 Hello and welcome everyone to the first virtual conference by Entrepreneur India and powered by BusinessX.com. Today's discussion will revolve around impact on funding mixed and aftermath of COVID-19. I'm Saurav Kumar, editor of Special Project Entrepreneur India, your host for the session. Today amid these unprecedented circumstances, going to the novel coronavirus outbreak, we are going to try and find answers to some of the questions that may have cropped up in the business community. First, but let me start by laying out the ground rules for our attendees. The discussion will last for 40 minutes and this will be followed by a question and answer session for the next 20 minutes. If you have any questions during the course of the discussion, you can post them to the Q&A option at the bottom of your screen. Mention in your question if it is directed at any specific panelist. We will take up the questions post the final discussion. We would also like to request the attendees to keep the questions within the scope of the discussion here today and not fix the discussion. Let me now introduce our section moderator for today, Ms. Ritu Maria, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur India and Asia Pacific. Our panelists today are Mr. Sandeep Murti, partner Lightbox, Mr. Sanjay Swamy, managing partner Prime Venture Partners, Ms. Anjali Bansal, founder of Aavana Capital, Mr. Mr. Ashish Kapoor, co-executive president, Mr. Ashish Papadia, partner Bloom Venture, Mr. P.S. Kanan Sitaram, venture partner Farsight Venture. I would now request Ms. Maria to start the session. Over to you, Ms. Maria. Thank you very much and very good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us in this discussion, which is basically going to be revolving around funding and its impact, both during the COVID as well as post the COVID. We have been talking about disruption and how we're going to change things and change the world with the startups and various ideas that are out there. And here we are all sitting today getting disrupted ourselves. Nature has played its role and we were in very unusual circumstances where and I can bet upon it that even till 10th of March, we really didn't know that everything was going to come to such a grinding halt. So there's barely been any preparedness for everybody to figure out what is the way forward. And therefore, you know, we've got this imminent panel here today, which is going to give us at least the first insights into what could be expected in business and economic activity, both during the coming days as well as the days going forward. So thank you very much to our imminent panel for joining us. And we look forward to having as we go ahead in the next 40 minutes, we look forward to your Blacksman memo, so to say, coming out and sharing as to what you feel is the best way forward, both for startups as well as for investments in the coming year. So let me start by asking this question that particularly, you know, when a situation like this is there, which is almost like a natural disaster, how, what is the, what is it that startups or young businesses, even small and medium businesses should be doing today in order to get their act right, in order to be able to cover themselves and see that they can keep their head up for water? So what, what are, how can they manage their monetary resources? How can they manage their managing resources so that there is least impact their business will feel after the lockdown is over? The next person, what, what is it that you feel that startups should be doing and what are you advising them on to keep floating? Did you say, was that me that you were directing it to? Yes, that's right. Okay, so listen, I think that first of all, this is an unprecedented event and we're very much in uncharted territory. So I think the idea that there's a good answer and no answer, this is hard to say. I would, I would say that just based on previous experiences of similar situations where chaos wreaks havoc and you kind of sit back and say, okay, look, there's very little you control. There's very little you actually know about how things are going to progress. So preserving capital, extending runway, making sure that you're using the time to evolve your product, improve your customer experience. These are things and I'm not going to go into them comprehensively because I think everyone else has their own way of communicating and I think it'd be great to hear other people's views on it. But at least as a start, I'll say that I mean, one of the things that we've directed our companies to do is really say, let's focus on product, focus on customer experience once you've ensured that the runway exists and once we've ensured those things to happen, which I think others will talk a little bit about how we've done that or how they've done that. I think really making sure product is differentiated and making sure you use the time to create a better experience. But I'll let others talk a little bit more about how to extend the runway. Sure. Sanjay, what is it that Sanjay is from Prime Pensions and of course he's done his own startups in both the funding community as well. So Sanjay, what is your opinion of things? How can startups today remain both business-sane as well as mentally sane when circumstances are not really in their favour? Yeah. So, hi everybody, it's certainly, I hope there are going to be some good takeaways for everyone here on the panelists. So definitely as Sandeep said, preserving cash is right now, cash is the hardest commodity to get and so that has to be done in a very prudent manner and whether that means cutting your spends, cutting your salaries, hopefully retaining as much of your team as you can. We are telling everybody to have a very conservative outlook, which is ideally you have the money you have should get you through December of next year but possibly June of next year should be fine. I'm sure there are others who have shorter time frames but we've just taken sort of a worst-case point of view. The other thing that is a little sobering is that many of your customers might also go out of business or might might be downsizing or downscaling the proper projects. So even the revenue that you have you should assume that probably 20-30% of that is probably going to go away and the ramp-up plans that they had might also slow down. So be very very conservative in terms of the money on the table. Having said that, I think the most exciting thing that should keep you going and a Sandeep said focus on product, there's a lot of nuances around what he said. One is what is changing here is the behaviour of the user, the fact that we are doing this video conference on Zoom, whereas in the past it would probably have