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From Accidental Entrepreneur to Startup Icon - K. Ganesh | Prime Venture Partners Podcast

• Prime Venture Partners: Early Stage VC Fund

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What happens when a founder builds and exits four companies, including a multi-million-dollar edtech company, before India even started talking about startups?

In this episode, K. Ganesh (Author & Partner at Growth Story) - the man behind BigBasket, Portea, Bluestone, and more breaks down the hard truths, lucky accidents, and pivots that shaped his journey.

🎙️ Hosted by Sanjay Swamy | Prime Venture Partners
📘 Featuring: Mastering Disruption by K. Ganesh

🧠 What you’ll learn:

How he went from engineer to entrepreneur by accident
The pivots that saved his companies during the dotcom crash
The GrowthStory model vs. traditional venture capital
His take on AI, relevance after 60, and learning to reinvent yourself

👉 Don’t just listen - learn, reflect, and share. This is founder wisdom in its purest form.

📌 Follow us:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/primevp
Twitter: https://twitter.com/primevp_in
Website: https://primevp.in

🔔 Subscribe for more founder-centric content from Prime.

#SerialEntrepreneur #KGanesh #StartupIndia #FounderStories #MasteringDisruption #BuildInIndia #BusinessWisdom #ConsumerTech #VCIndia #PrimeVenturePartnersPodcast

Speaker 2:

But today you're going to know a little bit the shop floor. So my second venture started. I ran it as CEO and then sold it to ICICI. Then started my third venture called MarketX, sold it to Listed WNS. Then did my fourth serial venture, tutor Vista. She sold to Pearson.

Speaker 1:

Talk a little bit about your book.

Speaker 2:

How to create a brand, consumer brand, from India or the US market. Why is Zomato being valued so much? Why is Paytm being valued so much? How do we utilize new age principles, platform principles, network efforts? Those are the moments that you really live for.

Speaker 3:

Never bite the hand that feeds never spit on the plate you eat from.

Speaker 2:

Most of the time you feel why the hell am I doing this?

Speaker 1:

Hi everybody, welcome to another episode of the Prime Venture Partners podcast. I have a superstar friend, business colleague and just an amazing gentleman with us today, k Ganesh. And if you don't know about K Ganesh, that's okay, because you have certainly used products that he has started and services that he has launched. But today you're going to know a little bit more about the man behind several of these products. I'm just joking, I know everybody knows K Ganesh. But, ganesh, welcome to our show. It's a pleasure and a privilege to have you here.

Speaker 2:

Thanks, Sanjay. Great meeting up again and we go quite a while back, but happy to be here.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, ganesh. So look, ganesh, every single name has got you as a part of it or behind it in some way or another, whether it's a big basket, whether it is a bluestone, whether it is a home lane all of these names that all of us have, you know, used and continue to use on a frequent basis. But you've also had, of course, your early days and then, of course, your days as a direct entrepreneur yourself and subsequently co-creating companies with founders, being an angel investor, very prolific angel investor and now recently released your book Mastering Disruption. I would love to cover some of this and, along the way, hear some of your insights and some of your experiences. Our audience here are primarily entrepreneurs, who would benefit a lot from your journey, so maybe we can start with the early days, your background and what led to this amazing journey in entrepreneurship.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I'm an accidental entrepreneur really and I started back in 1990. So at that time the entrepreneurial ecosystem, or the word entrepreneur, or venture capital, or risk capital, angel investor, all these did not exist. So obviously it has to be accidental. So 1990 was the time when India was just liberalizing.

Speaker 1:

Can we talk a little bit about your younger days, growing up, leading up to?

Speaker 2:

1990? Little bit about your younger days growing up, leading up to 1990. Yeah, so I was born and brought up in Delhi. My mother was a government servant so I stayed in government quarters. I lost my father when I was nine years old, so my mother has brought me and my two sisters up, studied in a government school and, very surprisingly, a Tamil government school in Delhi and Delhi had this where the medium of instruction was Tamil. Government school in Delhi and Delhi had this where the medium of instruction was Tamil till the 5th standard, so I could read Tamil courtesy despite being in Delhi because of the school.

Speaker 2:

And then I went on to do engineering at Delhi College of Engineering, delhi University. I did try IIT but couldn't get through it and after that worked for one year in Tata Motors what was at that time called as Telco Jamshedpur on the shop floor. Because I was a mechanical engineer and it is a natural job, realized within the year that I'll never be a good mechanical engineer and I was in Jamshedpur on the shop floor, which was at 45 degrees temperature. I said I can't do it. Went on to do management from IIM Calcutta because I didn't want to be an engineer on the shop floor. Then joined HCL. I was working directly with Shabnadar. I was his executive assistant, handling customer support role later and then sales role later, and that was what got me into entrepreneurship.

Speaker 1:

Got it Okay.

Speaker 2:

I always credit Shiv Nadar and HCL. At the time HCL was a small company about 20 crore company and I was interviewed directly by Shiv Nadar and given a lot of responsibility and that really taught me that I could take decisions as a 24 year old and see that actual decisions worked. Okay, right, that gave me the confidence to start my first startup when there was no concept of first generation entrepreneurs. I had the other two jobs I had from IIM Calcutta was Unilever at the time it was called Hindustan Lever and Citibank, and I always say that if I had joined either of those two jobs then I would not have become an entrepreneur. That's why I say accidental entrepreneur and HCL was a very, very great place to learn basics of entrepreneurship.

Speaker 1:

Wonderful wonderful. So then 1990 came about, and you said india was just starting to liberalize yeah.

