India's Media & Entertainment industry is expected to grow to $55-70B by 2030 at 10-12% CAGR, led by OTT, Gaming, Animation and VFX. Our creator economy alone grew from $1.7B in 2016 to a whopping $9.7B in 2020. This has led to a parallel explosion in creator economy startups, which raised around $2.5B between 2018 and 2022.
What does the current investment landscape for media and entertainment startups in India appear like? What are the distinct characteristics of this industry? What makes the US market exceptional in terms of media consumption and production? What are some untapped opportunities for aspiring media founders in the creator economy web 3.0 era? Why are top creators like Ranveer Allahbadia, Tanmay Bhat, and Bhuvan Bam now investing in media startups?
We explore these questions with Kabir Kochhar from Audacity Venture Capital, Asia's first early-stage media-tech investment fund focusing on creator economy investors. We delve into the future of the global media landscape and its impact on the evolving creator economy.
If you are an investor, creator or founder of a media venture, you’d find this useful.
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Saikat Pyne: Hi, I'm Sekar marketer, creative and media nerd. Welcome to
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Saikat Pyne: the you incorporated podcast On this show, I catch up
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Saikat Pyne: with some of the most bad ass founders, business leaders
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Saikat Pyne: and content creators in the whole wide world. Whether you're
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Saikat Pyne: a marketer, creative or a budding founder, if you want
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Saikat Pyne: to build your brand your voice your way, you are
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Saikat Pyne: in the right place.
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Saikat Pyne: Join me on the you incorporated podcast and start building
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Saikat Pyne: your empire. Here we go.
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Saikat Pyne: Please join me in welcoming Kabir Kocher, the founder and
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Saikat Pyne: managing partner of Audacity. Venture Capital Asia's first ever early
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Saikat Pyne: stage Media Tech Investment Fund
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Saikat Pyne: Audacity is a global media fund spread across India and
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Saikat Pyne: the US.
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Saikat Pyne: KB's latest venture comes on the back of two successful
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Saikat Pyne: stints at Anel Ventures as a GP and investor at
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Saikat Pyne: the Glitch as an entrepreneur during his time at an hill,
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Saikat Pyne: he managed the India funds, focused on consumer and media
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Saikat Pyne: investments and generated multiple exits in a very short span
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Saikat Pyne: of time. Kabir is also a pioneer in forming the media.
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Saikat Pyne: Accel Anel Studios,
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Saikat Pyne: a consumer accelerator known as Urban I and an accelerator
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Saikat Pyne: focused on women entrepreneurs known as Athena in partnership with
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Saikat Pyne: Rana Abati. It's a pleasure for Lifetime to have him
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Saikat Pyne: on the show. Kabir, welcome to the guest roster of
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Saikat Pyne: the U Incorporated podcast.
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Kabir Kochhar: Thank you. It's good to be here, and it's good
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Kabir Kochhar: to speak with someone who himself is quite a media expert.
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Kabir Kochhar: So I think we can have a very free winning
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Kabir Kochhar: discussion and I'm looking forward.
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Saikat Pyne: Uh, that's very kind of here. The past couple of
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Saikat Pyne: years have marked a sea change in terms of what
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Saikat Pyne: we call media and the perception of media both traditional
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Saikat Pyne: versus digital. So how has the investment landscape evolved to
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Saikat Pyne: keep up with the evolution of media
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Kabir Kochhar: in the media ecosystem? Of course, the evolution is stark
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Kabir Kochhar: and it keeps evolving. And that is why a lot
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Kabir Kochhar: of people who are not maybe from the media ecosystem
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Kabir Kochhar: are reticent in taking a position in some of these places. Right,
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Kabir Kochhar: because that level of it's so changing so fast, you
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Kabir Kochhar: need to stay on top of it and do that right.
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Kabir Kochhar: And how we look at the media world is very simple, right?
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Kabir Kochhar: How can you get a piece of the attention economy
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Kabir Kochhar: of a user, whether that's and that's Moti to two ways.
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Kabir Kochhar: One is through advertising and the other is through entertainment.
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Kabir Kochhar: So when we look at media right, first of all,
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Kabir Kochhar: if I talk to someone who's not in the media ecosystem,
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Kabir Kochhar: I have to explain what is media technologies of our
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Kabir Kochhar: investments in our ecosystem
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Kabir Kochhar: and for us. I get all sorts of questions. Are
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Kabir Kochhar: you investing in films? Are you investing in TV shows?
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Kabir Kochhar: And they say No, we invest in media technologies. So
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Kabir Kochhar: when I look at the world, let's talk first about
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Kabir Kochhar: India and Asia, right countries, which there is low a pos.
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Kabir Kochhar: There's a huge scope of media consumption, adoption and we're
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Kabir Kochhar: playing on the volumes versus other markets, right? So in
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Kabir Kochhar: this area, we look at it more from the entertainment
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Kabir Kochhar: lens where we say, OK, what are the different ways
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Kabir Kochhar: we can really make money and what are proven ways
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Kabir Kochhar: that have been used to make money in this ecosystem.