been an in-person thing with a social event and so on. That's becoming the new normal. And so sales cycles for example might or sales processes might move from a come here and let's have a conversation to a remote conversation and that might actually mean that if you're selling regionally in India now all of India is available for you. If your product has a possibility of going global and you were waiting for the next round of funding in order to hire somebody in the US or in Southeast Asia, that may no longer be necessary because the company that is sitting in Palo Alto selling across the street on the University Avenue to another customer might not be at any advantage over you who's sitting here in either Bangalore or Delhi or wherever or in indoor. So that will create a lot of new opportunities as well. So our advice to people is obviously go conservative first with the cash, but very quickly start looking at where the opportunities are. Sure, Mr. Kanan, let me ask you this. You know, you're in the consumer lifestyle space and today when of course it is primarily when you cannot even step out or buy anything or even online companies are not going to deliver you anything which is outside the normal, what is it that your advice is going to be for B2C startups to really keep their themselves afloat and also to be able to sort of fight back or come back or bounce back very soon after this is all over. Thanks, Ritu. You know, all our companies are in the product area, it's branded products and we really look at three groups of companies in our portfolio. One is where clearly the runway has to be extended and we're working with them on how they can conserve cash, how they can extend the runway and I think other people have spoken about that. Let me move on to the other bucket which is where we have a bunch of food companies. Most of these are following into what the government is calling essentials. Now up to last week we didn't see any reduction in demand for these guys. Demand was moving from being more offline to more online, but this week has been very different. The lockdown has also led to a lot of disruption because between the intention and the actual execution, there has been a lot of gap and we are therefore working with all our companies in the essentials area to try and figure out what they need to do to resume access to market. And we have been trying to work with the larger companies, we're trying to work with the platform players, trying to get insights from all of them on what is the best way to actually get supplies back into the market because stores are open, shelves are depleting and therefore the priority is to get products onto the market. So that's another group of our companies and the third group is products which don't fall into the essentials area. There we are looking to work with them to say, hey look things are going to come back. There is going to be a demand for products. We are only talking about largely a deferment of demand rather than a perishing of demand. So when you talk about deferment of demand how are you going to meet that? What's the kind of changes you're going to see in the environment and how are you getting ready for changes in that environment? So it's really three different sets of advisories which are going on from us. Ashish, let me come to you. You know at Lume majors you're leading all tech startups. So particularly of course you know tech is perhaps one of the the would be one of the least impacted when it would really come down to we go out and evaluate things but nevertheless not the best of lines but really sad. So what is your advice to them? So we have clearly in individual sessions apart from relaying a generic message and as large a portfolio as we have and as tough as it can get we are still focused on doing these one-on-ones across the whole portfolio and made sure that there is an acknowledgement of the fact that there is adequate runway we have spoken about it and within that also the utmost level of conservativeness. So driving the teams to get into sensitivity analysis if it's a B2B company you will have the customers also facing challenges and they might even get into expansion plans or really no one is talking. People are talking about by what level there will be deceleration. So that has to be absorbed in some sense in a temporary scenario. At the same time we are also telling the founders that there are going to be we are not going to be in a permanent lockdown situation. So things on what is happening immediately will come to a point where life resumes after about another four to six weeks max but things will still be slow. So prepare for that phase. It is not going to come back with a third. It has stopped very suddenly it won't start with the same degree of force. So you might have to be very very conservative and the fund raise is going to be as tough as well. So wherever you see opportunities to conserve cash without being overtly opportunistic there are going to be vendors who will need payment. There are going to be people in the team where you have to keep the flows going. So without being overtly opportunistic be sensitive but yet conserve cash. This is a time where if you are the funded company you need to create your own reputation and your brand but at the same time have the right communication with all your stakeholders on what you're trying to do create transparency a little more than what you already have and don't expect business to be as usual for at least the short term. Sure. Let me come to you Anjuli. So Anjuli is from Avana Capital and she's an expert in fintech startups. So where you see the you know financing is life and blood of business and the economy to actually fight in order to in particularly in the fintech space coming out over there. If I had a crystal ball I could give you the answer. I think there are three things we are actually telling all our companies fintechs or otherwise. One is and it's already been said conserve cash keep your cash safe look carefully at cost but even before that the first paramount thing is employees safe there is a lockdown is because this is a highly contagious situation so the first thing is keep your people safe business will happen if life continues so things are dire keep your people safe put in business continuity plans and all our companies big and small the second thing we are urging them to do is look at what you do to actually support and help this situation. So for example in lodges essential goods and services medicines food and that's for business but really the nation as a whole. So the second message is what can you do at this time of the whole and the army workers if they don't earn today if they don't work today they don't earn today