 Passion I will not be able to say it with the same vigor as you would in terms of telling us what you do at live space, but What is interesting about him is that I believe that in this lifetime? This generation is going to see all shades of his career You're going to be a professional at some point of time You're going to be an entrepreneur at some point of time You're gonna be an investor at some point of time and maybe there's a fourth thing Which I also don't know what it's gonna be, but he's already done it He's done all the three and so he's gonna tell us a little more about himself and let's start with how old you are Well, I'm in my late 30s, so I didn't get the 35 under 35 He missed it With that description you should actually call my mother because she still thinks that there's a lot that needs to be done So going back to a little bit about myself My name is Anuj. I'm the CEO and one of the co-founders for live space my co-founder RK Ramakan Sharma, many of you guys know one of the more prolific angel investors in India Was part of the founding team for Minthra. So build an amazing business which And similar success is being emulated by Zalingo, right? It's outstanding what they've done actually in Southeast Asia little bit about live space and It's almost like I call it dudes doing home design right, so When but if if Live space, I mean simplistically it is India's and Southeast Asia's largest interiors renovation kitchens so forth and so on largest brand and platform experience and While for the consumer it is actually You know a very classic problem like I've just bought a home and I'm renovating my home or I've bought a home And I want to rent it out so I want to get stuff done in my home and Traditionally they would actually go to a contractor to get all of this stuff done Today you actually have an end-to-end experience called live space that you can actually go to and transform your home So the vision of the company really if you see is real estate transformation and one day it'll be this right, so Our vision is not really limited by the fact that we've started with consumers and their homes We feel that any space any real estate space for them to live in that space play in that space Sell in that space enjoy work in that space that space needs to be transformed and to be made useful for its occupants Right, so that's the idea behind the company. So, you know coming out of Google. It's a it's a great company to be in You worked in Kora you worked in Google What sort of changed in you in order to become an entrepreneur what you know It's fun to work in Google right and it's not so much fun to do your own start-up So how did you sort of make this shift? How did you decide to go from a professional to an entrepreneur? So look I come from the era when There was no Android right and YouTube was full of like cat videos So yes, I remember like YouTube was this building in a place called Saint Bruno close to San Francisco Maybe you've been there and then all the videos out there used to be like people taking Small snapshots of their cats really and those are some of the most popular content So the internet has obviously evolved and this is not that long ago. Actually. This is like, you know, 2006 7 so if you see even a place which is believed to be as transformative as in Francisco 10 years ago wasn't that evolved right and I think We sort of uniquely live in a time where and because of The amount of capital it takes to start new ideas an appreciation for risk-taking right and I call it sort of the three F's of building a company which is funny Which is like, you know, it always takes a fool to build a company Right, it takes another fool to buy the stuff that you're building and it actually takes another fool to fund it Right and which is very interesting. So all of these vectors were actually a property Fine But I'm saying well, I'm similarly calling myself one So the ecosystem and its depth was actually available in San Francisco, Tel Aviv, Shanghai and whatnot I think the beauty is that today that ecosystem is available in India as well, right? It's completely okay to build great companies and have a great vision It's actually okay for people to buy some of that stuff and be early adopters and come work for you equally It is actually absolutely appropriate for somebody to actually fund your vision, right? And you know 2014 I didn't want to be an Indian who left India and went to the US and look at a Phenom called what's happening here and missed the boat, right? So it was actually some of those inspirations and ideation of course running into my co-founder was, you know a chance journey and Things come together because of serendipity, but once when you actually recognize the opportunity you jump at it I totally agree. So, you know He's in fact invested in more startups. He's he's While he's a great entrepreneur, but he's also actually a great investor So he's done some of the startups which have today become big unicorn organizations themselves so My question to you is and incidentally he's raised about 500 CR very recently for his startup So he himself probably is moving very closely in chink towards becoming a unicorn too But my question is, you know, when you're a startup and I said it before but when you're a startup You're really very passionate. You can actually be awake 24 hours a day and No care to the world. You can just build your dreams But when you're like funded to that an extent, you know, it's a huge responsibility and Running on adrenaline and running on responsibility are two different things. Sure. It doesn't give I mean the spark might be huge But the responsibility is bigger So how do you sort of make sure that the monies that come in the investor money that comes in is Wisely used. How does it get deployed? How do you evolve as an entrepreneur once the money start moving into your organization people start buying into your vision? What is it that changes? And I think we were talking about this thing and you were telling me your personal experience as well And I think many of the folks here would be feeling that, you know, given your companies are evolving is that and Think of a story like think of entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page You know the guy you found at Square and whatnot Twitter same guy See they at their times they were playing two different roles when they actually started their company They were like, you know, visionary and charismatic entrepreneurs founders who are able to create an idea attract investors Their first set of people, you know would come and work for them as their ideas evolved and they capitalized and raised more money A naturally great entrepreneur has to evolve right and you would have seen that in your role as well I see it every day, which is you have to literally wake up Every other day and fire yourself from the previous job that you're doing and be ready for the next job that you should be ready for so I was telling you this anecdote about this gentleman who's sitting next to me on a flight and And I got thinking about that. So today live space has, you know, a little over a thousand people And I was telling something to this this person who works for me the other day is, you know When was the last time that I ran a thousand person company? Never So if you see the experience that someone like me brings to the table when you're actually facing an opportunity that is Multi-tens of billions of dollars wide could arguably take phenomenal amount of capital and you know Can inshallah one day be tens of thousands of people You have to realize that the responsibility vested in you because of you know A vision that you or your co-founder or a bunch of people came up with is so enormous that you have to continuously invest in your own journey So you have to upgrade yourself every day You have to have a team that is able to upgrade yourself every day And you know, you shouldn't be afraid of failures and all that and I think you said a great thing Which is like, you know great startups one day become great companies You know Facebook