Startup Fridays S3 Ep4: ‘To win in startup investing, bring differentiated value to founders’ – Ashutosh Sharma

There was this early companies or late companies or late companies in India were modeled a lot after what was happening. The first trend that we are seeing now, especially given how unique India is, is the trend of building in India for it. Again, not to go around and drop it too much but against my logic, that is one example. That they have developed a crowdsourced method to deliver in interlants of India where a fixed cost model of logistics model or delivery model would not work economically. Welcome to everyone to another edition of Startup Fridays, which as you know is a weekly conversation with accomplished entrepreneurs, VC investors and other folk who are doing significant work in India's Startup ecosystem. I am Hari Arakali. One of my guests today is Ashutosh Sharma. Ashutosh is head of investments in M&A in India for a process. It is one of the world's biggest technology investors. As many of you would know. He started out with an engineering degree in electronics from Banaras Hindu University and spent several years in some of the top companies in the industry, including Motorola, Free Skills and Collector and Samsung. Along the way, he also picked up an MBA from Chicago University's Boots School of Business. He turned to finance and investments. Again, he has worked in some top VC firms, including Qualcomm Ventures and all-West venture partners before the process. Processes in investments in India are pretty well known, including some of the country's best known start-ups, including pay-you, aerodipers of the company, Misho, Farmi, Zee, Suji, Bhaiju's, the acquisition of Bill Desk and more recently, several promising companies, including Freshens, Captain Fresh, Detect, Dehardt and We Grow. Ashutosh, welcome to this show and fantastic to have you with us this morning. Thank you, Hari. Thank you so much. Great to be here. Great to be talking to you and everyone else who has joined us. All right. So just to get us started, maybe you could start with a little bit about the part that brought you to process. Maybe you can attempt a snapshot of the journey from engineering graduate to venture invested, you know, one of the worst tech investors. Then we'll go from there. Sure. I spent six to six years, a year's a NASPRS now. And honestly, Hari, I wish I could say that this was all planned and this was completely planned. I mean, when I grew up or when I went to grade first or second, I was very clear to them and maybe he was never that way. I honestly had no clue what we see was before I landed in Chicago to do my MBA. And I would say the story from then on has been a story of generosity of many people. Generosity with their time and with their conviction on me. I barely had any finance or investing back known before my MBA. I used to code and had never seen a penal statement in my life before. And so the first one to take a point on me was Karthi. Karthi used to have co-commenters in India. Karthi ran his own fund in Bay Area now. And the reason why of course, probably he hired me looking back is that I had some back down in Bada's and that was the area which co-com was focusing on. And so he was very generous in hiring someone into BC who had no finance or investing back on before. So I mean very kind. And then the second one was Mohan Kumar, Norris venture partners. Mohan again was very generous. And it is let's say point on me thinking that I can come out of file as into investments across sectors and we did investments not just in tax but not take healthcare and not utilities and all of that. And then more recently here at NASPerson processary, the entire team starting from Russell, Rajashtra, up to Martin Shobh now, funny story. I had never done consumer before by joint NASPerson. As you know, NASPerson is known for consumer taking investing. And I think the generous generosity of all these people in their belief in me and giving a chance to prove myself is behind where I am to and I'm very thankful to all of them. Looking back. Yeah, I also wanted to I guess for a more general audience wanted to point out that one thing probably folks may not immediately think about is that process is not really a VC fund in the sense that you're not answerable to, you know, NPs and things like that. You'll invest out of your own, you know, balance sheet and I guess that probably brings you your own advantages and experiences and so on. Probably get that getting to that a little down the line just thought that I will point that out. And of course, the process is very widely known in the venture ecosystems around the world. Maybe you could give us a brief history of, you know, processes entry into India and we talk about which was the first investment and how did that happen and some of those things. And you're absolutely right. I really be not a fund and that gives us a few advantages and we can talk about them later. But what processes entry into India predates me before I joined the team here. The team had already made two successful investments, one in flip-cut and the other one in IB so which we have both accepted since then. I specifically joined processes at Six years back since then we have made many investments as you highlighted Swiggy and one company, Parni, Zeeb, Vishwam, etc. and just another funny anecdote before my investment and Swiggy, the