Speaker 2:

So, uh, I had worked five years in hcl and india was just liberalizing at the time. The reason I said that was because, uh, it was still a license raj, very difficult to start businesses. There is no capital available. Only you could only project finance was available. But we did not think about capital and all that stuff. While working in HCL handling computers, selling computers to corporate, one of the things that came up aha moment that came up was that at that time the computer vendors used to maintain their own computers, the computers even though they were IBM compatible at the start they were still proprietary chipsets, and Wipro used to maintain their computer, hcl used to maintain their computer, epson used to maintain their printers and all that.

Speaker 2:

So we saw an opportunity that corporates used to struggle. They used to typically have computers and printers from 10 different vendors and whenever there was a problem they had to call everybody because they don't know where the problem is. The computer vendor will say it's not my problem, it's a printer problem. Printer vendor will say it's not a printer problem, it's a computer problem. Maybe the problem is in the cable that connected the two. But who supplied the cable? Nobody knows. Okay, right.

Speaker 2:

So that is where we saw the first opportunity that if you are able to provide a single point stop for computer maintenance, it's a great opportunity to start a business. And so we started the business as a computer maintenance company. People used to call us computer mechanics Used to charge an annual maintenance contract. Go to a corporate and say give me upfront money I'll take care of a computer for the next one year. So that is the. That is the genesis of the first, first first venture. It was bootstrapped venture, totally. We put in about 84 000 rupees across multiple uh, five of our founders, wonderful and started that. Scaled it, scaled it, scaled it and then, uh, sold it to igate got it, got it good.

Speaker 1:

So this would have been mid 90s yeah, so we started it in 1990.

Speaker 2:

I ran it as co-founder and ceo till 98. Then I moved to bangalore and we sold it in 2000 time frame.

Speaker 1:

Uh to igate got it, got it, got it. And then what came next? Because you've been a serial entrepreneur, started multiple things.

Speaker 2:

So my journey was my family had moved to Bangalore because Meena was with number two in Microsoft and Microsoft shifted the head office from Delhi to Bangalore. So for one year I was there. My daughter and Meena and my mother were here. So I had a compulsion to move to Bangalore and so two of my co-founders started running IT&T. So I was looking at what to do next and then the opportunity came. I was looking for a job or something to move to Bangalore and the opportunity came with Bharti British Telecom. Bharti's had just taken over Wipro share in Wipro British Telecom. That's why it was headquartered. Wipro British Telecom was headquartered in Bangalore. They were into VSAT services, satellite communication services using VSAT.

Speaker 2:

Then I met, coincidentally, sunil Bharti Mittal in one of the events there. He says oh, you're from IT, you want to go to Bangalore. We have just acquired stake. At the time Airtel was only in North. They were not there. They were not running telecom services here. He said we have a small company there. We need somebody to handle it because we have just taken over. We don't know anything about IT. You know about IT, why do you take over? So I moved to Bangalore as CEO of Bharti British Telecom which is great.

Speaker 2:

For two years I ran it but the entrepreneurial bug will not stop. So after one year I started selling. Sunil Bittal said that I want to start. I want to start, I want to go. He says hold on, hold on, hold on. So in two years started in 2000,. Customer Asset what is now known as First Source. First Source I see Very asset, what is now known as First Source. First Source, I see Very large BPO company part of the Sanjeev Goenka group and Listek and it's our first source as an email support company in 2000. But you know what happened in 2000. Dotcom boom and bust happened. But before we could even get our first few clients, fortunately we had a money of $3 million, but dotcom bust happened. So we did not have a business model.

Speaker 1:

We million dollars but dot-com bust happened, so we did not have a business model.

Speaker 2:

We didn't have it. We had money, so we discussed with a discuss with the investor, saying that what to do is what is. Then we transitioned into voice call center, which was not what we started. We wanted to provide asynchronous email support to dot-com companies in us from india, which was very simple. Running a real-time live voice call call center from India in 2000, when we were talking about lease lines and dial-up connections and all of those was a big challenge. That is what we transitioned to. Fortunately, we survived the complete pivot, thanks to our investor and thanks to the fact that we had 3 million raised. Otherwise, nobody would have raised.

Speaker 3:

that's how my second venture started.

Speaker 2:

I ran it as ceo and homeowner. Then uh sold it to icici, which is why it's called icici. One source took it but they took it public and now it's uh listed. Um then started my third venture called marketx, which is into high-end data analytics. The concept of high-end data analytics, the concept of KPO and data analytics was not even there at that time. It was very similar to the BPO model, very similar to the customer asset first source model, but this was high-end data analytics support for Fortune 50 companies out of India. That also happens to be, incidentally, in Indira Nagar. We took a residential apartment and hired PhDs or MSTAT people, statisticians and MBAs from FMCG a sector, put them together and did statistical modeling for coke and procter and gamble. Now, of course, the industry is well known as kpo and other stuff. That was one of the first thing. Sold it to listed wns because they wanted to get into the kpo space.

Speaker 1:

Uh then started that was with shankar marwada.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that was yeah, you know shankar very well. So ramki, unfortunately he passed away ramki, shankar marwada and Vinay Mishra three of the things I had worked with them earlier of sorts in that previous venture called Intercept and which then with that, so MarketX. I was the chairman and the sole investor when we sold it to. Till the time we sold it to Dubliners never raised VC money In customer asset. We did raise VC money a couple of rounds. Then did my fourth serial venture, tutorvista.

Speaker 1:

That was when I first met you actually.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, which we sold to Pearson. Later we were teaching kids in the US from India and we had an India edtech business Again india, and we had a india edtech business again. The word edtech was not there at that time, right? Uh, sold it to psn, that's.