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Kabir Kochhar: And in that I would say one is gaming, which
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Kabir Kochhar: is a massive, massive ecosystem, and gaming also has evolved
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Kabir Kochhar: more from a one way communication to now a two
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Kabir Kochhar: way space where you're able to obviously have so many
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Kabir Kochhar: nuances within that whether it's casual gaming to play gaming,
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Kabir Kochhar: game fire, all the different kind of things because it's
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Kabir Kochhar: taken up and obviously modernization through advertising and so on
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Kabir Kochhar: and other other sectors in this. So gaming has become
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Kabir Kochhar: a
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Kabir Kochhar: very massive segment for a consumption market like India. Even
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Kabir Kochhar: if the is very low, you're able to if you
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Kabir Kochhar: get 200 million users that serve with a significant number
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Kabir Kochhar: and if you add in things like gifting and so on,
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Kabir Kochhar: that's a massive area. The other is creator monetization. Now
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Kabir Kochhar: this is a global trend, but even more so in
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Kabir Kochhar: a country like India and some of the APA countries. Also,
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Kabir Kochhar: that's because
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Kabir Kochhar: even yourselves, right, I don't think maybe 15 years ago
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Kabir Kochhar: you would have have had the ability to build a
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Kabir Kochhar: podcast out like this. Also, from a cost perspective, from
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Kabir Kochhar: a convenience perspective and from a distribution perspective of getting
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Kabir Kochhar: your voice out to as many people as possible, right,
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Kabir Kochhar: those things have changed. All those little areas have come together,
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Kabir Kochhar: and the third finally is
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Kabir Kochhar: what we call content monetization, and this is the one
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Kabir Kochhar: that is most misunderstood, right?
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Kabir Kochhar: Most people's understanding of content. Modernization, as I said earlier,
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Kabir Kochhar: is whether it's television, film or at best it's, say,
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Kabir Kochhar: O TT or its production more on a production. For us,
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Kabir Kochhar: it's much more about saying that. OK, how can we
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Kabir Kochhar: look at how content is created, whether it's super short
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Kabir Kochhar: form content, whether it's long form content, whether it's middle
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Kabir Kochhar: of the road and how is content demonetized? Most importantly,
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Kabir Kochhar: how is it skilled, Right? Because in India putting money
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Kabir Kochhar: on content,
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Kabir Kochhar: you either do it through expansion of IP s, which
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Kabir Kochhar: means only the IP and going into new, emerging kind
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Kabir Kochhar: of sub segments and channels, whether it's me averse or
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Kabir Kochhar: at one extreme, or whether it's finding different ways, obviously,
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Kabir Kochhar: to modernise that through audio and other ways. And and
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Kabir Kochhar: obviously if you have an IP now the world we
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Kabir Kochhar: live in, if you look at the key dramas or
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Kabir Kochhar: what not, you know that if you have a really
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Kabir Kochhar: good IP, you have a potential of internationalising. That
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Kabir Kochhar: and as we've learned from something like a PC YouTube channel,
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Kabir Kochhar: where a significant part of the revenues come from a
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Kabir Kochhar: very small percentage of the overall listeners, which are essentially
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Kabir Kochhar: outside of India, right? Because the art Hooper user in
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Kabir Kochhar: India is great and obviously across the world, whether it's
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Kabir Kochhar: Korea or the US or the UK is much, much higher.
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Kabir Kochhar: So that's how we look at it. And this is
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Kabir Kochhar: only talking about the India's world. I'd say the global perspective, perspective,
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Kabir Kochhar: Or maybe when you cover that in subsequent
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Saikat Pyne: what are some of the quirks of investing in the
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Saikat Pyne: media sector? How is being a media investor fundamentally different
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Saikat Pyne: from being just another V c.
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Kabir Kochhar: See, from a global perspective, there have been so many changes.
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Kabir Kochhar: For instance,
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Kabir Kochhar: I was in the USA couple of weeks ago, and
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Kabir Kochhar: the biggest obsession that they have at least people in
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Kabir Kochhar: the media ecosystem that how do we miss out on Tiktok?
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Kabir Kochhar: Because up till now, historically, if we look at the
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Kabir Kochhar: media world that has been America's soft power right, they
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Kabir Kochhar: had a very strong control on channels. Whether it's Google,
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Kabir Kochhar: whether it's Facebook, meta now or any other channels snap.
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Kabir Kochhar: And then suddenly, out of the blue comes this Chinese platform,
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Kabir Kochhar: which suddenly how is it that the centre of influence
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Kabir Kochhar: isn't in America, even though the consumers might a lot
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Kabir Kochhar: of the consumers may still be right, So that is
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Kabir Kochhar: the That's where we're looking at right now. Now what
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Kabir Kochhar: happened as a
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Kabir Kochhar: from a macro perspective, we know on a tech eco
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Kabir Kochhar: of this year has been terrible. And it's like marking
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Kabir Kochhar: a large shift in how the consumption behaviours are changing
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Kabir Kochhar: and where the users are going. Right So already I
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Kabir Kochhar: can tell you right now, when you talk to Gen
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Kabir Kochhar: Z users, a lot of their focus is on more
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Kabir Kochhar: about
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Kabir Kochhar: how do I communicate with others, right? And how do
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Kabir Kochhar: I leverage media as a two-way stream? And this could
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Kabir Kochhar: be through something like a roblox in the near future,
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Kabir Kochhar: it could be through the better verse, which is a
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Kabir Kochhar: natural evolution. Now, from an investment perspective, it's very important
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Kabir Kochhar: to understand. First of all, put your finger on not
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Kabir Kochhar: where it is right now, but where it is going
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Kabir Kochhar: over the next six
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Kabir Kochhar: months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months and really take
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Kabir Kochhar: advantage of that. So there has to you have to
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Kabir Kochhar: have your your tentacles deep in the media ecosystem across both,
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Kabir Kochhar: whether whether it's advertising, whether it's in the entertainment sector
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Kabir Kochhar: and so on and so forth, or whether it's even
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Kabir Kochhar: media tools which are the underlying place of what's happening.
