Rajinder Balaraman

I started life in an operating role- leading a sales team,  working on a brand relaunch and using data-science to drive pricing, advertising and trade-promotion decisions across categories.

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I then attended Harvard Business School in the early days of mobile internet. iPhone 3G had just launched and I got to observe Boston startups like Quattro (a mobile-ads company that Apple later acquired). Closer home, I was inspired by the stories of Naveen Tewari, another HBS alum, who had started a mobile ad-tech company in India, and Avnish Bajaj - also an alum who had earlier built and sold India’s most successful ecommerce company to-date. 

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I joined Z47 (then Matrix Partners India) end-2011, grateful to have the opportunity to contribute to founders and to make an impact in India. This was a few years before 3G and smartphones launched in India but an inflection point was surely somewhere around the corner. 13 years on, having worked across technological shifts, it is clear that India’s best founders are on par with the best in the world and that their level of unlocked ambition will fuel our companies for years to come.

Both markets are highly competitive and value-conscious- customers will go to great lengths to negotiate a “great deal” and American e-commerce customers too have taken to low-priced, unbranded products, just like in India.

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As an investor, however there are differences. India has a much broader investing canvas because technology-based business models are still able to capture share in digitally less mature segments of the economy. The U.S. is much more innovation-driven with large players in most sectors. That said, with AI, incumbents can be disrupted in all markets.

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Our networks at Z47 run deep in both markets and our mission is to support our founders to build large global companies.

As early investors, we get to work closely with founders from company inception. Whether it’s helping build your early team, finding a co-founder or solving a co-founder exit, navigating pivots to product-market-fit or your first few follow-on rounds, going public or evaluating a life-changing M&A offer, I’ve been on all these rodeos before with founders.

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We’re honest and don’t shy away from difficult conversations, but respect that ultimately, founders decide. 

India has seen about 25 IPOs from the startup ecosystem across technology and financial services, but 90% of these IPOs have happened after 2021. With less than 5% of total market-cap in India being accounted for by high-tech companies vs. 40%+ in the U.S., the future is very promising for tech IPOs in India. 

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Public markets in India are very profit-driven and require education on new-age business models. We don’t have a single software company of scale that’s gone public in India as of 2024, but the first few that do will find success given the demand for these themes and a large global market opportunity.

Building companies is really hard work, for most, it is their life’s mission. As a former operator and now having worked with founders who have had different outcomes, the most important quality in my view is empathy.

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Empathy for the customer, empathy for the highly-talented engineering leader you’re trying to hire into your young company and certainly empathy for the founder who, on a Ramen budget, is putting it all out there trying to redefine the future. You have to enjoy this work and I do. I spend more time on portfolio responsibilities by choice and many of my best opportunities come from founders I couldn't invest in but tried to help anyway. Technology is the greatest tool for change human society has ever had. Working with the best set of founders to build a nation we all want in the future is a privilege.

My learning stack: 'Empire' and 'GTD' podcasts for strategic insights paired with 'Mastery' for understanding excellence. 'A Gambling Man' offers lessons from Masa Son's journey of building Softbank.