india venture opportunity – part 2

This episode ispart 2 to the India venture opportunity, a podcast we hosted last year. We cover the state of affairs in the Indian startup and Venture community, the recent China ban and its ramifications. Jio’s impact on start-ups and the fund-raising environment and the COVID effect on India’s digital economy among other topics.

Salonie:

Hi and welcome to Matrix Moments, I am Salonie and today’s episode is a part 2 to the India venture opportunity, a podcast we hosted last year with Miten Sampat, angel investor, start- up advisor and former CSO at Times internet. As well as Samidha Sharma, editor at emerging business and start ups at Economic Times, Along with Tarun Davda, Managing Director at Matrix Partners India. They discussed and dissected the state of affairs and we decided that it was now time for part 2 of this conversation and this time we also have a seasoned entrepreneur perspective that’s been added to the mix with Amrish Rao, the CEO of Pine Labs. We talk about the recent China ban and its ramifications, Jio’s impact on start-ups in the fund-raising environments and of course the COVID effect on India’s digital economy among other topics. Tune in.

Tarun:

Hi everyone, and thank you for joining us on Matrix Moments, it’s a pleasure to have all of you. I’m going to do a quick introduction before we dive in and I’m going to just go in the order on which I have you all on my screen. So I’ll start with Samidha who’s also the moderator for today’s episode. Samidha, thank you for joining us. As everyone knows Samidha is the most well-known journalist in the Indian startup ecosystem. She’s with ET and before that was with Times of India. Next in line is Amrish Rau, Amrish, thank you for joining us. Amrish is the CEO at Pine Labs and was earlier the founder of Citrus Pay which was acquired by PayU. And finally, Miten, who is currently I guess chilling and in between figuring out what next. Miten was earlier the chief strategy officer at Times Internet and has also been a very prolific angel investor. So, thank you all, really appreciate you all making the time and I guess I’m looking for a really interesting discussion today. Thank you for joining.

Samidha:

Thanks, Tarun. I think it’s taken us a year, a pandemic and Miten being a free agent to get us back together.

Tarun:

And how the world has changed, right, since then. It’s been a year, we’ve had a pandemic, we’ve had Jio raise $15 billion and we’ve had so much more happen.

Samidha:

There are audiences who would have caught up with us last time around that was more than a year ago it was Miten, Tarun and I discussing the venture opportunity in India. This time we thought we should definitely get a person operating a business so we have Amrish with us too just to give a little bit of context and then we’ll sort of dive in. Somehow we chanced upon last year’s recording and so many things that we discussed out there all of it sort of unfolded in the next 6-8 months whether it was Jio, the juggernaut that unfolded, the rise of Ed tech, Miten had spoken about it. It was just very interesting to sort of go back and listen to that podcast considering we summed up a lot of stuff which would happen and take place in the next 6-8 months. So I want to kick off today with three of you just if you could give your take in terms of what has really happened, what has changed, in the last 6-8 months. I mean obviously Covid is an overarching impact it has had on all businesses but beyond that I mean how is the new economy right now taking to this jolt considering the macro indicators are extremely abysmal at this point.

Tarun:

Sure. I think it’s been obviously at a personal level and as a country obviously the pandemic has been fairly bad for a lot of people. On the business side though I think things started off fairly negatively. I remember back in March speaking to portfolio founders almost every day and there was a lot of uncertainty. I think that continued through early times of lockdown maybe April-May everybody was just focused on survival, everybody was just focused on cutting burn, extending runway, all the stuff that we’ve spoken about and read about. And then I think there was -- I think I first started picking up these signals I guess from the US where there was this very famous chart where we’ve seen three decades and three months which showed the sort of ecommerce penetration for Amazon and several other companies and how that had picked up. And I think it quickly became clear that we were seeing early signs of something similar happening in India. It was more obvious in some sectors like Ed tech and gaming and health tech and some of these but I think it’s really interesting how it isn’t written about as much in India yet but I think we’re seeing very similar signs happening in India. I’ll give you an example, I spoke to a ecommerce start up founder just this morning, It’s a mid-sized company, obviously I can’t share the name and I’ll tell you why, his business was at zero all of April and May. Okay, and this is the company which raised between $50-100 million. Okay, he told me he has been growing 50 percent month on month for the last three months since July since the business has restarted. He will hit a billion dollars in annualized GMV next month, from zero in April and May. He will be 3x of what he was pre-Covid and he’s grown back quickly. So Feb versus October will be more than 3x. And the best part is he’s been cash flow positive for the last four months, he had no idea how the business would make money back in February. They were burning money at a contribution level and I think when I speak to a lot of founders even in sort of non Ed tech domains I’m seeing very similar sort of experience saying businesses now look better especially on the unit economics front things are better and because essentially all the incentives have gone away, all the discounts have gone away or at least they’re massively reduced. So I think that’s one big thing. I think the second thing is I think there is a recognition that those who have really hustled through the last three or four months and have basically been very nimble in figuring out alternate revenue models, alternate consumer acquisition channels I think a lot of them are seeing the benefits of that today.

Samidha:

Amrish, you want to talk a little about what really is propelling this growth because like I said I mean the macroeconomic indicators and the real economy is in complete shambles at this point. So what is giving a lot of these businesses the traction, is it only the digital edge, what is happening.

Amrish:

See, if you break it up into three parts which is the consumer, second is the business and third is the investor each one of them is going through a completely different experience through the pandemic. And I say this very seriously that when it comes to a consumer in India we’re getting to see a completely different behavior where the consumer is first time turning around and saying I want to invest in my own self. I’ll give you an example, coming out of the Covid lockdowns in some of the markets what we’ve seen is suddenly dishwashers and some of those electronic products which were not procured before the pandemic has started to kick off.

So the classic Indian was saying I’ll keep money for the next generation he’s saying, no, boss, I want to spend on my own self and I will spend now, I also want to spend on my children. So where they go, what they learn, what is then going to be the outcome and hence you would see Ed tech, then you would see consumer durables growth, mobile phones, a clear consumption growth in those areas. So the investor is saying I want to spend for now, I don’t want to spend for the future. So that’s one big behavior change at least now.

Second thing what we’re getting to see is at a business level one of the big things which I have found very difficult is not the slowing down of the economy but the acceleration of things. At any point of time there are five things to solve for, at the same time you’re taking out costs out of the business. So I think the business models in which we’re operating have definitely improved. So that’s on the business side. On the investor side, I kid you not, the real story is about liquidity. This pandemic has brought about insane amounts of liquidity. I mean to have Snowflake book $70 billion while Snowflake was valued 15 months back at $3 billion. It’s not business, it’s liquidity.

Samidha:

No, I was going to come to that point because that is what I was getting at it’s again – I’m just fearing is it again calling out the potential of the market too soon. I mean it’s happened every two, three years and then again now we’re saying oh, this is going to be the time when digital will really take off. How much of it is actually happening on ground and will become businesses which will be solid businesses and not really about money sort of coming in.

Miten:

I think the big investments you’re seeing are still in companies that had some scale, I don’t think you’re seeing it in like early stage, series A, series B kind of stuff happening--

Samidha:

But that’s also picked up, right, Miten, I mean --

Miten:

It is slowly happening but I think – see, I think there are two things happening. So one is I think the sectors that have seen acceleration to the point that Amrish made and that Tarun made which is business models have become better because incentives have gone away, everyone is extending their own runways and so business calls have become better all of a sudden. Second thing is consumer behavior shift is real and it’s big both on the consumer side and the enterprise side and even enterprises are investing in tech solutions a lot more and so on and so forth because they just had to – in fact if they didn’t they wouldn’t be able to operate.