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Kabir Kochhar: As you saw from this acquisition of Big Buy Adobe,
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Kabir Kochhar: who paid 50 x on the revenue
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Kabir Kochhar: insane. As any investor tell you, that's like a huge pain.
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Kabir Kochhar: But they did that because their whole it was an
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Kabir Kochhar: existential crisis because they were being somewhat disrupted in that manner.
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Kabir Kochhar: So the idea is to understand, Where will the world
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Kabir Kochhar: be three or five years from now more than it
00:08:04
Kabir Kochhar: is right now. And that's all in general, we should
00:08:05
Kabir Kochhar: look at that. But to do that, you have to
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Kabir Kochhar: have that deep understanding of where we came from and
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Kabir Kochhar: where we go.
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Kabir Kochhar: And
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Saikat Pyne: what does it mean for the aspiring founder coming to
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Saikat Pyne: you versus going to another V C. How can you
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Saikat Pyne: help an aspiring founder nail product market fit better than
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Saikat Pyne: just another V C?
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Kabir Kochhar: This is the point of our existence, right? The fact
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Kabir Kochhar: that we are a very sharp sector focused investor comes
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Kabir Kochhar: in use in two ways. One is that we are
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Kabir Kochhar: founder obsessed,
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Kabir Kochhar: and a lot of people may say this, but as
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Kabir Kochhar: is evidenced by anyone you may speak to in terms
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Kabir Kochhar: of our past portfolio and current portfolio companies,
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Kabir Kochhar: the centre of our world are the founders, and that
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Kabir Kochhar: is very important to understand because we know that there
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Kabir Kochhar: has to be a certain sense of empathy in the
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Kabir Kochhar: journey of being a founder. Because we have been founders ourselves.
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Kabir Kochhar: That is a very important point to know the second
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Kabir Kochhar: thing is from a technical perspective. Because of our backgrounds,
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Kabir Kochhar: because of our networks, both global and Indian, we are
00:09:04
Kabir Kochhar: able to truly help that company go from at least
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Kabir Kochhar: extra tennis. In our view,
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Kabir Kochhar: we would not obviously invest in that company if we
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Kabir Kochhar: didn't see that visible. If you're not going that much,
00:09:14
Kabir Kochhar: leveraging our networks and our connections to really help that
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Kabir Kochhar: company go to the next level is something which is
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Kabir Kochhar: very critical to our thing. And honestly, if we don't
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Kabir Kochhar: see ourselves helping that portfolio company, we won't invest in it,
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Kabir Kochhar: at least in the early stages, because in the early
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Kabir Kochhar: stages that amount of help is needed. I can tell
00:09:30
Kabir Kochhar: you the concentration of your efforts are possibly for a
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Kabir Kochhar: 6 to 12
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Kabir Kochhar: month period where it's maximum where you're putting an all
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Kabir Kochhar: you can do right. And after that, the startup itself
00:09:40
Kabir Kochhar: will say this. I don't need you for this, but
00:09:42
Kabir Kochhar: help me with smaller things here and there or connect
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Kabir Kochhar: me to the CEO of of some a network or
00:09:47
Kabir Kochhar: whatever it is, right? So the requirements also change. So
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Kabir Kochhar: for us, when we look at investing, at least are
00:09:52
Kabir Kochhar: we building our portfolio? We look, we obviously investing from
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Kabir Kochhar: C to series a sorry C to Series B, whereas
00:09:58
Kabir Kochhar: C and C investments are very hands on,
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Kabir Kochhar: and a Series V investments are because of good founders
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Kabir Kochhar: who have connected us to other founders. Because of our
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Kabir Kochhar: existing relationships, we are able to identify deals where we
00:10:09
Kabir Kochhar: can come in at either a discount to where it's
00:10:12
Kabir Kochhar: going on or at some very perceptible significant value for
00:10:16
Kabir Kochhar: our investors. Also, I guess coming back to your question
00:10:19
Kabir Kochhar: for us two things right? One is the understanding how
00:10:22
Kabir Kochhar: of how they think the second is
00:10:25
Kabir Kochhar: the strategic input, which you can put in truly because
00:10:28
Kabir Kochhar: I can tell you honestly, they are founders we invested,
00:10:30
Kabir Kochhar: and these these are companies which have been backed by
00:10:33
Kabir Kochhar: some of the biggest V C, and I'm not blowing
00:10:35
Kabir Kochhar: my own horn here. But they have said that you're
00:10:37
Kabir Kochhar: the only guys who actually understand what the hell we do,
00:10:39
Kabir Kochhar: and it's very refreshing. It feels amazing. It feels it's
00:10:42
Kabir Kochhar: a validation for me. And you know what my ultimate
00:10:45
Kabir Kochhar: validation will be that may be in F two or
00:10:47
Kabir Kochhar: F three, those those in those startups when they're successful,
00:10:51
Kabir Kochhar: they'll invest my fund
00:10:52
Kabir Kochhar: because there is no better way of proving that you
00:10:55
Kabir Kochhar: made it. Really? When the same people you give Michael
00:10:57
Kabir Kochhar: still like you enough to be able to put money
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Kabir Kochhar: in your fund?
