India Early Stage Venture : Themes & Learnings from the Valley
1. Cross-Border Themes & Learnings –
in Angel / Early Stage Venture
Destination India conference
July 26, 2012
The Sofitel, BKC
Mumbai
Private and Confidential
2. Agenda
• the “Valley” ecosystem
• early stage in India – and how its changing
• product Innovation from India
• learnings
• Q&A
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3. The
“Valley”
ecosystem
• role of universities
• Sand Hill Road
• entrepreneurs-turned-mentors
• encouraging & rewarding failure?
• “smart money”
• role models / heroes
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4. early
stage
in
India
• proliferation of options today - Angel groups, incubators,
accelerators, individual angels, HNIs
• increasing role models
• cultural acceptance of entrepreneurship
• breakouts from corporate india
• the M&A market
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5. product
innova.on
from
india?
• the product manager vs project manager culture
• emphasis on “traction” and “scalability”
• most entrepreneurs from services backgrounds
• can product funding be capital-efficient?
But…. Its changing…. Some examples!
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6. learnings
• strategic benefits a VC offers far more important than
just money (“smart money”)
• better to back the 2nd time entrepreneur who’s done it -
or – the failed entrepreneur?
• valley’s ecosystem – copy/paste or mix n match?
• domain expertise or adaptability / unlearning?
• right culture for product innovation?
• why is the team so important?
Private
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8. Blume’s
focus
Blume Ventures is a micro VC / angel fund helping capital-efficient,
technology-enabled Indian startups seeking between $100,000 to
$1.5 million in seed and angel funding
Blume’s
focus
Pre
-‐
Seed
Angel
Series
A
Growth
Late
Stage
Series
A
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10. sanjay@blumeventures.com
Sanjay is Co founder & Managing Director of Blume Ventures, an India focused early
stage venture fund. He is closely involved with many of Blume’s portfolio companies,
including Mettl, Sportsnest, Reviews42, Adepto, Carbon Clean Solutions.
He has over 15 years of entrepreneurial, business development, management consulting
and operations experience. He has been a member of the Mumbai Angels (MA), a leading
angel group in India since its inception in 2006. Sanjay was an early investor in InMobi
(formerly mKhoj), one of India’s best known angel-funded success stories. Prior to Blume,
he has made 10 investments across mobile, online travel, software, healthcare.
Sanjay spent 7 years between PwC Consulting and IBM Global Services' Silicon Valley
offices, advising and working closely with leading high tech clients like HP/ Compaq, Sun
Microsystems, Intel and AT&T. Before his return to India in 2010, he co founded and ran a
Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) company. Early in his career, Sanjay supported the initial
growth of Kanbay which had a successful IPO on the Nasdaq in ‘04, and was then acquired
by Cap Gemini Ernst & Young for $1.25 billion in 2006. He is passionate about helping
entrepreneurs and is active in associations like TiE (where he is a Charter Member) and MA.
Sanjay is an engineer from BITS, Pilani and holds an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School.
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