they don't eat today. So I think we have to start thinking about that as well those startups have as much of a responsibility as to big companies. Third thing for some what early stage investors we invest in innovation led and innovation driven stronger so if they can survive this they will come out stronger more differentiated and very well positioned. We are going to see a fairly significant shift even more significant shift to digital than we have seen in the past virtual working the way we live the way we work the way we consume will change and already news people have stopped getting newspapers so once you get used to digital that shift will continue. So more digital finance more digital consumption and thus those companies that are using tech platforms to deliver whether it is fintechs or what is fintech after all it's delivery of financial products but on an online digital way. So fintech companies consumer tech companies logistics companies that are using digital platforms these are the ones that are actually even today the larger economy and indeed the government itself is turning to turning to to facilitate the continued movement of goods and services. So three things keep your people safe if your cash safe so that's one two is think about what you can do to help and support and three is innovation will lead I think in the both world also hopefully if anything this teaches us a little bit more mindful consumption and more aware growth and this whole idea of just growth for the sake of growth has to kind of take a backseat and be reassessed and in many ways you could argue that this is the planet kicking back at us against all the irrational activities that we've done over the past many decades and I think quite honestly we've learned how to do business now on zoom we've learned now how to have to travel at the top of the hat I think that companies will be lower on cash by default as a result will reduce yes business will need to continue I think more intelligent growth will come about other aspects I would hope consumer behavior changes in I think that will create interesting opportunities for forward sure uh page let me also come to you and you know you've done investments in for soon as well as the new years both inside India as well as globally as well so you know and today when most startups think of global as soon as they start do you think there is going to be some impact some changes and how do startups now prepare for expansion which plans which is really and you know you as investors also bring the scale to these startups to these organizations so what what is the preparation likely to be at this yeah thank you so much so I'm just gonna not repeat what everybody has said and I agree with most of the last forever I mean in China we have started to see recovery happening so there is light at the end of the tunnel so I don't think world is coming to an end but obviously like most of the panelists said that the way we do business is going to change and which will throw new opportunities and I totally agree with Sandeep you know they were like so much thought and overvaluation which now will you know settle down a bit yeah so you know I think what we are seeing is that time so we invest in China US India and Israel a lot of and you know like you have to one thing I just want to say is as you guys are going through this phase just over communicate communication is is key and very important whether it is to your investors it's to your employees it's to the larger world just go out there and tell them about the situation a lot of our companies have renegotiated their rents you know some even smaller things and cutting down on your marketing expense focusing on product like a lot of people said the recovery will you know happen it is bound to happen and you know it is and I think Prime Minister Modi has done the right thing even though 75% of economy is offline but we are that right now because safety is most important at this at this pivotal moment so it's not at doing the measures which we put forward in the front will obviously help in terms of you know putting this pandemic right which is what is having families have said on top of it over communicate and recovery could be anywhere between today and in China six to 12 months is is is a good period when you can see things coming back and also the business will change so we'll put pressure on on company cut out your marketing expense which is you know throwing money for buying customers you will really see who are your real honest customers who stick with you SaaS companies are not seeing that much of a hit quite frankly they are you know for a short time travel is suffering we are investors in both make my trip and Xigo but at the same time they're utilizing their time now to build product like Sandy was saying you know focusing their tech teams to see how innovatively they can solve and some of the businesses will thrive for example communication businesses social businesses online online consumption of news and as well as gaming so you have to figure out where you fit you'd like the workforce keep them motivated very very important i mean it is a difficult circumstances but you are the leader and you have to motivate your people and keep yourself healthy recovery will come no doubt about backstage you know now on another level i would like to understand the history's rapid examples and whenever the recession or a slowdown hitting really cons have been born so now as investors what are the lenses you are going to have particularly post-covid to look at sectors or evaluate sectors where you want to make investments what are the areas that you at least you know so as you said very rightly dates that we need to think of future products now so as investors what are the lenses that you are now working on what are the areas you are looking at or identifying where you would like to see or park future investments so let me start with you Deish um so yeah we obviously we are currently focusing a lot of our time i think 80 percent of my time is going to work with our current portfolio companies so we have sort of slowed down you know kind of looking at new companies but this is again a great time to to buy so we are also invested like i said in make my trip the stock is down at $12 we are definitely going to invest more and similarly we are looking at opportunistically some of the businesses which we liked from before where you know we can actually get in so that's one and second is you know where some of the sectors we were not thinking about as investors i think we are taking a long-term view in terms of how these will evolve just one is healthcare you know we have only one one bed for one doctor for 40 000 patients in