I think as a result of that there’s been a shift of spends, there’s a dislocation of spends from certain things to certain other things and where the shift has happened is mostly Internet enabled sort of companies. And so as a result of that business models improved, profitability is now line of sight and actually I also think that a few favorites that were there going in were the adoption of things like UPI and online payments and stuff like that. I mean just even before Covid you had over a $100 million, $120 million monthly transactions UPI users. So imagine our situation if a lot of this was not in place, that friction of transacting would have been much, much higher. All that friction is much, much lower now and so things are picking up.

So I still think investors are being cautious on many different dimensions, I think there’s optimism on education, on enterprise related some connectivity stuff, things like that, there’s optimism on stuff like gaming because again there’s a dislocation. I couldn’t go to the movies, I’m going to spend on gaming. Or I’m going to buy that OTT subscription or I’m going to do a short video or whatever. So you’re seeing people invest in dislocations as opposed to more broad stuff, and as Amrish said there’s so much liquidity. And that by the way this morning’s news of the Fed saying they want to keep interest rate at zero till 2023 is the beginning of a massive bull run. Like doesn’t matter what you think now don’t apply basic sort of what is my PE ratio and stuff, none of this is going to be making any sense because markets are going to go there and you’d be a fool to bet against the momentum.

Samidha:

Every conversation gets me to that point that our enthusiasm around the Indian eco system is always contingent to the money that is coming. It hasn’t got to the point of celebrating an IPO like Snowflake yet, right, so I’m not really going by what the investors would think, but again I think we’re getting into a stage where there is a lot of money, it needs to be deployed. I don’t know if the fundamentals have really changed in six months?

Miten:

I’ll tell you one other thing that’s changed, Samidha, one other fundamental operating variable in the India operating system. The fact that the Indian government has started to take very specific and strict measures around what they will allow and not allow and what I think is sort of step zero of the unveiling of a great Indian firewall, as that’s happening I think sector by sector by sector there will be companies which will win and win very big on the back of sort of soft firewall. I think that has changed, now different people have different interpretations of that. I think different people have different predictions of that and like – you know, the Tik Tok opportunity. Like suddenly it’s happened, the few other things that have happened as well and of course the big thing you’ve seen is that the biggest validation of the fact that the India story is very, very real is that $4 billion have went into Jio…

Samidha:

Let me just break that down. I mean there were two points.

Amrish:

I just wanted to cut in because one of the things that we in this call shouldn’t miss is- we guys at least specifically those guys who are on this podcast here is I guess we’re in a little bit of a bubble, right, I think one of the parts which we have to talk about --

Samidha:

I’m not, but the other two gentlemen are

Amrish:

You know, I’ve been talking to a few of my friends who run payment companies and these are offline payment companies and I’ve also been talking to bankers. Some of the stories which I’m getting to hear are so scary it is unbelievable.

Samidha:

Yes. So, Amrish, I want you to highlight those because this is what I’m saying.

Amrish:

I want to make a point. For the first time when there are layoffs which are happening people are not turning around and saying thik hai yaar, I’ll get another job. For the first time you’re getting to see employees actually come back and really make requests after requests saying please hold on, please keep us there, these are tough times. These banker friends of mine they’re saying they’ve never seen some of these e-mails come before because in general economy is growing, everybody knows I’ll leave from here I’ll have another job waiting for me. I think one of the big fears that I have is in the real economy. Let’s take banking, right, in banking when you look at the back offices that some of these banks have there are like 200,000 people out there. Now all of this got digitized or at least a large portion of that got digitized in the last 3-4 months time. Now the banks are saying any which ways I think we can reduce about 25-30 percent of the staff. These are some unbelievably bad stories that you’re getting to hear and I feel sometimes and this maybe the people whom I follow on Twitter I don’t think I’m getting to feel it.

Samidha:

Tech Twitter.

Amrish:

It is really ugly out there in terms of the job market and the job losses which are being seen out there and the opportunities which people might have around.