00:11:00
Saikat Pyne: Absolutely. You spoke about gaming. What are the couple of
00:11:03
Saikat Pyne: hot sectors that you see that you'd want to invest
00:11:07
Saikat Pyne: in when it comes to startups building products out of India,
00:11:10
Saikat Pyne: what
00:11:10
Kabir Kochhar: we are looking at right now? So when I had
00:11:12
Kabir Kochhar: spoken earlier, I spoke about the India opportunity with the
00:11:14
Kabir Kochhar: consumption market is India.
00:11:16
Kabir Kochhar: Now let me zoom out a little bit and talk
00:11:19
Kabir Kochhar: about the consumption market, which is the globe, the globe,
00:11:22
Kabir Kochhar: and when I say the globe, I mainly mean the
00:11:23
Kabir Kochhar: US because in terms of the revenue generation maximum comes
00:11:28
Kabir Kochhar: from there and then in Western Europe to a smaller extent.
00:11:30
Kabir Kochhar: But that's broadly it. Because when we talk about Indian
00:11:33
Kabir Kochhar: or Asian entrepreneurs building for the world, what we're really
00:11:36
Kabir Kochhar: doing is that we're sitting in a country like India
00:11:39
Kabir Kochhar: where we have so many users. You can validate your
00:11:41
Kabir Kochhar: ideas so well at at such a low cost base,
00:11:45
Kabir Kochhar: and when that works, then you can scale it up
00:11:46
Kabir Kochhar: in the U. SI was talking to someone about this
00:11:48
Kabir Kochhar: the other day like there's a There was a startup
00:11:51
Kabir Kochhar: of us, which was maybe doing an enterprise startup in
00:11:53
Kabir Kochhar: the media space. They were doing maybe a piece in
00:11:56
Kabir Kochhar: India that exact same product, exact same. Everything was ported
00:12:00
Kabir Kochhar: to the US, and they're doing $2 million at the
00:12:01
Kabir Kochhar: same time. So think about a a 15 16 on
00:12:05
Kabir Kochhar: of what they do without changing anything. Of course, it's
00:12:08
Kabir Kochhar: important to know how to sell in the US.
00:12:10
Kabir Kochhar: That's an extremely important skill, but we can talk about
00:12:12
Kabir Kochhar: that separately, but coming back to your question about opportunities, right? Uh,
00:12:16
Kabir Kochhar: so from a global perspective, we are seeing tech Tech
00:12:20
Kabir Kochhar: and this media sa world. When I say media sa
00:12:23
Kabir Kochhar: I'm talking about it could be cloud video editing in
00:12:26
Kabir Kochhar: the media ecosystem could be something around the c r
00:12:28
Kabir Kochhar: M optimisation. It could be deep linking something which I
00:12:31
Kabir Kochhar: know somebody is working for. I
00:12:32
Saikat Pyne: don't know who that somebody is. No clue.
00:12:36
Kabir Kochhar: A lot of these things are really under index and
00:12:40
Kabir Kochhar: you see
00:12:41
Kabir Kochhar: that, especially when I talk about something like a tech
00:12:43
Kabir Kochhar: and march. They're so technical in nature that the kind
00:12:47
Kabir Kochhar: of people who know very well about it are either
00:12:49
Kabir Kochhar: people from the Big Four or five media organisations right
00:12:51
Kabir Kochhar: deeply or from the ad tech world. So when you
00:12:55
Kabir Kochhar: look at racing and racing to are not, it's very
00:12:58
Kabir Kochhar: under from a global perspective at and martech. Now what?
00:13:01
Kabir Kochhar: Where it is not under Perry is the later stages,
00:13:04
Kabir Kochhar: which is when they've proven their revenue model and making
00:13:07
Kabir Kochhar: a bunch of money. Because these companies want this so
00:13:09
Kabir Kochhar: they're not. They're mostly profitable when they don't pay the money.
00:13:12
Kabir Kochhar: That's when the PE guys come in, right. They'll come
00:13:13
Kabir Kochhar: in and say they go up so I can switch
00:13:16
Kabir Kochhar: back to English. You're in a 300 million valuation now.
00:13:19
Kabir Kochhar: I will take you to a three billion valuation, and
00:13:21
Kabir Kochhar: they do that.
00:13:21
Kabir Kochhar: But early stage, very few people understand that. How do
00:13:24
Kabir Kochhar: I take this guy from a 10 2030 million valuation?
00:13:26
Kabir Kochhar: Further Right? So if you're building something uniquely differentiated at tech,
00:13:31
Kabir Kochhar: great time because as soon as you prove your product
00:13:33
Kabir Kochhar: market fit, we are there to help you scale up.
00:13:35
Kabir Kochhar: Same thing in March March There. It's like a such
00:13:39
Kabir Kochhar: a misunderstood space. But essentially, what is March right? It
00:13:42
Kabir Kochhar: save the marketing
00:13:43
Kabir Kochhar: in the individual ecosystem? How can I whether it's a
00:13:46
Kabir Kochhar: mail chain, whether it's a company which is trying to
00:13:48
Kabir Kochhar: sell to what's it? How can I make a product
00:13:51
Kabir Kochhar: which is
00:13:52
Kabir Kochhar: helping sell Indian companies to US right through an enterprise product?