in India you know it is ridiculously low and only only way this can be solved is through tech so we are looking you know we are building our thesis while we're taking this time to build our thesis on the healthcare and i'm sorry to say but this is not the end of viruses i think there will be more maybe not of this magnitude but more you know more events like this Bill Gates spoke about it so we're looking at healthcare in a in a bigger way we already have investment in glan pharma and also you know consumer businesses we are we are going to halt for now till till you know the recovery happens because i think it will take some time for people to bring back the discretionary spend fintech investments also we are taking a you know a back seat on you know because we believe that it will take some time for them to come back and we are going to focus on online education one of the biggest beneficiary of of covid would be online education so get deep into it and see what we can do and also some of the communication companies sure Sandeep let me ask you this that do you see particularly a lot of merger and acquisitions by of big startups you know acquiring small startups you know from a product development perspective happening because obviously needless to say that the same amount of the same friends you are funding that we have been seeing in 2019 would probably not come back or not at least as soon in probably like quarter three or quarter four of 2020 so do you see that happening in the next few months thanks m&a is always one of those things that everyone would like to see happen to find liquidity i think in a case where you may end up in situations with lots of stressed or i guess companies without enough cash flow in their businesses putting two six companies together will not necessarily make a healthy business so unless there's true product differentiation which unfortunately quite honestly i think of the last couple of years too much attention has been paid on just growing the user base indiscriminate spend on cash not enough true product differentiation so in the few instances perhaps where we do see that and there are perhaps stronger players who feel like okay this the product might actually accelerate that for them i think absolutely there will be an opportunity for that however that being said i'm a little bit uh probably skeptical about whether that's going to happen at a scale or even a value that will necessarily be exciting for anybody i do think so that when we just set out with our new fund and one of the things that we identified as two areas that were focused on are climate related efforts and social related efforts and and we didn't do either of these because we're trying to be a green fund or an impact fund we simply said that these are two factors that will impact consumption going forward and so as a consumer fund if you're on the wrong side of things that impact that i think over time you'll either be regulated out or consumers will walk away from it and so i think that going forward what we are hopeful to see and perhaps your m&a can come in in this lens as well if companies have found themselves on the right side of the coin of figuring out how to be more mindful about the environment as they're building products be more aware of the social impact that they're having they talked about doctors and and addressing health care issues or education issues and wherever you may fall on that spectrum if you're doing in a way that is uh is more more aware of the residual impact that you have i think that there's going to be a tremendous interest from both domestic and global players and because i think at one level in some of these issues india is operating at a scale that is only one other country has and therefore as a result it's a an interesting place in which to actually scale some of these ideas up and perhaps then actually take them elsewhere and to a lack of incumbents in some of the traditional areas and perhaps with the the downfall deterioration of more incumbents i think there'll be interesting businesses immerse from sure ashish sanjay i would like both of you to sort of one by one answer this that uh do you really feel that valuations would again a sort of so the valuations of startups will get revised you know obviously the stock markets are taking a tumble and startups that can never be far behind so do you think the real valuations with which they went to the next round of funding and so on would take a hit and what could be the revised valuations of what is it that we're likely to see uh in terms of valuations for startups in the coming months sure uh sanjay i will go first yeah go ahead so uh i think whether we like it or not uh valuations uh are already in some sense being questioned so even when you have uh things moving towards uh point where there are term sheets uh around people are asked their ices and boards are asking questions to the investing teams uh on whether the current scenario needs to be factor adjusted uh while some of these reactions one can sitting from the outside one can say uh why on earth are you overreacting if all of you unanimously do believe that the india story ain't changing the long-term growth map ain't altering uh so far as this side of the world in asia is concerned and venture is a five ten year game so why are we having major reactions and adjusting valuations downward that said one can't really rule out that there there is going to be a fair bit of combination of data and data kind of starts trumping intuition and vision and passion at this juncture so wherever possible there is going to be this tendency to look at asking harsh and hard questions on whether we valued stuff right and one can't deny the fact that as samdeep rightly mentioned that there was a thrust on user engagement user acquisition so unfortunately even the companies where there are strong operating models may get scanned but i think this is a good opportunity for companies with strong business models while valuations may stand to be corrected people will ask hard questions and if you don't have the economics going in your favor there will be downward revisions as well but it does in my view pose an opportunity to making sure that we create sane startups in turn over the next two years it in my view it might even accelerate and make it convenient and possible for companies to go and create exit opportunities by listing etc because the foundations would probably be laid down as things start getting normalized yes there is a challenge but i do see i would like to try and see if we can convert it into a opportunity for the ecosystem in general okay sarjay yeah just to build on what actually said we had a couple of term sheets that were out they're