number one I think again comes back to problems so let me be more specific like if you look at telemedicine and healthcare or if you look at like recently I came across startup that was doing AI for maternal care okay or say fetal care or things like that or let's say that something through the vaccine okay then that's very interesting because that has much larger purpose also right you said work also earlier so I think it depends on the landscape on what the problem is and why you and the team are the best to solve that right you know this is not a public market where you say okay let's buy the stock right you know let's buy the stock because it's in the sector it is why is this team the founder of the best yeah but that's very important sure somebody is asking do you see any scope of cross border payment startups now like cross border remittances this is or what what can you see is it possible to give the audio to Rahil Himani okay Rahil please unmute and ask go ahead Rahil hello go ahead so actually I am planning to start a startup in cross border payment which is actually can I ask questions in Q&A in the tab we look yeah yeah we've seen your question which is really about cross border payments what kind of cross border payments are you looking at just transferring money across countries remittances really okay so Sanjeev what about remittances yeah yeah yeah we've thank you thanks for the question we've seen this model before it is it is interesting in the sense that if I look at it today versus couple of years ago you know there is going to be less physical movement right but earlier you know people would come and do it themselves so I think in that sense it is interesting I know a couple of startups that do global remittances and you can even focus on different segments because you can you know do it for different layers of the workforce right from top professionals to you know more the working class now I don't have more details on that but it seems interesting and of course you have to have a core competency in that but I'll have to examine more but I but yeah it's possible that that that could be interesting sure so there's another question which has come which says that essentially you know it's not that good for businesses to pivot but I mean now given the situation that we are in would you suggest startup founders to pivot then business model entirely depend on the alternative if the alternative is to pivot or die then you have to pivot right so um see I think it depends it really depends on what the situation is right that I know there's no formula so I'll give you an example you're in the travel business right let's take a non-type business and you're a hotel owner and you people just stop traveling if you don't pivot you're going to die right what do you do I mean so what else can you do that is related to your ancillary or the reason people got into grocery delivery was because you suddenly saw a massive consumer shift for people staying at home but ordering so it makes sense right so it's driven by consumer demand so I don't I don't think it you know I never say you should pivot or you should not pivot it really depends on what your situation is and what you're pivoting to so it really depends on how badly your industry has also been hit so for example the opposite of pivoting is doubling down right so if you're seeing something that works like a net tech education investing in a platform that can reduce latency or you know improve speed by 2x or enable virtual classrooms then I would double down on that right or if it's a tech company with learning centers and suddenly you see all your customers going online of course I would pivot I think the word pivot the word pivot is also sometimes overused I think it is more adjusting to the customer and adjusting tailoring your solution to the customer need sure so there's another question which has come when they're going going on and on in one place or the other so is what what future do you see for the construction and the real estate industry do you think it's going to change in some way yeah that's a bit out of my domain I think now years was interesting I'm looking from the tech side I think digital platforms or technology for the construction industry will take off can take off right which actually you know says that you know what parts of that can be designed online what can be designed you know from digitally for example and what has to be done you know on the premise on the real industry we have our own really a tree right which is now rebranded as the intercity which is doing the buses more than trains there could be different forms of you know of real travel that take but that's a bit out of my domain and for the moment it's been hit the world over right with metros and everything so just because of the lack of the vaccine and yeah sure you know I mean while we were talking about pivot earlier as a fund do you see this could be a time for pivot I mean you could look at more later stage investments also given that you know some sectors companies in your own portfolio companies are going to see some big rise and you might want to invest in them going ahead further yeah so you know it's all relative like for us like data stage means like investing five million is data stage right for some people you know the minimum check size or first check size is like 20 million whether we do late stage or not I think the fact is to always come in early right because our DNA that we you know bloom is to actually a lot of people use their word founder friendly but we actually like to come in roll up our sleeves work with them sometimes post an idea something before that so even if you really say you're still starting at the same point right having said that we moved more to pre but you bring up a larger point I think that the bar for entrepreneurship has been raised even more and what the message of the founders is that you know if it was going to take well if you if you earlier it was okay to have let's say nine months of cash in the bank pretty neat to have 15 months okay if you're a B2B company and you needed to have one million error today need to have two and growing at double the rate or order okay not growing today but not losing customers right so so what that means is investors are saying okay we'll invest ID data we will track longer so I mentioned that pipe is very fat the engagement pipe is fat but we'll track longer sales cycles for customers longer approval to investment is longer and this is across the across the world this is I mean happening in Silicon Valley as well right it's nothing with no just India it's just human behavior right that you're going to