entire amount of money that I put to work at Norvis, the total amount across all investments was 75 million dollars. The first check in Swiggy itself was 16 million dollars. And I honestly couldn't sleep for a couple of weeks thinking, "Oh, where, what if this goes south and so on?" But look, I mean, I had known Harshafal a long time before that we were investors in Swiggy even at Norvis and so that was very comforting. The other thing which really helped us while we made that decision is that process had many investments in food till it came across the world and Swiggy was not the first one that we were making. There was a lot of institutional knowledge around the sector which again sort of helped us realize that this is the better model to go with and this will be a large market and I can promise the business case that I had under written for our investment in Swiggy, the company is far exceeded that and so I was completely completely very considerate in my projections. But yeah, that's how the first one happens with Swiggy. And since then, it gives a snapshot of what process is done in India. I would imagine at least to my mind probably more of a low profile investor compared to someone with a bit more flashy like maybe a soft bank or a Tiger Global but in terms of the impact I think that process is right of there, some of the companies that you all have invested in India. So it gives a snapshot of what process is done over the years in India, so many companies. And I was reading somewhere that now I think emulatively more than $10 billion invested in India. Yeah, yeah. Now in that world part, and completely right, we've had a long and a very deep relationship with India. And as I said, started investing in 2005 and from a process group perspective, we have committed to more than seven, probably eight billion dollars in India technology businesses today. And we have done most number of things in the past two years. And some of them are really category defining companies, for example, by chance and I did actors and in tech, Swiggy, in fruit delivery, we show that God and e-commerce, who I people and travel and I can go on and on. And so I think we really do believe that we've been supporters of the ecosystem and have really been fortunate to work with some of these category defining companies. And to probably take an OTG comparison here, we never think of ourselves as the stars of the show. We are what we think of. in a probably a supporting role and we will do everything that's needed to make the show successful and the protagonists of the show successful and therefore sort of that low profile is I would say now in our DNA but what we do we do take pride in the fact that we are probably put a very large amount of money in India behind some very successful company. I want to ask you about the process model of investment but since you brought up the point that oh the last two years particularly you've made significant investments in startups and and I think folks have kind of noticed that as well. From your point of view can you talk about what you see happening in India because of which you've been you know kind of so I can't say aggressive but definitely very bullish in terms of investing in Indian startups. Yeah absolutely I think look we as I said as you in fact said that we not a fund we invest out of our value sheet and because of that approach that gives us a couple of advantages the first advantage of course is that we can take a very long term view on opportunities. We don't need to as I said return money to LPs and R&M so on. The second one is again because between trades money behind the mandate we can be very flexible in our arrangement with companies so for example we've done checks as small as five million dollars all the way up to six hundred six hundred fifty million dollars and because of both those advantages we play across stages in India and again I mean I feel that India still sort of emerging and a lot will happen in the years to come and therefore again having that sort of long term view on the country kind of health and being present overall why we like India and why we as RTPC it probably still scratching the surface when it comes to proliferation of tech and the lights of people in India. There's a lot of startup activity but in terms of market penetration barring a couple of categories a major chunk of spend still happens on plant and therefore poses a very keen to take a look at spaces where tech enabled destruction can meaningfully change the lives of people. Now in some cases this means supporting companies that are challenging the way business is done in the offline world for example Elastikram or in some cases this could mean challenging also supporting the companies that challenge the way the incumbents have done business in the tech ecosystem. This is another example. And basically this happened across the sectors consumer brands, beauty software, logistics and more and therefore I think this ability of tech to really impact the very positive way the lives of people kind of gives us the conviction that in India we're still early in that curve. It's slightly unknown as to how long will it take for us to mature and that puts us in a very beautiful position as processes someone who does not have time horizons associated with investing to that partner with companies to realize that that products are around the same thing. I think