is a 15 year old company Only as of yesterday and look at where it is right now and guess who's the founder in the CEO? It's the same guy now this person has evolved massively his team has evolved massively, but the velocity of thinking The vision that he created and it's sort of the bullet deep ability in thinking beyond the infinite. It just hasn't changed You have to maintain those three things. So what is your current role? I'm the CEO of my company But you know you and the company's what three and a half is already in its evolution, you know in a true sense that we went to market So you're still setting a Lot of the vision work for the company and as I say like Companies that evolve on an every day every week every month basis Really are the ones that are ready for the future So there's a lot of your role which is still like the founder that you were right So you still continue to inspire paint the big picture make sure that people are Continue to be to be invested and excited about the the idea that you came up with it's it's funny that For those of you who are doing their own companies You almost every day have to wake up and be the most excited person in your company, right? And it has a huge emotional toll on you obviously So there is sort of the dark side of being an entrepreneur, but as your company scale and they start doing well in Organization evolves and new people come in new cultures come in I think your role evolves from being a founder to a CEO, right and the CEO is about You know there's something called fiduciary responsibility So you as a CEO report into the board that actually have lots of great investors and they've actually invested With lots of money behind you So you have the responsibility to actually represent the board well you have the responsibility to drive returns Because partly their shareholder is a company you have to make sure that you actually uphold the values and culture of a company You also own a business plan that you have to deliver to right so your role actually massively evolves from someone who was actually able to Create the zero to one spark in a company and excite people To actually someone who's not gonna take it from 10 to 100 and you know God willing one day infinity very very different roles So I have the onerous task of actually playing to both these roles right now And you're doing it quite well, let me tell you that So You know you're an investor yourself So when you meet startups, what are the three pieces of advice that you give to them? You know when you fund them or when you mentor them or when you sort of tell them what should be the way forward? And it's something also that you believe in strongly. It's not just for them But you believe in it's your value system. I think first and foremost it's really The founders belief in the idea, right? I mean if you aren't the most passionate person behind that idea and you haven't thought it through then it will never come across So that's one and and believe you me the startup industry has evolved massively, right? So the strength and the capability of entrepreneurs and their ideas is no longer the way it was in 2015 in this part of the world so The the first and foremost advice is make sure that you've done substantial amount of thinking, you know before you're actually out in market That's one. I think Look things will go wrong things will evolve So as an investor who sort of seen the market a little bit and I've invested in the US and Southeast Asia in India quite a lot to have seen that It's really really really the team that you invest in like and there's a there's a there's a rule of investing which says Great markets great ideas great teams, right? So it's almost like great markets somewhat of an okay idea great team will actually invest, right? But phenomenal market phenomenal execution weak team you'll never invest, right? And I've seen that time and again between ideas that have worked out well and ideas that haven't The third thing is the most important which is phenomenal teams will phenomenal companies. They will figure it out, right? So I'd say that's the second which is believe in yourself believe in your idea But believe in great teams and you know third which is very very very very very important its speed, you know, so like I think teams that are able to Develop and take their ideas and test them in the market at the fastest pace and learn and go along are really the ones That have succeeded when you've seen it coming again, right? Look at Oyo and the innovation that they're driving look at Ola Uber Zalingo, I mean these are all great examples of Entrepreneurs that had great founding teams and they were actually able to test their ideas enough in the market And they were actually able to kind of grow beyond. Yeah, I'd say those three I'm gonna ask you this one final question and this is an interest to everybody who's present in this room So your business model was based on aggregating the home designing community To sort of get them together and they could actually build of instead of just thinking in silos and small bits They could all think together on a great platform today a lot of small businesses in India medium businesses in India are trying to transform They're trying to go through the digital journey, which is about building digital commerce They're trying to get new ways of learning. So what is it that you would want to tell them as they go along this journey? What is it that you think that you have tangibly done for the designer community, which everybody could learn from? Yeah, actually you'd be surprised. So I was actually in another conference in the morning Radically different from this setup and I think I'm overdressed for this occasion It was a Credi event. It's a government event and but you know the messages are so consistent Right that whether it is and it was a developer events of builder community It's sort of relevant to me or or the question that you sort of sort of asked if you see What technology and internet has done is really really really make the small business and the small business owner very successful Right, so whether it is an app developer on Android or it is a design partner in our community Or is it an older driver or it's a supplier on flipkart, etc. etc. etc Adoption of those platforms has really brought in new business steady-state payment. No loss of margin Or a trust building so my request and inherent appeal to Businessmen who are sort of in the smaller and medium-sized is really adoption of technology and adoption of technology Time and again, it's been proven that that's the transformative engine that that that'll actually leave frog them because Today as a small business owner and I've sort of seen that many times over that neither Do you have the power of access to buy? Right or negotiate and whatnot what technology actually enables is actually weeds away the crap in the value chain Right and actually puts you up front and center where the actual war is happening in front of the customer Right, so my request is and my appeal is that as a small and medium business owner It's actually okay to go through the transformation of utilizing and adopting the most relevant technology to your business right with its ERP or Amazon, you know or what I do or so forth and so on but I think that is really the The paths to freedom. That's really what's growing India. That's really what grew the US It's actually the ability of technology in the internet to make the small business person like really successful Super great talking to you ladies gentlemen a big round of applause and I do feel that you know you you got you got the next story to be written right there in India And all the very best to you as we grow forward We love to see great things coming from your stable an organization becoming much much bigger than what it is today Thank you. Thanks for having me over Thank you, Ritu. Thank you, Anuj. That was really insightful and Now let's up the ante I would like to invite us soon to be unicorns for a panel discussion on making of future leaders. I Would now like