Speaker 1:

that's the four serial ventures and serial the tutor vista was something different, though, in that you started it along with uh srinu, and uh your wife was also a co-founder, right. So that was sort of the start of this team, that uh did a variety of things together post that, so maybe you can talk a little bit about how that came together.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, srini was two years junior to me at IIM Calcutta, so I had known him for all this while and he had built Elance, what is known as, and then became Odesk, and he had come back to Bangalore from the Bay Area, just like you did.

Speaker 2:

That was the wave, yeah, that was the wave we used to call it B2B gang Bay Area to Bangalore. All the people moved Adarsh Palm, meadows and Golden Enclave and places like this. Now of course it's pretty common Shikhaan, nadamudi and all the teams, you, sripati, Acharya, all of you came back. So Srinath had come back, but with Meena I had done one previous venture. So the four ventures I talked about, two of them I did independently and two of them with Meena as a co-founder. So in Customer Asset, meena was a co-founder, I was the co-founder and CEO. And that's an interesting story in itself because that was the time when I was CEO of Bharti British Telecom. I was working well. I did not intend to get into entrepreneurship at that time but I was keen on it because I was doing exceedingly well. And Sunil Bharti Mithil was keen on me to become the ceo of the mantra online. That was the bharati's internet service. Okay, they had just applied and got internet service. He wanted to merge the two. He said you'll become, see, a combined entity. Don't go anywhere. Uh, okay, right. So that is the context.

Speaker 2:

But meena wanted to, was working in microsource number two, she was teaching to start a business and this entire customer asset customized opportunity idea came that because dot-com boom is happening, you require email support and you can do email support from India and that is a great new idea. Nobody had done it. Only IT software development from India was there. Support was not there. The concept of name BPO and all were not even heard of call centers. So she was, and I, because I had done entrepreneurship, I helped her to make a business plan and was part of the brainstorming with another founder called Ajay Rao. Okay, right, so I was trying to help them. I was part of the think tank and making it and all that. And that is also the time when my son was born, so there is a small baby at the house. So I needed help.

Speaker 2:

And suddenly a call came from Bombay saying that from eVentures at that time, neeraj Bhargav you might be familiar with saying that why don't you come to Bombay and pitch to Ardaswan? He said we are not ready. He says no, no, no, it's okay, this idea is fine, we want to through a common friend. So I mean I said then they said, listen, you have worked on the model so much, why don't you also come along? Come along for the meeting, just as an advisor, mentor, because I'm legitimate right. I'm Meena's husband, so it's nothing wrong. I'm an entrepreneur, so I went there for the meeting and so some questions were there in the meeting with the partners of eVentures. So they liked it. They asked some question and which they answered and I answered and all that stuff. Then suddenly Neeraj says who is going to be the CEO of this venture? Okay, now we are not prepared for the thing because it's the first meeting first ever.

Speaker 3:

VC.

Speaker 2:

First ever VC, second VC in my life I have ever met. First VC. They have met. First VC meeting. That is there. We are going to see you.

Speaker 2:

So Meena looked at Ajay Rao, ajay Rao looked at Meena. We had another gentleman called Sanjeev Dalal who was also…. First time we met during the Bombay trip, all of us, meena and I met. He was also co-founder. He was a technical guy guy. So listen, look at how the team got formed.

Speaker 2:

The only interaction with Sanjeev Dalla, the co-founder, was in the car journey to Fort Mumbai and he was the techie he was not going to. So then they all looked at me and Azharov said Ganesh is going to be the CEO. Okay, I said done. Okay. They said done and we'll give you a term sheet. And we came out. I said where did this come from? He says no, I had to take a call because they were ready to fund. I could sense that they were willing to fund. They needed an answer to the question. I said okay. I said okay, okay, right. Also, to be fair, meena was a co-founder, sini, while he knew him for 20 years, he had come back and the idea of Twitter, vista, came in, which really had me brainstorming but how to create a brand, consumer brand from India for the US market Now? Today you have so many SaaS companies and others that it's no longer suppressed.

Speaker 1:

But still for a US consumer base, right yeah.

Speaker 2:

So for 2000,. Yeah, so in 2000, for example, there are only IT services companies. They were all B2B. It's not for US consumer. Okay, right, completely different game. Excel was there, bipro was there and Infosys was there. The only offshoring was B2B. There was no B2C that leveraged Indian resources was b2b. There was no b2c that leveraged indian resources, and I was very keen to create a consumer brand, so that was one then. Education is an opportunity that came without, before any tech or anything was known. So that's how it started and it's been a nice partnership. After you sold it, we started growth story wow.

Speaker 1:

It's interesting because my introduction to you because I had lived in the us for several years came back when I was, I think, early days of my running. Mcheck is when I met you in 2006. And so all of this is new to me also. So it's really amazing. But what's really interesting is also two, three things you touched upon, right. I mean, sometimes we tend to overthink things, at least nowadays, because we are sort of in this information age and we have now chat, gpt and perplexity also helping us go into deep research mode and things like that and yet some of the most astounding decisions and opportunities happen so much by serendipity and without overthinking some of these decisions.

Speaker 1:

And they worked out awesome.

Speaker 2:

No, absolutely. I'm sure you would have seen it in your life too. Of course, you also entrepreneur, came back here, worked with the Aadhaar and this and started a venture capital firm. There are very few cases of operators actual operators starting entrepreneurs, starting venture capital firm, and yours is a great example I often quote of the model working wherein the entrepreneurs who have been there, done that before and that actually shows. I mean Prime Ventures is known as a very entrepreneur friendly organization because you have lived in the shows. That's not to snigger at the others, but it's a very, very unique perspective.

Speaker 1:

Okay, you can snigger at the others we don't, no, never, never.

Speaker 2:

We still have companies that are raising money. Never bite the hand that feeds, never, never, and not in public forum like this now, but I never spit on the plate you eat from.

Speaker 1:

So so, ultimately, I've also capitalists are great.