Samidha:

Obviously in India it is sort of a little more than just a Tik Tok led thing it’s a wider anti China sentiment which is led to the ban of say a Tik Tok and many other apps. Tell me how do we kind of leverage from this because I mean there are two schools of thought. What Miten mentioned was there would be some businesses which would flourish because of this. We’ve not really seen too much in terms of adoption because it’s not easy to just have the same kind of success as Tik Tok did. What does it really mean, because there’s also a flip side to it and the investors will become a little wary coming into looking at India and the way one fine day you can just ban hundreds of apps. What does it mean?

Tarun:

I think there’s two, three things. I think the point you’re making is very valid, I think the policy flip flop is the worst thing investors want to see. You know, everybody likes stuff to be sort of consistent, right, whether you’re consistently against or you’re consistently for it that’s fine, but people expect consistency.

I just think that in the last few years the overall worldwide political sentiment has just shifted so dramatically. You know, having the president of the United States involved in deal making for a private company is something that none of us would have imagined even six months ago. So I think we are living in extremely strange times.

As far as I think the India app ban I can speak on behalf of an investor in India who is focused largely on the digital economy obviously is it a good thing for Indian companies, yes it is. Did the China firewall benefit local Chinese companies, absolutely it did. Did it seem like there was an unfair kind of ground that Indian companies were competing with, yes, it did, right, because on the one hand Chinese companies don’t allow any of the companies from outside China operate there but they’re sort of going and dominating in several other countries. Thankfully in India a large part of it other than Tik Tok a large part of it was through investments in Indian companies. And we should talk about the impact of those investments going away. So if you ask me for example are there certain sectors where only Chinese investors were bullish especially when it came to media, content, social, absolutely they were. Will companies in those sectors probably have a little bit of a harder time to raise cash I think it will happen.

Samidha:

Yeah, it’s already we can see it.

Tarun:

We can already see it, right, I think in India, Chinese funds/companies have put in several billion dollars in the last five years.

Samidha:

Yeah, about $4 billion or something.

Tarun:

I think more than half of Indian Unicorns have some sort of Chinese color to their money. If you ask me I think over time a lot of it will get negated and there will be enough capital chasing companies.

I think the China thing is a point in time and there will be some time for it to correct. Take Jio for example, I think people underestimate what Jio itself has done through its fund raise. For the first time there is a large company that can absorb 10, 15, 20 billion dollars of foreign capital. Those investors for the first time started looking at India as a serious market. We’ve already seen Silver Lake who started their India foray with Jio and now have gone and invested in Byju’s. And I think the very fact that India has come on their radar is something that I think we all should recognize that that is what is the bigger second order effect of what Jio has done. And I think that will continue so is policy flip flop good, no, it isn’t. But from a local Indian venture ecosystem is it a net positive, I think it is.

Samidha:

Amrish, I think you would be able to give some more perspective on payments, I mean, that’s highly regulated, has always been.

Amrish:

I think you’ve got to separate out things, right, one is nationalism and the fact that you want to make India strong and Indian businesses stronger. I think that part of it I’m in violent agreement with that, I don’t think so there is anybody who would disagree with that.

I think then let’s come into the second level. When we come into the second level I think the policy flip flops have been unfortunate. So for example I must tell you this, I haven’t met a politician or actually a senior banker when he hears about payment fees the first reaction is not going to be like, oh, take-off MDR. Invariably everybody thinks that that’s the secret to solving for the payments problem but what it really tells me is that you’re not taking time to understand how the industry works and you are allowed to play around with the industry even if you’ve taken only a five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes to understand it. Now I think those are things that we’ve got to be very careful about. Right now we have a situation where RuPay cards are not being promoted in India by Indian banks. So it’s actually gone exactly opposite which says that this is the time in which RuPay should be growing these are in a situation where RuPay is not being promoted.

Miten:

Lost the original role of RuPay itself.

Amrish:

Exactly. So now another piece to it is one side we want to have our payment systems go global that requires investment. So that payment system has to make money so we’ve got to open this up. I think the second order of some of these decisions are not being thought through but you know “der hai andhar nahe” so things will change and we’ll get there.