that's what we like about India that's what it's like about India. Okay you give kind of a very brief overview of how you like to invest in terms of not being a fund and a long term view and so on but maybe you could explain the process investment model to a sort of a next level of detail both globally in India and typically and historically what stage do you like to invest and then how closely do you work with founders all of these things just sort of walk us through the process we have doing these things. So absolutely and look with the caveat that this is pretty dynamic and sort of changes very often. I will tell you that there is three things that are very important to our thesis. The first one being that the impact on the society has to be meaningful and so what that means is maybe even I come together and we develop a product which is applicable to the top 100,000 users in India given their spend maybe will still be a decent sized company but that's not something that we go after. So we try to invest in areas where the impact is really on a large chunk of society on a few million people and we can sort of later all come back to how this translates to investing in the Arabic this impact on the consumer side of things on producer side of things and so on. So that's very important. The large societal impact of it. The second one being the again the ability of tech to disrupt that space and the recent point tech is important is probably that that's the best leverage that we as an institution have seen to making large outsized companies. I think that leverage that tech provides is very important therefore to our assessment of companies. Ted, well by that I mean that should not just be an enabler of the business should be disrupted. The business should not exist without Ted. The third piece of course is the team is very important. Here is the promise of India as a market. There is the promise of Ted but there has to be a team that can translate that promise to reality. And I think that again is very important. There is of course many other layers to our analysis like compared to that reason. So more, but I would say if I was to think of the tent pole of our investment these are two or three points. Come on. To begin with as I said we started by investing in late-stage in consumer tech companies in India. What we have or how we have changed over the last few years is that we have expanded not just in terms of stage at which we come on. We have started to write early checks over the last two years. But we have also expanded our sector focus. So we have gone beyond consumer tech to be the first one and be to be with the last implement and lay hard and then cap and fresh fashion design we go more recently. But then we also added SaaS. We have we have an air meet and get in SaaS there is a couple of other some time. And so we just following the curve in India and as we get more comfort in other sectors we will continue to back teams and founders, leaders and those sectors as well. So continue to expand our focus on India. Continue to expand stages that we come and continue to expand sectors that we invested. It's interesting that you said you know you kind of follow the curve in India. I'm just wondering I mean as a sort of a tech journalist I'm seeing some very interesting climate tech startups coming up entrepreneurs with some really cool ideas. I'm just thinking what the process view is globally and as well as in India. I mean I think several people think that the whole climate opportunity could eclipse pretty much everything else. In India how are you looking at it? Yeah. And this is very true and completely aligned here how do you view that this could be big not just in terms of what impact it makes on the society but also I feel in terms of sort of value creation for all of the ecosystem partners and for that reason we are evaluating your few ideas not just in India but to look at as well. And there are many lenses that we are taking to this kind of investment. At one extreme of this spectrum one could think of EVs and related solutions as sort of a primitive investment. On the other end you can think of even like something like a synthetic biology companies that are providing feedback to let's say farmers on soil or companies that are manufacturing which table proteins in lad and so on. So I can again I mean I'm not saying that we're there yet but we continue evaluate ideas here and we will announce a couple of investments shortly in this case. And you gave us some broad stroke general points on what you look for. If you can sort of again delve into that, what are some of the checkboxes that have to be ticked for you to make an investment in a founder and the startup. And I'm also asking this in the context of how this might have changed as you've learned more about what's needed in India specifically for a startup to succeed and also because of how the markets changed and the incomes customers and consumers have changed over the years. Yeah, the checkboxes remain the same all over and I think the key ones I've already highlighted. Beyond that, I think your other question on India is very interesting because I think it is extremely dynamic, extremely complex and very heterogeneous. And therefore investing in India is I would say is a relatively harder task. Given the dynamism in India, one has to probably squint harder to project or understand the future because