Speaker 1:

Okay, right, so let me I also learned that I think everybody has to figure out what game they're good at and play that game, and I think there are certain things that many VC peers of mine do that we can never do. We're not just set up for it. And then there are probably things we can do that we can do best, and I think it's also an important thing of not just founder market fit but also founder investor fit. That matters as well, because some founders may work very well with us and others may not. We may not be the right funds as well.

Speaker 2:

That is what I've admired. I've seen your journey because I remember when you just first started that angel prime, it was supposed to be a small fund.

Speaker 1:

We lived in the same community and community we discussed.

Speaker 2:

We went to walk, we discussed all that. I liked the idea of small fund. I mean and you're not, your fund is not in a hurry to invest, there is no FOMO with you, which is something which I really like. Also helps because the fund size is not large and you're not running after deals. Okay, right, and one second thing I've seen you support the companies. We are investors and the co-investors in such companies. I've seen your support during a good time and bad time, so which which I think partly comes from being most of the time we are in bad times this is what I tell statistically yeah 360 days of frustration and five days of glory is all you get every year.

Speaker 1:

So so look we, so that that started sort of the next phase of your journey, right where you move from being an entrepreneur with, you know, extraordinary outcomes all along, and of course you could have repeated that, uh. But you sort of got into this model of saying let me share the wealth in some ways, I would say the wealth, expertise, for the most part in a co-creation model with the whole growth story journey, right. So tell us about how that came about and why that versus, say, a venture capital model. And how did that? I mean, obviously we've had stellar hits along the way and, you know, is there another parallel anywhere else? So it's completely designed by the three of you, you know, you, meena and Srini. And how did that come about and why was that the right thing for India at the time?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I don't really know whether it was the right thing for India. So I had just turned 50 when we sold Tudor Vista to Pearson and I had done four serial Greenfield ventures, acted as the CEO in three of them Marketing I was not the CEO, I was the chairman and the sole investor and only investor and advisor and all that. But three of the four ventures all of them were Greenfield, all of them as founder and CEO handling P&L. And at 50, having done four, I was feeling slightly jaded or tired. Okay, right, too much of four exits, and also, I think, rightly so. After four Greenfield serial benches and four successful exits, it's almost like a run.

Speaker 2:

The probability of the next one was questionable. No, seriously, that is not the reason. But we said we want to do something different. I didn't want to, so two things. So I didn't want to so two things. So I didn't want to be the CEO and run this after this. I want to see what makes to do it, and I do this every 10 years.

Speaker 2:

Okay, right, so you can look back and say what do you want to do? I want to repeat the fifth one. I didn't want to do it, so that's one. So what are the options available? I mean, the option is venture capital, raising money. It's a 10-year commitment and it's too much of a responsibility. Okay right, I did not want to take on the responsibility of raising money from LPs and running a fund. That's too much of a responsibility. Fortunately, I had done some monetization, I had made money. I said I don't want to do that. At the same time, I don't want to hang up my boot, be on the boards, be an angel investor, mentor, advisor, because there there is no skin in the game. Okay, right, I mean, they'll take advice, but you're really it's like being a board member or an angel investor our good friend Sanjay Anandram has another word for that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there's this mentor, and then there's tormentor. Yeah, mentor and tormentor.

Speaker 2:

You could be mentor, tormentor and all the stuff is nothing there and at 50 it is too early, yeah, detrimental mentor.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay, right. So at 50 it is too early to retire, and not only this. So we wanted to do something more uh, hands-on. So that is when we came up with this particular model of venture builder model, which is the growth story model. There are no really parallels there. We also did not do it, but because we're not raising money from any LP and all that, if it doesn't work, it's fine. It's not something which is there, it's not creating legacy. So we said closest parallel was Rocket Internet in Germany, sambar Brothers. But their model was not exactly the same. They controlled the full thing. They gave a small equity to entrepreneurs.

Speaker 2:

We said we will look at where the broad areas of next 10 years are, do some initial research or business plan, see if this is something we want to get into, and then find teams who can actually come and run it as co-founders.

Speaker 2:

Each one will have a strong co-founder team and give them 50% equity upfront, 50% with us, then raise money and value and the initial capital also Initial capital to be able to do it. So the idea was if it works out, we'll go quickly and raise money from top venture capitalists. Reason is that each one will have a life of its own, will have its own governance, will have its own capital. It will not be seen as a family company, family office company and we'll be able to attract good talent with this and we'll be able to build a company of its own. We never wanted to control it, so we obviously diluted immediately and do that. And if it doesn't work out, if you are not able to raise money or if you think that it's not a good idea to raise money, then shut it down at some point of time.

Speaker 1:

Okay right.

Speaker 2:

We have shut down companies after two months or three months of starting. We have shut down companies after six years of funding it and starting because it didn't work out. It did work out. Some of them did RBC money didn't work out. Some of them did not have RBC money. We funded it and do that stuff. So that is the way we ended. I think it's been a good run. We have had multiple failures. We have also had Big Basket, blue Stone, homeland, portia Medical, verloo, hungerbox, fresh Menu all these companies coming out of this particular model and whether it's the right model don't know, but for us it has been satisfying because it has been not a full-fledged founder, ceo, entrepreneur, not an investor board member. We are the founder of the last resort. We still have companies which have shut down. The founders have moved on. We are handling the tax notices and we are handling all the challenges. All of it is ours, got it.

Speaker 1:

No, and I think you're being very humble when you say we've had some successes. There've been like extraordinary outcomes here with Big Basket and home lane thank you.

Speaker 2:

You're being kind. As always, you're being more kind than right okay.