not revising them but we are certainly telling the founders look whatever money you're getting now assume this is going to take you through plus an extra you know ideally six to nine months right was that but the founders new founders should certainly expect and we do mainly see seed stage like a couple of others here like group for example i think realistically if you're getting money at a six or seven million dollar valuation you're going to be getting it at a three or four million dollar valuation that's something people have to face the reality and and guess what five years ago that's exactly where the market was right so this market does have some inflation and then we'll have some contraction the good news for founders however is that the cost of doing business is also going down right secondly you're not being penalized against anybody else in the market it's the overall market that has come down right so the cost of doing business has come down i think you know good companies as they say they don't die of starvation but they can die of indigestion and then they have too much money they try to do too many things what we will see is a crop of startups that will be very laser focused on solving one problem and doing it really really well which is what a startup is supposed to do startup is not supposed to solve everybody's problem it's supposed to solve one problem really well for a large enough you know a niche of users that's why advice big companies would be solving everything right so i think it will get much more disciplined into startups they're going to focus on solving one problem as Sandeep said you know focus on the customer focus on product focus on tech and do a really great job of it right so in some ways you know i don't think anybody should be disillusioned about this for seed stage companies i think all of us you know around the table here that do seed you know we are constantly looking out so i don't think as entrepreneurs one should say let me just wait and think this thing will come back right you might just miss the opportunity because the opportunity might be now as well right so there are a couple of questions that i was just going through that opposed to the panelists you know i would say yes of course you know physical meetings face-to-face meetings might you know over the next three weeks be difficult and everything has to be done over zoom but do not wait six months to see how this market is going to turn around because you know you have a window of opportunity to build your startup and if you're thinking long-term as an entrepreneur you have to assume that somewhere in your journey there is going to be one downturn for the most part very few startups are between downturns everybody should expect to experience one and the younger of the companies now you know it's good it's better you're taking this hit now and you'll come out stronger for the long term whether you look at Uber whether you look at Airbnb whether you look at Salesforce they all came out of the worst of the downturns at that time so this is actually a great time because nobody's going to be judging you just on random growth we're going to be you know judging on value to the customer sure let me ask you this Mr. Kanan what now with consumer startups and you know you always focused on product startups what kind of product startups are you going to be looking at in the coming year so you know year after this so the thing is that this behavior change has been in the covid generation there is also a way to get embedded in a cycle that changes behavior the other factor is what's going to do and there is we're losing you somewhere yeah can you hear me now yes better yes so i was saying that the government is also going to intervene stimuli and that's again going to change consumer behavior so i think what we clearly see is health and hygiene but i think for a very long time as things which are going to be much higher in their consumer buying interest see depending on how you know this is like government intervention etc play out but what we certainly see is that where they buy how this shop is certainly changing so how communicate and engage with consumers the fundamental shift that is happening sort of i'll i'll have to exit unfortunately sure oh that's fine thank you for your thank you everyone thank you thanks so uh very quick the sectors uh we quickly do this in two minutes and then i'll hand back to you sort of for questions with us our investment thesis actually gets even more strengthened which is around how can all large problems i think what we are seeing clearly is the little strand of rna is making us all change how we consume and that's come through our pipeline but at the same time there will be opportunity and our continue to be on the large problem before there is a shift in the way or at least we hope there will be a not a small shift but in a large shift on how the world consumes everything whether it is financing or it is consumer products or it is health and the delivery of those so we will continue to look at companies that are either being able to provide these kind of solutions and goods and services to very very last mile in a profitable scalable way it has also been said by this group in this discussion that i think we are hopeful that at least the next few months we'll bring back some frugality which is really what startups used to be and a focus on building the business versus the raising money only so the next round hopefully uh of course you know entrepreneurs have to continuously raise money but on the back of a fairly robust business model sure thank you very much um so you know our audience are actually waiting to be um they ask waiting to ask questions so sort of let me pass it on to you and if you can just on behalf of the audience put some questions forward thank you all for the very insightful discussion um it's mariana as the analyst i'm sure it was very helpful to all our attendees uh we have a lot a lot of questions filled up and we'll try to uh take up as many as possible so we have uh we have uh one question from Mr. Ashruti Parveza for Mr. Anjuli Bansal uh he says i belong to the tourism industry and my entire business is from the on from online customers so we continue to spend on adverts or online digital marketing as employees are still there but no conversion so should we keep going on spending on marketing for future business as as we have inquiries for November, December and for Anthony. That's a very very specific question i i think there are folks who here who are actually investors in online travel companies who can perhaps provide a more specific response to that page or something. I also already um i think it is question online uh what are