tighten your risk management a little more and you know invest with most scrutiny without a doubt absolutely you know I know we are almost out of time but this one final question I want to ask you you know I remember in one of your earlier interactions you told us that raising a fund is actually raising a fund for a fund is next harder than actually doing a startup now do you even the times that we are in is it getting any more tougher yeah actually you know on a lighter note you should talk to our friend Sanjay Manta also because he's called it hundreds so he'll probably say it's hundreds you know you know yes and no I think the interesting part of founders raising capital is like what you see is what you get right so if I'm if I'm coming in to you and I like to say you know I built this link if you like it that's what it is right as a fund you have to go and say okay here's one ceiling and then I'm going to do this link in you know 10 different countries 10 different countries it's okay come and talk to me when you've done that right so it's a bit of a concept set and then you have to have a track record you have to have the right team it's become more competitive having said that I think you know institutional brands and institutional platforms would stand out even more because I think you know what happens is when there's a crisis people brands and trust I mean this is about trust right what is all this is all about trust and about confidence right that you're going to back up we see that is going to then make responsible decisions back responsible founders that will build companies responsibly it's like a chain it's a food chain and how do you trust that that comes with the track record right so in that sense I would say the best performing funds and the known funds will not have as tough a time as as as newer funds having said that there's some crazy ideas I mean I'll say this on in public also in the valley for example let's say cannabis right cannabis is actually a it's legal it's not manufacturing scammers but delivering it the fintech around it because there's use for medicinal medicinal usage yeah there are 10 million dollar fund in the new sector may actually find it much easier than a larger fund or than a startup because it's a new field it's a green field it's a white space so I think it really depends it really depends on you know what the space in the sectors well finally since you mentioned the valley I mean you know as as a country we have always looked at best for some ideas while I know our prime minister talks about vocal for local but you know sometimes you have to take inspiration from ideas and then have to sort of try and see how your country can fit into so if today if potential startups are to look in the valley for some trends what what exactly they should be looking at cannabis you mentioned yeah you know I'll I'll I'll just separate this I think you know the valley is the valley because people from all around the world are there right there's people that have made it special and many of them are Indians so I think we have a lot of credit to take for that secondly I also be careful that you know we don't necessarily look up to it and with awe or anything I think it's just that they got a head start right I mean I mean venture capital is invented there in the 50s and in India it's new literally I would say from the 2000s so they've got a sort of unfair head start I think on the B2B they're clearly ahead right if you look at cloud and infrastructure and storage and slack and zoom they all tend to start from the having having said that Eric Yuan is Chinese right it started zoom and look at Jan Tom of WhatsApp was Ukrainian right Sergey Brin himself came from Russia right his parents came so I mean the all immigrants who started it on the consumer side I think there is learning if you look at you know what Facebook can be I think one learning and again I'm never glorifying the value over India or any other place but one of the learnings is that just the UI UX and very quickly to kill what doesn't work and accept what works I think sometimes we have a tendency to you know just go at it and be determined but again like you said right are you going the right direction right you you what if you are okay are you listening I think that's the right word right are you listening to your users are you you know are you doing enough customer discovery right I think that is something to learn to and it's not just about India I think founders keep me on you go aside and learning we're often we're like I like like to say we're always in pitch mode right all of us in pitch mode right we like to sell but are we listening right to what the customer may want or the customer may not know what they want but can we listen and do that I think they're good at doing that right they're just very very in a very they're taught an open environment to listen and then develop something versus just pitching sure thanks very much Sanjay I think this was a great talk and thank you so much for sharing some great ideas so my couple of takeaways from the big talk and of course you know you've shared some brilliant brilliant stuff here is really that you know today we're sitting in a pandemic so I think what is more important for startups and prospective startups also is to try building for what could be post COVID and therefore you should not look at currently the time as a lack of opportunity but you should think of it as an opportunity to build something new which could actually go on to become becoming much bigger going forward and secondly funding is always available for a good idea so I mean as long as your idea is on solid grounds and you can do you think you have a customer in the market you can go ahead and do it and thirdly you know even if today you feel that opportunities are less for you whether you're unemployed or whether you feel that you have some great experience and you can do a startup just don't think of doing a startup you can do so many other things in the ecosystem so thank you for joining us Sanjay any final words from you I'd also shared that you know we've always been a sharing economy but I would share more on the human capital side right I think we're all we're all lonely but we're going to empathize more and it's incredible value to sharing across share with your friends share with other startup founders and just share good things bad things with this time to communicate and band together so I'll just add that but thank you for having me it was a pleasure doing this and hope some of the insights were helpful oh absolutely thank you very much for joining us Sanjay thank you thank you bye bye yeah thank you bye bye