Speaker 1:

But I think in this business you know, most of the things won't work out right. But the few that do uh are the ones that really uh, and one may put in the same effort or sometimes more effort.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, effort is I mean I mean for every company, every entrepreneur, every company that fails. I don't think it is lack of effort. I mean most of them work harder than I have ever worked and do work, and it's amazing to see entrepreneurs the kind of passion and determination they bring, including in our own companies. I mean, whether it's Big Basket or Bluestone or Homeland or Portio Medical to all the ups and downs and you know this, sanjay, ups and downs is a given.

Speaker 1:

We all go through huge. Downs are given, ups are not.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, ups are ran and we go through huge euphoria and gloom and doom many times on the same day. Yes, okay, right, and come out of it.

Speaker 1:

You know, the other day I was a guest on the podcast and they were asking me what's the day in the life of a venture capitalist? Said, I wake up and I look at my phone. If there's good news, I'm really very unhappy because now there's only bad news coming later in the day but if some bad news has come in the morning, I've said okay, I've got something to look forward to, maybe some good news will come and um but um, you know, look at, I think even as venture capitalist I'm in an early stage and our model is kind of a reactive engagement, so probably the closest battle from a VC angle to what you build.

Speaker 1:

but we're still sort of distanced and enough, because for you, you know, ultimately you have to handle all the legal notices and stuff like that and stuff like that. So was there ever a time where you felt, wow, this is, you know, this is becoming too much. Or, you know, is the pain is, you know, a lot more than perhaps the fun part here? Or was the fun so amazing that it really didn't matter? And these are all smaller things.

Speaker 2:

No, no again. Statistically, most of the time you feel why the hell am I doing this? Okay, right, right. So in terms of time, 80 percent of the time you'll be handling fighting fires. It's like having six children if you have six children, you can be guaranteed one of them.

Speaker 1:

Somebody's got a cold and somebody's got a stomach one of them always be in trouble.

Speaker 2:

one of them will always be sick. You cannot have a peaceful day with six children. All the six will be out of trouble, doing great and fully healthy. Not having a problem that requires you to attend every day is unlikely, okay.

Speaker 1:

We have almost never looking after each other.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we have 10 companies. Yeah, it's a given so number is you sign up for. But the other way to look at it is, when you have six children, that's what you have signed up for. Okay right, you knew that it's not that, so it is there.

Speaker 2:

What satisfies me more than the success of it is that these are huge pain points that you have tried to address. The fact that there are customers willing to buy your product, swear by it, thanking you for it, gives a huge amount of satisfaction. Take, for example, portia Medical, the largest home healthcare company. I'm sure you have experienced it. So the amount of comments that we get that because of this service, I'm able to live my life, I'm able to go to my office, I'm able to work, I'm able to do that. Okay Right, and this did not exist before. Right, a branded caregiving service for this which you can rely upon. That is so much satisfying. Or during the COVID or pandemic big basket, for example, okay Right, the way they stepped up to be able to, to be able to do it. I mean those are the moments that you really live for that, that that is worthwhile to create a brand, no and, as you said, you know you'd already achieved, you know, fairly strong financial success already.

Speaker 1:

So getting into it, that was certainly not the objective here. Right, it was perhaps an outcome, but the, the real success was in both the journey as well as the, the value that people see in the, in the product and at scale. I think that's, and it's sort of a gift that you have to be able to recreate this over and over again and almost a responsibility that you have to make sure that these things happen right. I mean, you could certainly have, you know, put up your feet and you know been at the golf course.

Speaker 2:

Sanjay, let me ask you the reverse question. Okay, right, you've had Angel Prime and Prime Venture Partners. You're doing this. Venture Capital business is a 10-year plus business at the minimum and a lot of responsibility Till the time the last money last at the minimum and a lot of responsibility.

Speaker 1:

Till the time the last money, last rupee is returned it's a pending responsibility.

Speaker 2:

It's not like raising money in a company. A company you can shut down and say sorry and do stuff there. You can shut down what motivates you to raise next fund?

Speaker 1:

Why would you do it at this particular site? Okay, my LPs are going to be listening to this. Look, I think, ganesh, for us it's been an extraordinary ride. We wouldn't have seen a lot of this stuff.

Speaker 1:

Of course, in this business, you will always have a wall of shame where some company will come to you and you don't back them and you look back later and say what the heck did we miss? What were we thinking? But ultimately, our outcomes are only driven by the ones we do choose to back right, and so that is one. So I think I've always, very early on, made my peace with saying look, it's not about it's. If your logo makes it to my wall, then I have to do everything to, because the others don't really matter, right in some ways. And so when you, when you do that, I think one of the things we have found, and I think you have also seen entrepreneurship in India is a means of really just making life livable for the masses and making the world a better place.

Speaker 1:

It is an outcome of it, in the successful case, that one does make financial outcomes here, but it's really never, never the goal, and I think we have to enjoy the journey right, and I can't think of a more exciting place and exciting journey right now. Right, if, if I was to stop doing this as a profession, I would still want to be involved with this. Right, I would still want to be meeting. I keep thinking about it. I'm really fortunate to have my partners as my best friends in our team around. It's a little bit of a uh, in some ways a little bit of a family. I luckily managed to situate the office very close to my house so I don't have time to commute, yeah right, um.

Speaker 1:

And so now I look at it and say, okay, this is exactly what I started telling people, this is my retirement. My retirement is exactly what I'm doing, because I'm just having so much fun.

Speaker 2:

It doesn't feel like work so the pressure of raising money for next 10 years plus, and all that stuff, despite your having achieving financial success and you're in the same place.

Speaker 1:

I love it when LPs challenge us, because those are the most stimulating conversations, right.

Speaker 2:

That makes you, that gets you, that's more exciting.