00:13:56
Kabir Kochhar: So there are a lot of little things like that
00:13:57
Kabir Kochhar: and which are People are not thinking about enough right now,
00:14:00
Kabir Kochhar: and the other thing I can tell you being in
00:14:01
Kabir Kochhar: India or in the rest of Asia, we are at
00:14:03
Kabir Kochhar: least a couple of years ahead in terms of the
00:14:05
Kabir Kochhar: ability to experiment, to do things which will eventually be
00:14:08
Kabir Kochhar: of use in the US of the Western world And
00:14:10
Kabir Kochhar: a simple example, right? Yeah, O TT s right. We
00:14:13
Kabir Kochhar: are so far ahead in terms of advertising based O
00:14:17
Kabir Kochhar: TT s, whether it's in. You wanna call it E
00:14:19
Kabir Kochhar: v o D. You want to call it?
00:14:20
Kabir Kochhar: I support it. We're gonna keep changing names, depending what
00:14:22
Kabir Kochhar: area you are. But hot stars proved to us that
00:14:26
Kabir Kochhar: you can make a lot of money and live by
00:14:29
Kabir Kochhar: the way. Live sports is one of the biggest things
00:14:31
Kabir Kochhar: for what it is. What is the biggest thing right
00:14:33
Kabir Kochhar: now in the US? Which people are talking about exactly
00:14:35
Kabir Kochhar: where we were in India with cricket four years ago.
00:14:38
Kabir Kochhar: Five years with Hot star? Now I was talking about OK,
00:14:40
Kabir Kochhar: NFL pay, get Amazon prime. I think I I believe
00:14:42
Kabir Kochhar: Amazon Prime has Monday night football ball or something like that.
00:14:44
Kabir Kochhar: So they are lagging.
00:14:46
Kabir Kochhar: So what tools work here to even enable that? No,
00:14:49
Kabir Kochhar: it's not. It's not a joke to that. India. Pakistan
00:14:51
Kabir Kochhar: matched it a 1.1 per 1.5 per live simultaneous live
00:14:55
Kabir Kochhar: streaming users. That was a massive bomb, considering Yeah, insane,
00:14:59
Kabir Kochhar: right So, um, if you take that and say Look,
00:15:01
Kabir Kochhar: look at the underlying tools which made this possible, can
00:15:05
Kabir Kochhar: we pick those up and start selling that in the US?
00:15:07
Kabir Kochhar: So those things become interesting and important? Also, other broad
00:15:11
Kabir Kochhar: blue ocean opportunities you want to talk about Web three
00:15:14
Kabir Kochhar: as a distribution channel is huge.
00:15:17
Kabir Kochhar: We're not there yet, but that's why you need to
00:15:18
Kabir Kochhar: start building right. You don't want to be the last
00:15:20
Kabir Kochhar: guy there building it. Or also look at certain media
00:15:23
Kabir Kochhar: infrastructure tools, which are enabled by elements of that. I'm
00:15:26
Kabir Kochhar: not saying go all in that space, but can you
00:15:28
Kabir Kochhar: use Blockchain with fast emerging Blockchain to say, Listen, let's
00:15:31
Kabir Kochhar: solve this problem of ad fraud, for instance, Or let's
00:15:36
Kabir Kochhar: see how video serving can be better served by utilising
00:15:40
Kabir Kochhar: distributed network or decentralised networks to
00:15:43
Kabir Kochhar: let it run off other people's computers. And and which
00:15:46
Kabir Kochhar: is not an old idea, by the way. But the
00:15:48
Kabir Kochhar: new aspect to this is how can I make sure
00:15:50
Kabir Kochhar: it's secure? How can I make sure that if I'm
00:15:52
Kabir Kochhar: sitting at home, my laptop is there? My WiFi is there.
00:15:54
Kabir Kochhar: It's not being used. How can I make sure that I,
00:15:56
Kabir Kochhar: as an end user, is compensated, whether it's some smart
00:16:00
Kabir Kochhar: co economics and so on and so forth. So that's one.
00:16:02
Kabir Kochhar: Of course, gaming is a whole world where there's potential.
00:16:05
Kabir Kochhar: But what I would try to tell people is that
00:16:07
Kabir Kochhar: don't try to build the next big game. There's too
00:16:09
Kabir Kochhar: much risk in that.
00:16:11
Kabir Kochhar: Try to build the ancillary world around. Can I build
00:16:15
Kabir Kochhar: a platform router? And a portfolio company was earlier from earlier.
00:16:19
Kabir Kochhar: He did a phenomenal job job of building India's largest
00:16:22
Kabir Kochhar: live streaming platform for mobile gaming, right, essentially, what Twitch
00:16:25
Kabir Kochhar: was doing for a desktop in the US and Western countries,
00:16:27
Kabir Kochhar: Other places and here also. But no one really thought
00:16:30
Kabir Kochhar: to do it for the mobile space and this guy,
00:16:32
Kabir Kochhar: right place, right time
00:16:33
Kabir Kochhar: saw the opportunity and executed phenomenally, and that's how I
00:16:36
Kabir Kochhar: built it up. Of course, having said that, building a
00:16:38
Kabir Kochhar: platform is probably the hardest thing to do for anyone.