things change on a quarterly basis here. But on the other hand, that allows you the opportunity to be very creative on what India could look like five, 10 or 20 years out. So India could, as I said, one example is Swiggy at my business plan. Swiggy was very conservative when we look back. So you need to wait for example, is doing multiple tens of millions of orders but my business plan was like single digit million orders a month now. So India could really surprise you on the upside but I think the risk that you learn is that you could be very gone on the downside as well because of the dynamic nature of the country. Similarly, if you look at the heterogeneous country, we are a we are a sum of many India's not just by people's earning potential but also by languages we speak also by the age of people working, non-working, rural, urban, north India, western India, so on. And again, I think that gives the chance to someone who's spending more time in India at the classroom level to really make a much more informed call on investments. Having that close to the consumer first time I feel is very important and therefore I think that's something that's very interesting and that's why I think process decided to open an India office before we double down on the curve feeling of a very blessed thing because what I feel is that if you extrapolate too much of what's going on globally or what's happening globally, it will lead to a lot of false negatives and false positives in India. And therefore I think in some I feel the complexity of the country, the heterogeneity, the dynamism gives one an opportunity to make bets which may not be obvious to people outside of India, outside of the country. Yeah, in fact that's one of the points that I wanted to ask you but before I get to that I'm just trying to see if I can follow on Swiggy to my mind it feels like a very good example of how process could bring its experience in other markets and I'm just wondering how founders in one region might benefit from your experience in others and you know you're an investor in high food now you basically own it and I correct me if I'm wrong I think high food is profitable. Swiggy is probably getting there so I'm just wondering how your knowledge of different markets, different entrepreneurs and startups in the same sector can help each other. Yeah and this is an extremely important value and again so because that low profile nature or if we don't broadcast this too much but we have investments in 90 countries across the world and therefore we really can help facilitate cross-qualification of a lot of best practices especially in sectors where we have multiple investments across the country. And these synergies for me are explored and observed at various levels. So for example a co-bode member of my non-Swiggy is a gentleman for Larry and Larry overseas a lot of food investments across the world for NAS person. Therefore on the as part of the board discussions he can bring along a lot of his understanding, his knowledge of how food companies across the world are changing, adapting and kind of best practices that they've been around. At the same time we also facilitate a CXO level discussion between these companies and so so almost all of them are talking to each other on a very regular basis. We also try and do like once a year formal institutionalized meetup session amongst these guys so again so that they can talk to each other exchange ideas. And then we take it to the next level and bring the functional teams along together. So for example we have a platform for the CFOs of food delivery companies to interact with each other and not just food delivery companies generally the companies in the India portfolio to interact with all the food delivery companies next year. So yes I think you've right that there is advantages or there is synergies to be observed by investing in similar companies across the world and these are being observed at various certain levels and through various different mechanisms. Okay I'm going to come back to the point you made about opportunities in consumer trends in India that may be not so obvious to folks outside. Anything that comes to your mind that you know like an unobvious opportunity that you are actually looking at and then we can tie that into you know a sense of the direction in which process wants to go in India in the next 12 months, two years and so on. I'm not giving away the none of these opportunities so easily I'm sure. But let me get into our core of trends though and I think as we sort of discussed previously that is there was this early companies, early internet companies, or tech companies in India were modeled a lot after what was happening across the world. I think the first trend that we're seeing now especially given how unique India is is the trend of building in India for India again not to blow my own trumpet too much but against my last example where they have developed a crowdsourced method to deliver in hinterlands of India whereas a fixed cost model of logistics model or to be model would not work economically and now we're seeing people in Southeast Asia come and say that we are a last example of in addition for example. So I think that's one trend that I'm seeing. The second one again is while a lot of large categories in India are spoken for e-commerce, grocery, food, travel and so on. What we are also seeing is new business