Speaker 1:

right you start the conversation and say, okay, fine, of course we're in for your next fund. No, that's more exciting, right? You start the conversation and say, okay, fine, of course we're in for your next fund and thankfully, all of our LPs have actually put us through the ringer every single time oh, I'm sure they do and challenged us with all the assumptions.

Speaker 2:

It's not easy to raise money for fund after fund, however successful you are. Because they've got choices and they've got One more question for you. I know why did you not come back and start another venture as an?

Speaker 1:

entrepreneur.

Speaker 2:

As an entrepreneur, what made you and your partnership, what made you decide this? And I asked you that question even earlier, because when I started Growth Story, I came and took your advice. This is what I want to do. I don't want to be PC, I don't want to be entrepreneur, I want to do a halfway venture builder model.

Speaker 1:

What is your motivation? I think so. My motivation on that was actually it's very hard to be an entrepreneur and it's a very lonely journey and I have the craziest amount of respect for entrepreneurs, right, and I just didn't see myself doing it again and again. Similar. I was approaching 50 when we started Prime and now a senior citizen, so I get half percent extra in the bank, you know, and my FDs are very proud of that, you know. But I think for me, I think it's really, really tough. I think we are kind of vicariously living our entrepreneurship dreams. This is like you know the crude analogy I'll give is sort of like grandparents versus parents. You know, the crude analogy I'll give is sort of like grandparents versus parents.

Speaker 3:

You know when the diaper needs to be soiled.

Speaker 1:

You hand it over to the kid, but you enjoy all the pleasure of it.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. I think very, very, very, very, very valuable, I think, vicariously living having the touch and feel without some of the pressures of running it, and we've structured our model to be that way, right by doing four to five new investments a year as a VC fund for early stage.

Speaker 1:

That's actually a very concentrated portfolio, but it gives me time like I block Thursdays on my calendar to say this is my portfolio. Only day I will not meet any new startups, I will not meet any outsiders, but it's my time. If I don't have meetings with the portfolio, I will go and harass the founders or I will go ask them some questions. I'll sit down and do like product discussion, which have nothing to do with how the company is performing and things like that right. So those things we have the freedom to do in our model, and I think that's the part that I enjoy the most in the brainstorming with founders and I hope they enjoy it as well, and your next fund?

Speaker 2:

you'll continue the same philosophy.

Speaker 1:

We will continue the same model right, so our model remains the same. You know we've raised 100 million again and we will do four to five new investments a year. Obviously, we now have a larger team, and so a lot of my time is also going in mentoring the youngsters and building this. I think the big thing for us here is how do we turn what we started off with into a sustainable institution at Prime.

Speaker 2:

So you're institutionalizing the practices that you have learned, so that, instead of just being a fund by successful serial entrepreneurs, it becomes an institution on its own too.

Speaker 1:

And part of that is bringing in more serial entrepreneurs into the fund right, and whether it is a new partner whom we just added, bridge who was the co-founder of Magicpin, and even some of the next generation folks may not have necessarily been founders but worked. You know, gaurav had worked with Homeland and really understands early stage very well and I think there's a lot more exposure. So you know the philosophy of working side by side with founders and being hand-holding them through the tough times.

Speaker 1:

I read somewhere and I think Andreessen had quoted you know, you make your money from your, your winners, but you make your reputation on the ones I never use the word losers, but on the ones where you don't make your money, and that's also very important and very early on, we're trying to get people exposure into the board matters right. So our investment team is not just hunting for new deals, it's after the investment happens. They're sitting alongside me saying wait a minute, what did we miss? We thought the revenue was going to go like this, but it has actually not gone that way and hopefully that's the feedback loop for picking you know the next set of entrepreneurs as well. So that remains our model and, you know, as long as health supports it. You know I'm not thinking I would do anything else. I can't think of what else I would do. I'm sort of pretty narrow set of you know hobbies and things lovely, lovely to hear that so.

Speaker 1:

So that's been our journey. But speaking of hobbies, you know I've seen you on the squash court, I've seen you on the tennis court or in the certainty. So what are some of your things that you do on the side? You know to stay, you know amazingly fit that you are yeah, you know.

Speaker 2:

so I have been playing tennis for the last 25 years, and when the covid stuck, I started learning bridge. So now I'm addicted to online bridge, right so so so that's something that I do, but I play tennis every day, and after I turned 60, which is a couple of years back, I said I'm going to start learning something new every year. Covid helped in learning bridge, so I started playing badminton, so now I need to pick up one more sport this year, so I regularly play tennis and badminton. That keeps me fit. In addition to I'm fanatic about intermittent fasting and low carb diet, which really has helped me lose 14 kgs, stay fit and be able to have all the energy for for my also.

Speaker 2:

After 60, I said I need to give back in certain ways, because I do every 10 years. I do this. At the time when I turned 50, I sold Twitter Vista to Pearson. I said growth story, venture builder model. So at 60, I said I want to get into academics. I want to teach, formally teach. So I teach one course at IIM, bangalore, I designed a course called New Age Business Models, and a couple of courses at Indian School of Business, hyderabad and Mohali. So almost one third of my time goes into teaching right, wherein I design the course, I offer the course. It's a full credit course in teaching. Other than that, I have my tennis and this.

Speaker 2:

Meena and I also have a family foundation called the Bahar Foundation, where I spend some time and Meena spends a lot more time, where we are trying to use some of the things that we have learned over the last 40 years in giving back. So what we do is a program called Community Healthcare Entrepreneurs wherein we said can we make tribal women in rural area self-sustaining entrepreneur by giving her the ability to provide healthcare services in the remote areas? So, with point of care devices, with market connects, with market connects, with training, the local tribal woman is able to do basic healthcare testing and diagnostics in her community Right and charge a bit for it and earn money. So we fund the whole thing through the foundation for the first one year, the viability gap funding. At the end of one year she should be an entrepreneur, self-sustaining, earning anything between three thousand to six thousand rupees per month, which is substantial in a tribal area which is 25 to 40 percent of that monthly income and that is it.