00:16:42
Kabir Kochhar: So I have a tonne of respect for whoever tries
00:16:44
Kabir Kochhar: to do that,
00:16:46
Saikat Pyne: Absolutely. But tell me, Kabir, what's about the US that
00:16:50
Saikat Pyne: makes it in some ways, the JI market? What's different
00:16:54
Saikat Pyne: about the US because there are countries where audiences have
00:16:59
Saikat Pyne: money to pay. But what's so special about the US?
00:17:01
Saikat Pyne: We're
00:17:02
Kabir Kochhar: talking about a country of
00:17:04
Kabir Kochhar: 270 80 million people where the spending power as you
00:17:07
Kabir Kochhar: already covered is very much there. But I think there
00:17:10
Kabir Kochhar: is a certain openness of at ease of doing business,
00:17:14
Kabir Kochhar: which
00:17:15
Kabir Kochhar: is not as easily available pretty much anywhere. Most place
00:17:18
Kabir Kochhar: are protectionist. Most companies, businesses in America want to get
00:17:22
Kabir Kochhar: Shaked done right, And, uh, at the end of the day,
00:17:26
Kabir Kochhar: we in India through a childhood we've always the concept of,
00:17:31
Kabir Kochhar: is why we have so many successful
00:17:34
Kabir Kochhar: our heads of large companies in the US. Why we
00:17:38
Kabir Kochhar: have people doing so successfully because we know how to
00:17:41
Kabir Kochhar: make it work right. And that attitude is very important.
00:17:44
Kabir Kochhar: If you can make it work and if you're driving value,
00:17:46
Kabir Kochhar: no one's gonna come anyway. That's one more of an
00:17:49
Kabir Kochhar: essential kind of thing.
00:17:51
Kabir Kochhar: Look, other than that the systems are so well built
00:17:54
Kabir Kochhar: right through this time, and America has this is talking historically,
00:17:59
Kabir Kochhar: also right. Think about how any sporting event anything was
00:18:03
Kabir Kochhar: structured in the US. There's baseball, then there's basketball, then
00:18:07
Kabir Kochhar: there's something else something else. You're never sitting on a
00:18:11
Kabir Kochhar: random evening and having nothing to watch.
00:18:14
Kabir Kochhar: So the world is built historically from a consumption perspective.
00:18:18
Kabir Kochhar: Consumption obviously means a lot of other things, but in
00:18:20
Kabir Kochhar: this case, I'm talking about media consumption. And that you
00:18:23
Kabir Kochhar: will notice, has always evolved because people keep complaining that oh,
00:18:26
Kabir Kochhar: from aeons has complained. Oh, radios and V. Everyone said
00:18:29
Kabir Kochhar: people are spending too much time on private television. Then
00:18:31
Kabir Kochhar: people say people are spending too much time on computers,
00:18:34
Kabir Kochhar: too much time on their cellphones Now it's gonna be
00:18:36
Kabir Kochhar: too much time in virtual worlds. So the consumption is
00:18:40
Kabir Kochhar: not going anywhere. And it's been geared for that.
00:18:43
Kabir Kochhar: And the other thing is large. You know what really
00:18:45
Kabir Kochhar: irks me. And what makes me sad is that why
00:18:48
Kabir Kochhar: hasn't the next forget billion dollar next $50 billion 100
00:18:53
Kabir Kochhar: billion dollar media enterprise come from India? We have one
00:18:55
Kabir Kochhar: from China. Now can you imagine a closed economy like
00:18:57
Kabir Kochhar: China Have you come up with that? But still, most
00:18:59
Kabir Kochhar: of everything is there, right, because the size of the market,
00:19:03
Kabir Kochhar: the size of the sub industries, each of them can
00:19:06
Kabir Kochhar: support that ecosystem. So one of our objectives is to
00:19:10
Kabir Kochhar: try to, hopefully in the new new media world, find
00:19:12
Kabir Kochhar: a company which is in India, which is an Asian
00:19:14
Kabir Kochhar: company which is able to kind of take that mountain
00:19:17
Kabir Kochhar: of becoming a global media company. There's nothing stopping it
00:19:19
Kabir Kochhar: from now with these boundaries. And and like I said,
00:19:21
Kabir Kochhar: Tiktok is the best example of actually proving that
00:19:25
Saikat Pyne: absolutely, how is selling in the US fundamentally different from
00:19:28
Saikat Pyne: selling a product in Southeast Asian market? Keeping
00:19:31
Kabir Kochhar: aside the technical aspect of whatever you're selling, what's more
00:19:35
Kabir Kochhar: important is understanding the cultural context that applies even in
00:19:38
Kabir Kochhar: Southeast Asia, for that matter. But it applies even more
00:19:40
Kabir Kochhar: in America because America is a little bit more. It's
00:19:43
Kabir Kochhar: not purely transactional. It's relationship driven. There is a certain
00:19:47
Kabir Kochhar: comfort you have to build. First of all, that you're
00:19:49
Kabir Kochhar: not going to be a fly by night, that you
00:19:51
Kabir Kochhar: come and promises yourself. Somebody take the money and then
00:19:53
Kabir Kochhar: you've never seen again. So that distance barrier has to
00:19:56
Kabir Kochhar: be bridged. Whether that's bridged through cultural context, whether it's
00:19:59
Kabir Kochhar: bridged through getting someone who is living in the US
00:20:02
Kabir Kochhar: or who is an American who is based there to
00:20:04
Kabir Kochhar: make sure that you're not. You're you're there, you're not
00:20:07
Kabir Kochhar: going anywhere. That's the first thing because you cannot do
00:20:09
Kabir Kochhar: it remotely. You need to have some presence in the US,
00:20:11
Kabir Kochhar: which is why it gets harder or it's a market.