the requests these guys do i'll i'll i'll wait and quickly tell my my would wait it out i think that uh that on the plus side historically every time travel has been hit he's come back very strongly and uh i think the upside to that is is something to keep in mind so i think i assume that's what page sees and then therefore it's coming to make my trip as well right now and i mean i think we we're clear trip right now it's all about conservation waiting watching um with airlines now flying hotels running empty it just doesn't make much sense so i think i would wait it out but take hope in the fact that it will come yeah just to add to what Sandeep said i think totally all of them i think in travel it's going to be a v-shaped recovery so also just want to make the general point you know when you're looking at your business you can see whether it's going to be a v or it's going to be a u u means you know it's going to go down further for a long time and then come back up or it's going to be a l you know so you have to figure it out but i think travel i my advice is cut all marketing expense wait it out um it's going to bounce back as soon as people start traveling everybody is in the cage they want to get out that's actually my very limited point on travel is right now nobody can step out but there is one thing there are many things that cannot go online one thing that cannot go online is travel and holiday you still need to get away it's it's still a very physical activity so it will come back we should buy your time yeah i think Sandeep also wanted to say something uh so i actually had answered this question online almost exactly what Sandeep said um i actually think that a lot of travel will be impacted even longer business travel will probably come back domestically i think domestic tourism will also come back over time if India manages to stay safe i think a lot of the exotic locations in europe for example i think average indian consumer for tourism will be very very cautious given the the hit that italy and france and you know rest in europe are taking as well as the big tourism spots in the u.s like new york for example so i you know certainly i think you should be very conservative with the money right now my only advice is maybe you can do some controlled experiments but do not open the tab and spend all the money now can we go to the next questions order hi uh sorry so uh the next question that we have uh is for is from Mayura Rao and it's for Mr. Kanan uh what is your advice to be taken to take advantage of department of demand for fnb startup post experience uh Mr. Kanan would you like to take that up so actually fnb companies are going to be the yeah i'm trying to i think there's some problem with my internet connectivity actually can you hear me yes yeah uh so uh i think what we see is that uh the food startups in our portfolio are the ones who are going to be the quickest to recover uh because of the fact that the government is treating most of them as essentials uh especially those which are for consumption at home now if you're about consumption outside the house obviously uh you're impacted unless you are in one of the delivery platforms so i'm not seeing at this point in time for our portfolio at least a serious uh uh deferment of uh demand it's a lot about getting the supply going so that they can uh satisfy demand okay okay Sadeep would you like to take this up uh from a food startups perspective that's been interesting uh as there's always the delivery from a variety of angles um i think just it took some time to clarify and and get the on the ground people in tune with what the intent was of allowing essential services to include food delivery so there was a bit of a hiccup over the last couple of days i do think that um over time though as this settles down the uh the the idea that um you know there will be branded food entities that stand for a certain quality uh brand will will will carry more weight and i think that applies across the board whether you look at that from a perspective of food or whether you look at from any service provider any product that you're going to buy going forward the the fact that stands for certain standards stands for certain um qualities certain ways of manufacturing and uh i think in food i think again like everything else if you're building something else build weight get it ready if you've got the scale already sure by all means continue to run it but i i think there are a few companies in that bucket so um but but i do think that if you can build something differentiate great the question will be can you really have something that's differentiated i think that's what i would question a little bit and um if you believe that that's there then by all means pursue it but um yeah i i think it should benefit over yeah just just adding to that as i mentioned earlier there is this huge concern or our health and what we're seeing is we are investors in a couple of um health food brands yoga bar and kapiva and we're seeing actually both of them seeing a strong increase in demand and i think this is not a temporary thing i think there is going to be increasing concern for what you're eating and how that is helping your body handle all the problems that nature is going to throw at it and therefore if you're in the healthy foods or health foods area i think that's a great space to be in sure um sort of next question please yeah so uh uh we have a kind of a follow-up question for these so so we all are talking this is from uh mr pavan adhultani so we all are talking about opportunities emerging post covid what could be those for cafes and restaurants Sandeep you would want to take this up like my bias is in the cloud kitchen world so um i think that unfortunately uh look i i really don't know i mean honestly i i'm i'm looking to be inspired perhaps by entrepreneurs with creative ideas for cafes and restaurants but right now our our approach to it has so far been to to go with the the cloud world and try to see how that plays out i'm sure that there's going to be some tech intersection that's going to make it interesting but um i i think our role is to to be inspired by the entrepreneurs to come up with a great idea sure uh sanjay sanjay you want to add yeah sorry i was on mute uh so i just wanted to add you know sort of at the more macro level related to that question uh i think for founders you know a lot of people have been asking you know when should we be raising money etc what are we investing in right i think the obvious thing that almost everybody in the group here will be looking at very uh realistically is what business is getting a tailwind due to the fallouts of covid 19 right so you have to think about it as an entrepreneur