Speaker 2:

We have done this. Initial cohorts have been very successful. We have done this in the Bastar area, naxalian Invested area in Chhattisgarh. It has worked out well. So that takes a bit of time. So tennis, bahaar, teaching of monetization. The BigBasket of course I no longer sit on the board of BigBasket. We still have some shares Tata's own two-thirds of BigBasket and they control the board. So I have no role to play other than selling my shares whenever they make a good offer or they take it to IPO. Bluestone we just filed the DRHP, got the SEBI approval and hopefully it will do that. I'm not on the board, but we have independent directors on the board and hopefully we'll monetize. We have Homelane, which is just acquired, design cafe and I'm sit on the board and likely to take it to public in the next 12 to 18 months. Portia Medical, where we have Vibhav Tiwari as CEO running it. I'm a board member. Do that.

Speaker 1:

So those responsibilities take the balance two-thirds of the time. I heard the bell ringing in the puja room just as you were talking about taking all these companies to their next milestone, so that's a great omen. Before we close, we'll talk a little bit about your book, right? You recently published a book on new age business models, you know, which is also the class that you're teaching yeah.

Speaker 2:

So this book, the need for this book, came about because a lot of queries came from potential entrepreneurs, wannabe entrepreneurs, students and even general public saying that how are these new age business model working? Why is zomato being valued so much? Why is Zomato being valued so much? Why is Paytm being valued so much? One was they were stunned at the valuation when the people are struggling to raise money. Okay right, what makes companies, new age companies get valued so much?

Speaker 2:

One, two, from a retail investor because people have invested in the new age IPOs. Many of them have lost money. There has been challenges. And also they said how do we really evaluate? Because traditionally for a retail investor, evaluating on PE ratios, earnings per share, is quite well known, but when you're loss making, there is no PE ratio, no earnings per share. How do you evaluate it?

Speaker 2:

So this question came up and general interest on saying what drives this and do that? And many traditional businessmen running traditional business say that how do we utilize new age principles, platform principles, network effect, virality, how do we use those in our business to scale, not to be. Have our lunch eaten? Not to be left behind, not to be. Have our lunch eaten not to be left behind not to be disrupted, all this. So I found a common thread across this right. So, and of course, this is also the topic which I was teaching at IIM, bangalore.

Speaker 2:

So that is how this book came up. It's meant for a general reader, not just for entrepreneurs, anybody who is fascinated by all the new age business model, fintech or creator economy, digital transformation, disruption, all of this. So that's that's how it came it. Penguin was, and I, kind enough to publish it and happy to say, first few weeks it was number one bestseller on Amazon and it's in its category. It has just gone for a reprint, which I'm very pleased about. So, like maybe, we also talk about vanity metrics in the book. One of my vanity metrics is does it go for a reprint in a short period of time? So that's a vanity metric, and as is being number one on Amazon, but I must have wanted to brag about it here.

Speaker 1:

So absolutely, that's hardly a vanity metric, that is an earned metric by the book itself, right by the, the review. So congratulations on that. And uh, one last thing to close, and then we talked a little earlier. You know this whole new exciting world of ai that has come about. Um, what are you doing about it? You know, is this another wave that you're going to jump into? And uh, if so, any early thoughts on where you see the opportunity or what you're trying to figure out here?

Speaker 2:

Frankly, sanjay, I'm a bald old man. Okay, right, I'm trying to get to grips.

Speaker 1:

The bald part I can verify, but the old man part hardly.

Speaker 2:

Thank you. You're again being kind, then, right, but the real this one is I'm really trying to learn. There is so much happening Okay, right, every month there is something is so much happening. Okay, right, every month there is something new that is happening. New release that's being forget. The release of technology, just the use case.

Speaker 2:

Latest now is agentic AI and how workflows are getting disrupted. Forget about investing or doing. I'm trying to get my grips about learning about it. Okay, right, it simply is fascinating because, almost like internet or at olden times, that steam engine or transformed, or the invention of the wheel, transformed this is completely transformative and unlimited potential to be able to do it. I mean, I thought I had good understanding of LLM Okay, right, I was clear about where it was going and it's fine. I even wrote a chapter for the book, for the next edition of the book, okay, but within two months now we are talking about how workflows are getting completely disrupted using agenting, and you must have seen this in fintech also, right, I mean absolutely. I mean because you are an expert on fintech.

Speaker 2:

When we talk to banks, we are talking about earlier, about banking as a service, bass, embedded finance, banking as service, which was great. We were just scratching the surface. Adoption was less single digit percentage of banking as a service, all of that stuff. Suddenly, now you're talking about agentic bass, where you're talking about agents replacing full workflows yeah, yeah, okay, and doing it. The same thing is with sas software. Sas has had a great run. Now you're saying why do you need a sas software? Why can't I use autonomous agents to be able to, to be able to do so? Short answer I think this is going to be big, transformative, great opportunity for entrepreneurs and any case, whether you are a marketer, whatever you're doing, unless you are using generative and agents, you cannot be competitive. It is like saying if you're not going to use automation, if you're not going to use internet, you cannot be competitive. It's a fact. You can't if you don't have a website, if you're not sending online, you can't be you to be able to provide that.

Speaker 1:

It's both a survival and an opportunity is what you're saying.

Speaker 2:

Both survival and a great opportunity For me personally. I think I'm still trying to learn how to decipher it and I look forward to discussions with people like you who are actually evaluating. I'm sure you are the inflow of business models you're seeing must be phenomenal right.