models catering to the same categories and then Misho is one one example there. Now they have come up with a business model hurry that attracts the next 100 million buyers on e-commerce. You may or may or may not be a natural buyer on Misho but 35 million people every month do buy something on the platform. They ship 2.5 million shipments on a daily basis which is 25% of all e-commerce shipments in India. So I think this sort of new crop of ideas which is catering to the next set of buyers in India is again something that excites me a lot and I'm looking to finding companies across verticals that will enable the next set of buyers in India to fund that online. I want to ask you about a couple of things that probably many people are seeing for the first time. Certainly I guess the younger folk would probably be seeing it for the first time. One is of course this raft of unicorns we saw in India in recent times and then now the slowdown and what that might mean for the start-up ecosystem today. I'm just maybe you can talk about and that's also sort of one of the reasons I asked you about the direction in which process wants to go over the next couple of years and I'm wondering if you think that might be the timeframe or which which we'll see some kind of. of turn around from the current slowdown and right now what are some of the strengths and weaknesses that the slowdown is surfacing in the Indian start-up ecosystem? Sure. Let me kick them on my one Hari, I think on the question of unicorns, I think it's a very interesting one and probably if UNI sort of generalize we'll be doing this service to a lot of entrepreneurs who don't think that maybe some of them are thinking about that badge but I don't think it's really important for these the more downward sensible founders and just to give an extreme example here that by the way I'm not comparing both but I think this this so badge of being a unicorn is and again a caggierting by saying that this an extreme example is that I came first in my second grade exam and I was very happy about it right but that did not make me a let's say the Lathan Tata or an APJ at the club and I think that's what we should aspire to be that's just a milestone that's something that happened on the way me coming first in second grade can change anymore so I accept mine probably and I think I think that's the best founders therefore I feel who aspire to build long lasting sustainable companies that will update you me and them and and answer create a meaningful positive impact on society and on the country and I think I think we owe it to the country the the country has given us so much and we are so privileged to be where we are that we owe that in return so I think that's one on on sort of unicorn it like honestly we as as those are not sort of not married to the idea we don't you don't push our companies towards that but I would rather I would rather celebrate product market fit I would rather celebrate product market fit at scale if a company is portfolio of my insurance I would rather celebrate let's say successful expansion outside India I think those are those are very sort of meaningful and yet look if you do all of that if you build a fundamental sound business valuation will happen so so I think I think that's that's that on your question on on what we think of over the next few few months so a few things one why the news more recently the last couple weeks has been exciting promising the good price is coming down inflation kind of tampering not just in India but in the US also and therefore one could one could make an assertion that probably we'll pass the draft but on the other side we have seen this happen many times there's a lot of these poll starts that happen in time to slow down so so so who knows and honestly I wish I had a pistol all back but I don't think but look at all this doesn't matter to us much because as I said we take a very long time we are not taking a four year or five year view on India I'm taking a 15 year 20 year 20 or 30 year in India and if one is taking that longer view a year of slowdown 18 months or so down 15 months or so down doesn't really matter it's just a blib and if you believe or you want believes that they have invested in fundamentally some companies and if they will invest in fundamentally some companies these companies will figure out a way to get over these smaller homes and then in the end in the long term I think people look back at this period and this yeah we will not be worried too much so so again that's the the other advantage of being a very long term focused investor that in such times also we tend to be we tend to be leaning forward then tens of leaning backward when it comes to investing at the same time in sort of times of friends you also you will see that we not go and berserk my portfolio is not at 50 companies we still have 15 only so so yeah we tend to be balanced in all kinds of has both an investor and someone is including to what's happening in the venture scene the other part of my question was any interesting sort of strengths and weaknesses that you think the current slowdown has brought to the surface across different startups yeah no I think this one is very very interesting actually and very reassured I would say and I think the number one reason is that this time around like last time hurry we have a lot of sales sustaining profitable companies so it's not as if