even even with your current business if you're an existing entrepreneur what is uh you know what is the tailwind that just happened that the world tilted to your favor and you may have to reject you may have an adjacency to your product something that looked like a vitamin in the past suddenly has become an aspirin because it's solving a huge pain point right so whether you are a new entrepreneur uh if you're a new entrepreneur i think you should literally only be focusing on in the post-covid world how is my customer's problem going to be solved and is there a adjacency that i need to be addressing because that is likely to be more attractive from an investor perspective right because there's a mindset and a set change there's a dna change something that was going to take five years you know i cannot believe that the largest of the banks are telling our tech portfolio we will just do the meeting as a video conference no need for you to come to Mumbai right two weeks ago that was not happening right so customers change and it's very important for you not to be building something for a circa 2019 customer because there has been a step function change in the mindset and thought process so right now as an investor we are looking at you know is something here going to benefit from a new behavioral change of the customer and i'm sure that's true for everyone around the table here so as entrepreneurs rethink uh you know how you're perhaps pitching your business how you're designing your product lot of your assumptions that you had might not be valid anymore in the matter of these two weeks but some of these might be temporary changes and the market will come back to the to the older model so you need to balance those out and then look at you know how the timing in terms of a fundraise definitely from an investor perspective you know fundraising right now we will focus on companies that are going to benefit right now i'm going to add two points to this discussion which is sort of going beyond restaurants in some ways is see already governments around the world and including government of india the last couple of days massive activity in ensuring that supply lines continue so if you are in a business that caters to essential needs of people those businesses will never go away and the way we have seen industry actually come together whether it is startups and government and various arms of government various ministries at the highest level at the local level i think has been absolutely unprecedented so there are some very good outcomes and some silver linings to the situation and there are there are some ways of working that are emerging where there is a joint industry government effort we have actually seen much more of a leaning towards and this is both government and large companies and sam involved the large companies also they are seeking solutions which are non-physical in nature so companies that need to now move goods and services uh whether it is to enterprise customers or to consumers or retail consumers are looking for digital solutions to that so sas type businesses technology platform enabled food delivery and we should chat after this can be for sure i think those are going to see more of a flip than before because for large solutions now technology is a given and those that are able to use this in some ways use this opportunity to both do good but also do well in business will come out stronger so i think that is one thing around government and the second point is large enterprises are going to now start looking much more aggressively for solutions and we might even see a new setup investors emerge in some ways uh different exit opportunities and i would encourage hence for uh entrepreneurs the best ideas come from entrepreneurs not from us i would encourage them to think about how will how we live how we work and how we consume change and that's where i think the next set of opportunities will sit yeah i just uh want to add a little bit on that too i think as we've also alluded is basically if you can marry tech with uh with food like uh luck in coffee is a great example in china uh with just in two and a half years became you know 2.5 billion dollar company um i mean i should have joined them then for soon is sometimes what i think is uh it's amazing how they grew and that was you know basically the consumption is still there but we just have to deliver in more efficient way and that's what luck and did you know everybody orders coffee and they ordered that in at your doorstep with the with the cost which can be done because the clusters are pretty good in china so you can do it um and in a cost effective manner so the opportunity exists just you have to think about it differently if you're opening another cafe then i think it's no big deal but if you are bringing some element of it that would be good also just want to add that the guy who started luck in coffee actually used to run um in uh in china uh which is the car renting company so he understood logistics uh very well um so yeah actually if you think about it even in the last day all the essential supply orders that have come out mention all the online companies because they are able to both procure food prepare food and this is rebel foods um swiggies amato etc uh medicine companies that are online so the med life and the follows and so on so forth as well as logistics companies that can create the first mile last mile as well as the line halls the delivery and shadow facts and so on so forth those are the companies that are getting the essential orders to even now move around and needless to say big basket groofers make basket so and i'm not just saying that these are the companies that you should try and replicate but in moments of crisis we are turning as a society towards businesses that can provide high quality consistently at scale digitally yeah i think that i'm hopeful that i'm hopeful that as we come out of this perhaps there's a new way of measuring the uh value of businesses i'm having today we look at let's say revenue growth eyeball customers maybe profits at some case but i think that if anything if if as a as an economy as a society as a world you can add a dimension that kind of talks about impact that it's having um in a negative or a positive way and that gets attributed into how values is considered because i think it's becoming evident that you know actually sitting here right now the businesses that are on the right side of these things are going to be in a better place to be able to manage things going forward and i think that i'm i would be surprised if regulations didn't come out that made it some way even more imminent and important for businesses to be thinking about these things and