Speaker 1:

No, absolutely. I think it's true and I think one of the things I have been trying to do is actually just use all the products that come out and to give you an example of what was never possible that is suddenly likely to be possible I never wrote code in my life. I could never. And then I always correct myself. I wrote I could never get Hello World. Same here, I could never. And then I always correct myself no, I wrote I could never get Hello World to compile, I was just so bad at it. Right. But today, with tools like Lovable and stuff like that, you can get up in the morning and in 30 minutes you can whack out a nice looking, professional looking. You know at least mock-up and you know if you things with it over the last two three weeks.

Speaker 2:

So give me an example. What did you do? What was the first thing that you tried on?

Speaker 1:

Lovable, so the first thing I tried was a health tracker. Right, and not to say that I've been great help or anything but just tracking all the activities around a health tracker and you basically just give it an instruction, you know, saying design a health tracker for me. And it says, okay, I'll look at healthify, I'll look at this app, I'll look at that app, I'll I'll take what I think are the best thing, and the first version it gives you itself is something that looks like a product that's been built right by a professional and in all this, done by five seconds, in 30 seconds, right, and then you interact with this. Okay, can this? Can you subtract this? And so this whole idea of one size fits one, which is my new mantra, is I think there used to be a restaurant in New York that said we give such personalized care. It's a one size fits one strategy.

Speaker 1:

I think that's where the world is going. So to your point earlier about agentic flows and stuff like that, how you and I interact with something might be very, very different. The functionality at the end might be yes, we press a button and buy the air ticket, but I want to have the experience of talking to my travel agent. You may like the e-commerce experience, you may only want this category of flights, et cetera, and once there's enough personalization on that, this is the K Ganesh experience, that is the Sanjay Swami experience, and there might be a different one for someone else. And I think we are going to move into this extraordinary new world where it's going to be one size fits one, and how I do things, how you do things, might be really tuned to ourselves, but with the same functionality and the same business process. Right, so it it is.

Speaker 1:

Sky is the limit in terms of what's possible.

Speaker 1:

There's also the. So I look at it as, at least in the financial services and certainly in health care, there is the core product itself that one is talking about, which is which can use AI a lot, and that could be lending algorithms, that could be, you know, you know diagnostic algorithms, for example, and so on. Those, I think, are very sensitive, right, and there one has to be very, very careful because explainability and all these other issues will arise. But all the scaffolding around it of how you interact with the customer, how you interact in the post care, in the customer service, et cetera, that can be attacked immediately. So to me, the first order of opportunity is what I call the scaffolding around the business, which is very, very domain specific and customer specific and use case specific. And then there's the core business itself, which may or may not come immediately, but there also we're starting to see some extraordinary innovation. So it's definitely an opportunity to be both excited and scared at the same time, and that's always the perfect mantra for me, for for a new fund.

Speaker 2:

Will that be a focus area? I mean, obviously leveraging gen a is uh is a given. Yeah, talking about gen a native business models yeah.

Speaker 1:

So I think, um, it obviously is a core part of of everything we're to do, I think everything everybody's going to do, but I actually think that what does it enable that wasn't previously possible is also a very exciting thing to think about. So there are things of you know, for example, edge AI models. We recently funded a company, off-the-shelf cameras and AI at the edge to do industrial automation to the extent of like fault detection. Right, it's already being used by cement manufacturers, already being used by. So predictive it is. No, it's actually looking at the product and saying, okay, this is a faulty product right.

Speaker 1:

So if you look at, a scooter assembly line near Bangalore, there's one that manufactures a scooter every 90 seconds, right? So a false positive is very expensive because it stops the manufacturing line. A false negative is even more expensive because now we have a recall problem, right, but things are possible now at scale and at speed at the edge. So, one thing after the other, I think every use case, but anything which has an IoT element to it, an iot element to it or a regulatory element to it, or a digital element to it, combined with the digital piece, I feel very comfortable about, because there are enough inherent modes that get built. Anything which is pure software, only I'm scratching my head saying do I have the guts to bet on how this is going to proceed over the next five years?

Speaker 2:

right, it's a hard call no, that's a very, very interesting perspective. You combine robotics, iot sensors, analog digital devices with software and with gen a. It looks like a more comprehensive model and something I as a old person old, bald, old person can relate to much better.

Speaker 1:

But pure, pure llm or pure software is something I mean, of course, we'll have several of those also in our portfolio, but it is quite scary right to be to try to say you know, if you're going to build a generational company, a lasting company is going to be around 10 years from now.

Speaker 1:

Who knows what the world is going to look 10 weeks from now? So, in termsheet and sha, the model may have changed, but that's, I think, also where backing the right entrepreneurs who have the right mindset and are not wedded to the solution but are wedded to the problem, I think is very important, right? And if they have that insane desire to solve this problem and not claiming that they have got the perfect solution, I think those are the instincts that we look for. Anyway, ganesh, look, we can go on and on and on, and I would like to, and we'll probably come back and do part two of this soon, perhaps with Meena as well. But thank you so much, both for your time today as well as for the extraordinary contributions you've made, both in the for profit world as well as on the giving back world and the inspiration you are for everyone. Thank you.

Speaker 2:

Thank you very much. Thank you for being so kind. Thank you.

Speaker 3:

Dear listeners, thank you for listening to this episode of the podcast. Subscribe now on your favorite podcast app for free and you'll be the first one to know when new episodes are available. Just search for Prime Venture Partners Podcast in Apple Podcast, Spotify, CastBox or however. You get your podcasts, Then hit subscribe and if you have enjoyed the show, we would be really grateful if you leave us a review on Apple Podcast. To read the full transcript, find the link in the show notes.