across the board there is a there is a lot of companies that are a bit of a step cash flow positive and so they don't really care about the store now about the store down especially the capital market so I think that's a great sign that shows the strength of the companies that are being built in India secondly there are pools of long term capital like ourselves supporting their ecosystem so India unlike some of the other countries it's not cost it's not right up deals are happening the lease may be slow but just don't happen the third thing is unlike the rest of the world domestic consumption story remains has strong we had run the best GDP growth last year we are projected to grow in both real and nominal terms the best across all Asian economies including Indonesia and China all of that next year and so I think the domestic consumption story remains very strong and lastly I would say especially from public markets perspective the domestic capital availability has also been a reason so Indian stock markets are not taken a hit as much as other stock markets for that reason and now on the weakness is front of course we are very young ecosystem and therefore many founders that are witnessing slowdowns slowdown now may not have seen this slowdown last year or last time all the time before right because they the first time that they're pounding is coming and therefore a lot of them are very aggressive last year and will now have to force correct dramatically this year and that will lead and is already dealing to paying in those companies and if you have sometimes when you have that history you can know that what's coming and so I should probably six months and I'm on schedule ready for that for that but that that has not happened from just because how we are these companies are and for that reason I think some of us may need longer to reconcile with this sort of new reality and in some cases I also think that excesses sort of happen over the last couple of years and and that may have shown in governance related chains in some companies which now the boards and the founders and senior medical have to manage now so I think those are the weaknesses but hopefully it's the ecosystem that you learn from past cycles and improve in the next cycles okay I do want to ask you a few questions about your own sort of personal journey as an investor some lessons there for others but one one more question on the industry and sector you know if you'll one way of looking at some of the biggest tech successes today could be that they're all now companies that may have started out as products but which are now providers of very sophisticated large platforms to the extent that they literally control the ecosystem in which they play so I'm wondering in India if you see any early signs of any companies you know that show sort of promise of getting to those kinds of levels well absolutely and a look at platform can be looked at in very certain ways are one is I am very this infrastructure what else can I use it for all right and I think Swiggy comes to mind so they build this infrastructure around for full delivery they're using that same infrastructure now provide grocery they're using the same infrastructure to provide to move your documents from one place to the other and they're using the same infrastructure now with the new mini option so the idea is to how to make hurry very late such that he doesn't need to come out of the house right I get to do everything everything that he needs at home from food to grocery to to an iPhone that he wants to buy from a store in Indra like a me sure comes to mind as well they build this platform for fashion they're expanding to grocery life covers and so on the other we can look at this build this platform for India where else can I take it I think let's call it comes to mind I think that companies the first try comes to mind I both not mind but for you but I think both of them have successfully built the in fry in India the tech in India and have now convincingly so launched that the same offerings outside India and in some countries they are hurting some countries still still some more time ago so I think I think there's enough and more examples of people using technology. and also offline infrastructure to now expand it to beyond what the initially were all. - Okay, so let's talk a little bit about your own experience. Let me start this one. Over the years, I'm sure you kind of fine tuned your inclusion sense and gut feeling, and apart from of course the data driven decisions on when to sort of go all in. When would you say no to an investment, even when you feel that the entrepreneurs, qualifications and experience are great, and the intent behind the idea is really worthy. Are the instances where you feel either that the idea won't work or process is probably not the best thing that's to do. - Yeah, no, I mean, there's two statements I will make. One is beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder in our business, right? And then investing is an art in not a science. And therefore I think because of both those reasons, sometimes two pistols is not for me to listen to could be three in that situation, whereas if for you, Harry, it could be two pistols six and therefore you will take that bet and I won't. And it could happen for that idea, it could happen because of something that I've seen in the same sector in another country, which