therefore by virtue of that value will be ascribed to those businesses that are there so i think it'll be uh an interesting time for companies also to look at how how do they prioritize that aspect of it and what impact will that have on the types of companies that come about next can i add another aspect to this whole conversation i think uh we know for many of the companies out there uh revenues are going to get hit revenues are going to get hit for most of the companies i think it's about how the entrepreneurs handle the downturn and how they come out of it i think that's going to be very interesting for us as investors and we're really going to look at uh entrepreneurs back entrepreneurs who we think have very dealt with the crisis in a very very constructive way uh last questions uh Saurabh yeah so we have a very interesting question from Prasanti Atupuri given whatever has happened i think this is this is a question that how do you how do you see home health care solutions for business going forward from now on all that but now that everyone has been you know made very conscious about the hygiene and the health of the yeah uh i'll take a first stab at that we actually have a company in this space um company called uh empine which is doing you know teleconsult uh yesterday actually i think the government uh uh fast-tracked the release of a set of guidelines for you know for teleconsult uh this is again something that has changed materially right this thing would have taken in a two to three years perhaps but now has suddenly got accelerated uh so uh you know health care in general you know and also the india stack team or the iSPR team has been working with the government on the national health stack which was also you know tied into the overall um uh aishman bharat program from the you know you know availability of health insurance for the masses so the entire health care industry uh is going to see again a lot of digitization that will happen that will uh so just fyi india uh as a country has got somewhere between four and six thousand cardiologists and we are adding 250 a year right by the to have the same density as the us which is also not got a very deep enough density we need to have eighty eight thousand cardiologists right so we're adding 250 a year it's going to take 40 years assuming all the existing cardiologists are still alive and serving to get the density of the us so the only way this will get solved is through technology what will happen now is through digitization and technology that is going to be accelerated uh substantially right because the acceptance of digitization and this is whether it's health care education logistics food delivery essential services things that you know however we want to call them as essential services uh all of these are really essential services that we're going to live our life around and now is the opportunity for the tech industry to say boy this is the best time for these to get digitized right the market has moved forward five years if you're an entrepreneur that's the takeaway you should have from today's meeting that is like you know thanks to corona virus the market has moved forward five years yes in the short when you're worried about survival but the macro thing that has happened we could never have achieved with billions of dollars of VC investment and marketing and trying to buy business right this is what the market has forced so step back you know look at the next three to six months and say okay how do i make sure that my business is alive and then look at what has materially changed and how do you go after it i think that's the biggest one thing you should take away from my side at least that would be the big message yeah i just want to add to that i think i'm going to have to step out unfortunately so with past one i'm sorry about that oh yeah thank you very much for joining us appreciate it i'm ready to go so me as well i need to step out as well thank you thank you mr kanan bye then bye bye so i just want to add there's a pivotal moment for each businesses and i just said it but this i think is for healthcare this like demonetization was for digital payments there's a great moment for healthcare businesses i think just to throw one number out there is that we have one bed for almost 2000 patients and this is how under penetrated you know pr in terms of india so i think this this opportunity of covet is going to make people think from across the government and to the private sector on how to serve people there is amazing initiative that china did during the covet time which is to put a health qr code for each and every person which actually explains if you can step out take a plane or not you know right now shutting down flight was the only option but if you have a healthcare qr code you can go to the airport you can ensure your code if it is green you are okay to travel if it is not and you have to sit back i think what sanjay was referring to the to the stack healthcare stack i hope they think through that i think it is very essential to change healthcare we will i'm telling you we will be hit by unfortunately more viruses in the coming you know a few years and we need to be better much better sure thank you tate there's one other last i think i just wanted to make a point that you know the world was dependent on china for manufacturing that will change right because you know that so that's another thing for entrepreneurs to think about sure the supply chains are going to move so thank you very much to all the panelists i think this was a wonderful discussion certainly gives us a sense of what to expect so some of my best takeaways from this discussion was ready that it's time to build up all digital businesses physical businesses need to change and they need to think in non-physical ways education health care they look very very promising in the coming times of course for startups who are already existing it's time for frugality we need not overspend sit on cash because that's where you know that's only going to be your differentiator versus the rest and i think technology solution businesses would certainly do very well because all physical physically enabled businesses would require now digital solutions in order to move faster so primarily these are some of the best takeaways from the conference from this conference and the discussion that we had thank you very much sanjay the age sundee for joining us today and making this you know at least giving us a filter of what to expect and how to move things forward appreciate your time where do i hope uh i hope this is the the future of conferences absolutely we hope so too you don't have to do yeah okay take care guys all the best bye thanks sanjay bye bye