00:20:13
Kabir Kochhar: People decide to pick on what's their scale and again, fundamentally,
00:20:17
Kabir Kochhar: it's open for innovation. It's open for change. The country
00:20:21
Kabir Kochhar: is built on immigration, and and that's why you're able
00:20:25
Kabir Kochhar: to find a lot more opportunities. Absolutely.
00:20:28
Saikat Pyne: Let's dial it back from how the industry is shaping
00:20:32
Saikat Pyne: up more to the unit startup level. As a media investor,
00:20:37
Saikat Pyne: what do you look for in investing companies? In each
00:20:41
Saikat Pyne: of the subcategories you mentioned the gaming, The fact three
00:20:44
Saikat Pyne: at each stage
00:20:45
Saikat Pyne: and you're investing because I'm sure some of the metrics
00:20:48
Saikat Pyne: are going to be the same. But in the media,
00:20:51
Saikat Pyne: you are also looking at certain metrics in terms of
00:20:54
Saikat Pyne: time of consumption, the amount of time spent on the
00:20:57
Saikat Pyne: platform so on and so forth that might not be
00:20:59
Saikat Pyne: the same of, let's say, transactional platforms. It's a
00:21:02
Kabir Kochhar: big question, but let me start with the stages first
00:21:05
Kabir Kochhar: because some of those things are agnostic to the category
00:21:08
Kabir Kochhar: of startups.
00:21:10
Kabir Kochhar: So let's just break it for ease of understanding. Break
00:21:12
Kabir Kochhar: it up into early stage and later stage. If I'm
00:21:14
Kabir Kochhar: an early stage investor which say I'm putting in anywhere
00:21:18
Kabir Kochhar: from 100 K to 500 K in a startup
00:21:23
Kabir Kochhar: $2 million valuation, what am I doing that right? I'm
00:21:26
Kabir Kochhar: looking at the founder. I'm looking at the founder. I'm
00:21:28
Kabir Kochhar: looking what the person has done in the past. I'm
00:21:30
Kabir Kochhar: looking what their vision is. I'm looking to see if
00:21:32
Kabir Kochhar: the timing and the size of the opportunity is is
00:21:36
Kabir Kochhar: something which is there I'm looking at. Is there
00:21:39
Kabir Kochhar: anything which I can pick up on because you don't
00:21:41
Kabir Kochhar: have much data to work with, right? Anything showing me
00:21:44
Kabir Kochhar: early stickiness in that business, I need something. I need
00:21:48
Kabir Kochhar: one of those things to work for me. And most importantly,
00:21:50
Kabir Kochhar: is it the right time to build this business? Because
00:21:52
Kabir Kochhar: the good ideas are good ideas, but they may not
00:21:55
Kabir Kochhar: be as relevant now, but they may be more relevant
00:21:57
Kabir Kochhar: five years later or two years later. Case in point
00:22:00
Kabir Kochhar: is a lot of the Metaverse plays and whatnot right now,
00:22:02
Kabir Kochhar: I will probably not invest in them. But you tell
00:22:05
Kabir Kochhar: me a year later, two year later when there are
00:22:06
Kabir Kochhar: more users in eco that I might So that's one
00:22:09
Kabir Kochhar: thing
00:22:09
Kabir Kochhar: on the late stage. What changes
00:22:12
Kabir Kochhar: is that you now have more data to play with.
00:22:16
Kabir Kochhar: You have revenues, hopefully right. Or at least some consumption metrics.
00:22:20
Kabir Kochhar: And you have understand where the company is going. You
00:22:25
Kabir Kochhar: have some product market fit to work.
00:22:27
Kabir Kochhar: So now my job is to say, OK, do these
00:22:30
Kabir Kochhar: metrics hold? Like, for instance, if a company has, I
00:22:35
Kabir Kochhar: don't know, say that they have an article of supposing
00:22:37
Kabir Kochhar: this company is selling a video commerce and they have
00:22:41
Kabir Kochhar: a cap of ₹200 and their their N TV is
00:22:44
Kabir Kochhar: ₹800 now. Sure, you're making revenues of, say, hypothetically. You're
00:22:48
Kabir Kochhar: making revenues of $2345 million. Does that ratio of 200
00:22:55
Kabir Kochhar: to 800 LTV does that hold
00:22:58
Kabir Kochhar: at scale Very important to understand, because we have model
00:23:02
Kabir Kochhar: at scale, it's very important to understand. And, um,
00:23:07
Kabir Kochhar: what are the marginal improvements that company could do to
00:23:09
Kabir Kochhar: get to a certain level level of profitability.
00:23:12
Kabir Kochhar: What are the adjacent C in that business model, which
00:23:15
Kabir Kochhar: the person can grow into to get to a larger scale?
00:23:19
Kabir Kochhar: And what are the exit potentials now? When I look
00:23:22
Kabir Kochhar: at a company, I say I'm putting money at X.