I've heard was very similar to India, which probably you may not have seen. Or you're seeing something posterior, some places which I may not have seen. Similarly, in some situations, I may have a conflicting investment and we don't do conflict investment. Therefore that is, I may not do that in the rest and that's becoming. And I mean, and I'm not saying that I'm ever right, I can be completely wrong, I have been now 100 times in the past. And if you look at sort of my portfolio, it looks robust, but there is a lot of antipod folio, that's a lot of good companies that are there, which I did not invest in and they have done amazingly bad. And so I think for active reasons, why would you say, no, you said that in the past as well. - You spent several years in the earlier part of your career, the electronics industry, some very well-known companies, Motorola, free scale, Samsung, and also Qualcomm mentions, but I'm just kind of thinking, what got you thinking about finance and investments? Was there a sort of a pivotal moment and experience? Or was this something that you've been thinking over a period of time? - This is the most embarrassing question you've asked. (laughs) Really honestly, because as I said, I want to know what I said. I had honestly no inclination or no idea also about investing. And what happened is when I moved from India to Korea and started working with Samsung, I was in a book called Marketing, Tech Marketing thing, and that was the first time I got introduced to the world of P and L and so not really CAC in our case, but overall marketing cost, account management, so on. And like all of a sudden, I felt that this is a much more interesting world just because of how dynamic it is, how ever changing it is, how flexible it is. It's not flexible at all. It's covered by it also. This is exactly in the end, how fast can an electron move from one flip-flop to the other one. And I think that's the part I like. And that's suggested that to me that I should do an MBA and figure out more about this industry. And it's only after I did my summer at a venture fund in Seattle, did I get to know what we've seen last year? I think I really liked that. And the whole experience, it was amazing. The joy of meeting very, very sharp people and not just one, 12, three of them every day and just to learn from them was insane. It was so exciting. I just should look forward to meeting three founders every day. And I think that's when I kind of quote can be said that this is what I want to do. And therefore, my whole time I'm recruiting most of us can focus on. We see and then as I said, Karthi happened from core conventions. So yeah, then I'll let you. - What would you say? One or two of the biggest lessons you learned in each phase of your career, first in the electronics industry and then in the investment scene. - Yeah, very, very orthogonal lesson. I must say. So I think, look, at the very top in engineering, I felt that the idea of never giving up is something that I really learned there. I felt that if I tried hard enough, I will get an answer. There is always an answer. And that feeling was amazing. Then if I put in the arts, I'll get the result. Similarly, everything was kind of deterministic, as I said. It, that would be done or it could not be done. But you can do too much. And so everything was, I tried it when I was code and it was in control. By that, what I mean is that if it fits all the input variables, you will always get the right output, but I don't. I envision exactly the output. Even if you fix all the inputs, right? You will not get the answer. Two countries, 10,000 miles away from India can get into the frictional situation when you answer all over the place. What you predicted, what you predicted is not happening anymore. Even if you fixed all the inputs, even if you made all the right moves. So I think that sort of non determinism of financial world or the real world as they call it, I think is that that was my first kind of lesson here. The second one here is, I would say, the belief in general goodness of people has gotten much stronger here. I think why the stories that largely get published or come out is this of how someone's cam, someone else, et cetera. But if you need 100 people, I think 95 people are generally good, are nice to work with. And I'll be happy to work with any of them. So I think that ability to meet a lot of people and figure out the belief in general goodness from my current is amazing. And the last one is, I feel like after meeting all these very very sharp people, I feel human imagination is just harmless. It's like as soon as you feel that this sector or this space of grocery, for example, is done with big baskets, it's like someone else coming with a different angle. There is Mr. Mart, there is Springgate, there is City Mall and so on. So the imagination of people, especially a farm persona in our country, it's insane, that's the biggest lesson. You should never think that there is space or a sector or a technology is done and there's nothing else to do. - So you know this thing about looking at 95 out of 100 people in general as folks will be good and seeing the best in people, that kind of an attitude, at least in my limited experience, either comes very early in life or it takes a long time in your life to figure that out. So I'm just thinking perhaps in your case, there was some interesting influences earlier