Samidha:

Miten, you want to talk a little about what really is the kind of leverage that – you’ve been an investor in some of these companies. You’ve watched a lot of the social apps very closely, is there actually does it open up space for Indian companies to do well in a situation where Tik Tok is not there, is it that easy?

Miten:

Look, I don’t think it’s that easy but I think the easy part is I think Tik Tok has trained the user and trained a lot of creators in the format and so I think there’s a lot of supply of content, I think there’s a great amount of demand so it’s like once people get a taste of something which they like and lots of people get it then if the supply goes away somebody else has to supply and kind of come back and make that supply happen.

So that’s what’s happening but the other element here is how long does this ban last? and that’s anybody’s guess. Somebody is saying that some guy could spend seven minutes on the topic tomorrow and decide chalo abhi thik hai abhi kholdo. You don’t know, it’s so like whackamole and unpredictable. So the question is if Tik Tok comes back easily then will the creators go back and the audience go back. The algorithm is definitely way ahead of everybody else, 600 million DAUs in China, unbelievable. So I think it’s a short term bench, I think winning is not obvious, you have to keep investing a lot but there’s definite demand creation which is clear so is the category made the answer is yes.

Samidha:

And we still don’t know if there’s money to be made, right, it’s not like even Tik tok was.

Miten:

I think there’s a lot of money to be made. I think it’s one of those video formats which is far more engaging as opposed to OTT also the format enables a fair degree of performance led advertising. You’re flipping, flipping, flipping through videos, a full screen ad experience a lot better than an OTT experience which is on the typically landscape. And you know, the whole experience is very different, so I think even video there’s definitely the short form video they’re definitely lot more monetizable as opposed to long form video.

Amrish:

I just need to add to what Miten was saying, right, so one of the things which I have been noticing right now is the number of founders in India who are IITians and great BITS Pilani and then Manipal and great engineering colleges. I feel that our engineers are going to solve for really difficult problems if they’re given a three, four year slot where there is no competition coming in there. H1B has as it is messed up people’s dreams of going to the US, if you have a 3-4 year period for our engineers to actually build on something I think we could be looking at something really special coming out of India in terms of a what kind of products which are being delivered. Maybe this is just being hopeful.

Samidha:

WithJio raising this mammoth $15-20 billion, I’ve lost count, I remember when this was happening and I ended up writing about it that there was so much being spoken about what Jio was doing in the last one year or so in terms of their own products and stuff but really the venture community and the startup community at large was not really aware in terms of you know, it’s plan to sort of do what it went ahead and the entire fund raising and things like that. I want to understand what is it that while there is a simplistic reading to this that Google and Facebook everyone sort of aligned with Reliance because it helps them in their policy push and we know that they’ve not done a great job and specifically Facebook in India and even in the US. Is that a very simplistic read that you align with Reliance and everything is hunky dory from next year onwards? I mean it’s not really happened, Whatsapp Pay is still in a limbo. Miten, you’re eager to chime in?

Miten:

It’s a phenomenal tragedy that we’re living through and I’ll get flack for saying this. But we’re just sitting around and witnessing one company be able to sort of have disproportionate leverage over the market I see no business case for Facebook investing in here. And I repeat again I see no business case for Facebook investing in Jio beyond saying we need regulatory help. That is a white collar way of saying this is corruption involved and if the government gets upset I’ve invested somewhere with some friend of the government. This all of us are losing at the benefit of one company. Sure that one company is creating a lot of value in the market and I’m also a shareholder in the market through the BSE or whatever but I feel massively uncomfortable about what’s gone on and the caliber of people who’ve participated in what’s gone on is massively disappointing.

Samidha:

So what do you think led to it?

Miten:

I don’t know what’s led to it but I can – my view is that – again it’s baffling to see again Facebook and Google both investing billions of dollars in one company the arch nemesis in the market, they fight on every dimension that you can find. I mean this whole idea that you get a friend with the regulatory clout in the market.