on, maybe you can talk about, you were born, where did you grow up, what did your parents do? - Yeah, very very small town in North of India, in Jogi, called Parivi, that's where I grew up. And I think to your question, everyone around, especially at that time, was not, let's say, was start for means. And I think despite that the tendency to share, the tendency to push each other, the tendency to support, despite all that is something that I really grew up with and I sort of, I still treasure that. The other thing which it was, that really helps me with how it is that, because I'm still connected to that ecosystem back home. I feel, I get this sense, and again, maybe I'm blowing my trumpet, I get the sense of what sort of real India still looks like and not the top 5 million or top 10 million, India which looks like UK, US, or anything. And therefore, that helps me provide feedback to my whole four year to follow that I meet. To say that, look, this looks very sexy, very beautiful in the Western European context, but in the Indian context, it may be different. So I think that connection still helps me a lot. Lastly, I would say, because of where we were at that time, I think that hunger, that hustle, there are urge to change things, there are urge to improve things, I think that again has stayed with the early age and children. What did your folks do? What did your parents do when you were in school? So my father was a teacher. So I think that again, a bunch of boats at home and I think that's the only treasure we had. So I spent a lot of time reading it that habit still sort of raised the need and used the teacher of inhalation. He pushed us to reading Shakespeare much before we were supposed to read it. So but yeah, I think that really helped me still. I think that variety of reading, then even now kind of helps me, I would say, realize things much better. So it's very embedded actually in whatever that situation was. Okay, a couple of last questions as we begin to wrap up. If you look back and I guess there's a kind of a standard question. If you look back, can you think of any pivotal experiences that taught you the most, whether they were setbacks or missed opportunities and maybe you can contrast that with your biggest highs so far? Yeah, no, I am not the one to look at sort of setbacks on this opportunity. Sorry, like if you start doing that, there is no way. You can start from sort of very beginning and say that my biggest setback was that I didn't win the DNA lottery and so on. So I think every day I'm learning something new. Every day I'm having setbacks and so on. So in that similar life, I think there is no setback and there is no improvement and you stagnate and that's it, you're done. I think the most pivotal movement was my internship at the set. It's Seattle, especially when it comes to investing career. And this was a fun which was investing in distressed sets. And so one was of course the understanding of analytical rigor and this that when you analyze balance sheets and so on. But just to be close to someone a founder or an entrepreneur who was in distress, I think that taught me the most, that taught me one lesson that look investing is not all about numbers. It's a lot about what we're going to support and provide when in the time of when in these messy times. And I think that's what I tried to do in stolen by investing work or investing work. Okay, just a little bit of trivia that I'm going to take 30 seconds because I can't resist saying that over here. This thing about the DNA lottery, I think a lot of truly successful people who are also very chilled out and very comfortable in their own skin have figured this thing out about. In fact, recently I saw Shreeder Wemble tweet that the biggest decision in your life that you have no say in is who your parents are and you come to terms with that then you can pretty much own your life. So, yeah. So okay, last question. What advice would you give someone aspiring to a career in venture capital in India today? No, I just have one one advice. Which is different. She'd separate. Make yourself unique. I think the world and this is what I would like to give to my team as well. The world where one thought that I had to try to access to a deal or I know how to do retention charts better or I know how to do LTV to gag better or I know how to do a justable market analysis better. I think that was all. All these skills are commodity and therefore you need to bring something very unique to the table. As far as gone and so you need to create that alpha by differentiating yourself. Either you focus on a sector or you focus on a stage or you focus on one of the functional areas. It brings out special product marketing skills to the table and that's why a founder loves to work with you and that's why you get access to the deal. I think that's what you do. That's what investing will be 5-10 to 15 years. Excellent. Wonderful conversation. Thank you so much again so far. Making time for this. I definitely hope to keep the conversation going. Absolutely. My pleasure. You thank thanks for the interview. Alright. That is Ashutosh Sharma. I had a investment in the MLA at the process in India. That's it for this week's start of Friday's. Wherever you've been listening to us, I hope you stay safe from doing well. Be back next week with another conversation. Until then, have a wonderful Friday and a great weekend ahead.