Samidha:

Who says that is the only reason, I mean, it could just be that they did not see anything of that scale before in India?

Miten:

These are not investment companies, General Atlantic investing or Silver Lake investing makes sense. Google and Facebook are not investors, Matrix is an investor. The other thing I’ll say, this is the single largest investment that Facebook would have made outside of acquisitions. Maybe I’m dumb but --

Samidha:

I think a lot of that will be is still to play out so we don’t really know and like I said if people thought it was just as simple as this then Whatsapp Pay would be live the next day and –

Amrish:

Two things, first of all I’m in violent agreement with Miten, I’m going to give a slightly different picture. So when I got into this whole, you know, I was a corporate executive and I got into the whole startup world everybody was Oh, my God, Steve Jobs, he will never compromise on anything, he wants to create the best products, he will never compromise for something which is unclear and I see what’s happening I really have to ask the question saying what happened to singular focus believing in your product, believing in your designs, believing in yourself. How did you become an investment company, violent agreement.

But I’m going to talk about something different. Reliance has not delivered free cash flows for the last ten years. So there is no need for anybody to sit around and think that Reliance has a right to win. I think the bigger point which I’m trying to make out here is janta janardhan hai, they will decide what is a good product. If you’re delivering a good product that product will stick and I’m not convinced that somebody has the right to win. And again it’s not a comment about Reliance, I’m saying neither Reliance, neither Google, neither Paytm, nobody has a right to win, it’s up to you how you look at your competition, how you’re going to be fighting it out, that’s the second point. The third part and very important part at least from where I come I still believe that there is honesty and integrity. So for example the Reserve Bank of India I have such a high regard for Reserve Bank of India over the years I can guarantee that Reserve Bank of India is not going to roll over and just move out of the way and let somebody come in and take charge of a certain sector. There are people out there who have built this institution over a period of time and I do believe that those people will continue to operate with a certain level of integrity. You know, I might be proved wrong but this is the way at least I want to start on that topic.

Samidha:

Tarun, I want you to maybe give us a perspective from you being a VC while there’s been -- multiple people have said including Miten that why would Silver Lake or funds which have never really invested in India they’ve come in, it’s going to be it actually facilitates more investors to look at the India story. Is that so or actually there is concentration of too much of capital in one company along with a collective of sort being formed which is not so great for early stage companies or otherwise as well for people who are looking to raise money. And there are some specific examples, grocery, a few others where they have very visibly shown that they’ll be very aggressive and we know of companies which are not being able to raise because of the Reliance factor playing out?

Tarun:

Yeah. So I have a slightly different view so let me address three or four different points. I think the first thing that very few people recognize is world over some of the best companies that we all sort of use and know and respect largely are one-trick ponies. There are very few companies that it’s hard enough to build a single business line, having one company that will dominate telecom and payments and grocery and others - it’s not easy. Amazon was a retail company for two decades, it added AWS, it’s added a few other lines but these are very, very, very rare companies that have been able to crack more than one or two or three businesses.

So I think very often we forget that 90 percent of the more successful businesses in the world are still one-trick ponies. They’ve figured out one thing and they do it really well. I don’t see a reason at least till today to believe that Reliance will be a very different story. They will crack one or two things and they’ll do it really well, the rest of the stuff they will take their own time to figure out. It’s not so easy and India is not an easy country to operate in, so that’s number one.

I think number two when it comes to if I take – you know, you spoke about is it just policy, I don’t think it’s just policy. If I take a very different view from what Miten and Amrish have taken I think there’s an argument to say that all these investors have been waiting on the sidelines, they’re looking at India as the last of sort of large remaining Internet market. They actually don’t know, they’re like haan, bahot kuch chal ra hai, there’s a lot of competition, you know, startups keep getting funded, profitability, IPO, nothing is there, let me just invest in the index. And as far as I see I think a lot of these people have basically looked at it as optionality. They’ve said Jio is the index for Indian Internet, they’re the pipe, there will be multiple things that will flow through that pipe. If we’re part of the pipe we won’t lose money and then there’s an optionality for me to make money.

Is there a side benefit that there’s a toll that they feel they’re paying to get some favors who the hell knows. I mean the reality is none of us are in those rooms and those discussions to know what really went behind it. So I don’t think it’s as simplistic as a toll to get any favors or whatever it is I think our government is smart enough and at least they won’t do anything blatantly to the point you made on Whatsapp Pay. Will some of these things be seen with a more positive lens, I think that’s the way things happen and it may be that way, I don’t know.

But in my mind it is actually somebody betting on that index and saying if there is – so Alibaba and Tencent today if you take China, China has had about $3 trillion of internet market cap that was created in the last decade. One out of the $3 trillion went into two companies, Alibaba and Tencent. I think the call people is taking is that Jio is that Alibaba and Tencent of India and let me just play the market. There’s too much noise today, it’s all still very early, let me just come in and I’ll learn through my investment in Jio. And it’s a fairly safe investment, the Ambanis won’t lose his money.

Samidha:

And also they’re betting on the man, right.

I bring this discussion to an end with like quick 30 second overview from all of you guys, a quick summary of the way you personally have been able to gear yourself to face this in the last 6-8 months.

Miten:

You know, the one formula for me that’s been working is not to get overly excited or overly pessimistic with things too fast. I think we’re sitting in this environment where there is like a tremendous amount of bad news at one end and there is a tremendous amount of like up and down good news. I think that the world changes rapidly but doesn’t change so rapidly in so many things at once and so I think for me I read very widely so when things are optimistic I’m overly optimistic, when things are negative I’m overly negative. So working to be not that massively up and down, to become a bit more of a smooth curve, I’ve started to react a bit more slowly to things.

Samidha:

You’ve gone into the Zen mode.

Amrish:

I’ve actually been trying to break the two things into separate parts, right, one is work and I’m saying as work as a responsibility to what I do you got to keep adopting to change and what’s going to come and all of that, so that’s a good part. But I think the second part which I don’t want to do is 15 years from today when I look back at this period and the only thing which sticks in my mind is I did a lot of zoom calls then I’ll be so disappointed with life. Can you imagine somebody asking you, hey, you lived through the Spanish Flu, what did you do? I was on Zoom calls.

Samidha:

Quite ironical because we are on a Zoom call right now.

Amrish:

Yeah, can you imagine 25 years later somebody comes and asks you what was it during the Covid 19 crisis, I don’t know, I was on the Zoom calls. So I think I want to spend time in terms of what’s happening around the world, how people are reacting. So to Miten’s point I spend a lot of time on that and I try and completely take my mind away from work and work related activities. So, yeah, that’s a very conscious effort saying what did I learn from this.

Samidha:

Great. Tarun?

Tarun:

So I’ve actually been terrible, I’m guilty of doing exactly what Amrish said he doesn’t want to do. So unfortunately work life balance at least used to be a concept that we used to look forward to before the pandemic. I think the pandemic I’ve given up all hopes around work life balance because literally life is between your office, your desk at home and the bed and the desk back at home and the bed and so unfortunately it’s been a lot of that. But otherwise I think for me 2020 is about just surviving, I think anyone who comes out of this will come out stronger and that’s what I tell a lot of our portfolio founders saying that just focus on – like especially the ones who are obviously negatively hit is just focus on survival and anyone who comes out will be a winner.

Samidha:

Yeah, makes sense. Thank you, gentlemen, for taking out time and hopefully it should not take us another year and one more pandemic to get all of you and me together. Thanks so much. Sorry, Miten?

Miten:

I said no more pandemics, I’m opting out of that.

Tarun:

On that note thank you everyone. Really, really appreciate all of you taking out time and doing this. And, Samidha, thank you so much for moderating excellently.

Samidha:

Thank you. And we will continue the chat offline.

Amrish:

Thanks.

Miten:

Thank you, everyone.

Samidha:

Bye.