00:23:24
Kabir Kochhar: I should have a visibility on how this company can
00:23:27
Kabir Kochhar: get to go to 10, and I know it will
00:23:29
Kabir Kochhar: have bumps up downs, whatever right? But there should be
00:23:30
Kabir Kochhar: something knowing where this guy to go to can go
00:23:33
Kabir Kochhar: to 10. But when I'm looking at a little bit
00:23:35
Kabir Kochhar: later stage, I'm like, Let me look where this guy
00:23:37
Kabir Kochhar: can borrow five X But let me see what I
00:23:40
Kabir Kochhar: will have with that next round Investor. When he tells me, Hey,
00:23:44
Kabir Kochhar: are you putting in some a follow one check. If
00:23:47
Kabir Kochhar: I say no, the company is in trouble.
00:23:49
Kabir Kochhar: If I say yes, then why am I saying yes,
00:23:52
Kabir Kochhar: then and look, It's an inexact science, right, but at
00:23:55
Kabir Kochhar: least you can work your way to trying to understand
00:23:58
Kabir Kochhar: where it could be. So those are some of the
00:24:00
Kabir Kochhar: things we look at. That's from a, I guess, stage subcategory.
00:24:03
Kabir Kochhar: There's a lot of stuff. But let's start with, say,
00:24:06
Kabir Kochhar: the toughest thing of all right if I'm looking at
00:24:08
Kabir Kochhar: a platform, which the reason I keep talking about platforms
00:24:11
Kabir Kochhar: because media platforms are really great, right? If you can
00:24:14
Kabir Kochhar: build one, make a shit load of money,
00:24:16
Kabir Kochhar: but making it the the failure, it is more than
00:24:19
Kabir Kochhar: anything else. So if I would look at, say, a
00:24:21
Kabir Kochhar: media platform, whether it's like a video commerce, it could
00:24:24
Kabir Kochhar: be some kind of social media. It could be a
00:24:26
Kabir Kochhar: better word. Could be anything else I'm looking at. How
00:24:29
Kabir Kochhar: much does it cost me to acquire a user? And
00:24:32
Kabir Kochhar: how can I get what's my blended cost? What are
00:24:34
Kabir Kochhar: the different hacks I can do to acquire users cheaply?
00:24:37
Kabir Kochhar: What did LinkedIn do back in the day when they
00:24:39
Kabir Kochhar: what was their hack? Their hack was to? Basically, when
00:24:41
Kabir Kochhar: you sign up, they would have access to your address
00:24:43
Kabir Kochhar: book and they would blast. And that and that was
00:24:45
Kabir Kochhar: their hack of acquiring
00:24:46
Kabir Kochhar: amazingly cheap right, getting old multi user and network effects. What,
00:24:51
Kabir Kochhar: is there something that the company can do in that? What,
00:24:53
Kabir Kochhar: is there something differentiated versus Don't tell me that I'm
00:24:56
Kabir Kochhar: gonna spend extra piece on Facebook and y on networks,
00:25:00
Kabir Kochhar: and this is what I'll get to because shit will happen.
00:25:02
Kabir Kochhar: You all the the the revenue, the the the the
00:25:04
Kabir Kochhar: cost of acquisition can increase. And a lot of a
00:25:06
Kabir Kochhar: lot of things can come in the way. Right? So, first,
00:25:09
Kabir Kochhar: is that second one? What are you doing to your customers?
00:25:12
Kabir Kochhar: Very important. Retention is very important. Where are you at
00:25:14
Kabir Kochhar: M M six? Are you at a 25% M six retention?
00:25:19
Kabir Kochhar: That's amazing, by the way. That's a really good number
00:25:20
Kabir Kochhar: to have. So retention is important.
00:25:23
Kabir Kochhar: And also how are you balancing out your demanded supply metrics? So,
00:25:27
Kabir Kochhar: for instance, how do you ensure that if it's an
00:25:31
Kabir Kochhar: advertising back platform, you have enough advertiser platform? Yet you
00:25:33
Kabir Kochhar: have enough users engaging with the contents to ensure that
00:25:36
Kabir Kochhar: adviser again. So it's a that chicken and like thing.
00:25:38
Kabir Kochhar: So that's just taking an example of that.
00:25:41
Kabir Kochhar: Let's say, changing tack a little bit, right? Let's say
00:25:44
Kabir Kochhar: I talk a little bit more about s oriented world
00:25:47
Kabir Kochhar: in the media ecosystem, which is a little bit different
00:25:49
Kabir Kochhar: because it's not direct consumption more. Most of the time
00:25:51
Kabir Kochhar: in media starts. You talking about enterprise sales, or at least, uh,
00:25:54
Kabir Kochhar: prosumer or something like that? Right
00:25:57
Kabir Kochhar: where I would look at saying that. OK, how? What
00:25:59
Kabir Kochhar: is your cycle of converting a large core right? What
00:26:03
Kabir Kochhar: is the process? How do you go about it? And
00:26:04
Kabir Kochhar: what is the potential of you doing this? Is it
00:26:06
Kabir Kochhar: only based on networks, or are you actually providing a
00:26:09
Kabir Kochhar: product which is saving them time and or money?
00:26:12
Kabir Kochhar: And I know what I'm saying Sounds a little generic,
00:26:15
Kabir Kochhar: but these are very critical things which are relevant to
00:26:18
Kabir Kochhar: to the company you would be evaluating. It's funny how
00:26:20
Kabir Kochhar: people might have to gloss over some of those things, right? Yeah,
00:26:23
Kabir Kochhar: so that those are some of the things I think.
00:26:24
Kabir Kochhar: And obviously we can go at it much more once
00:26:27
Kabir Kochhar: we start talking. Maybe at a time in the future,
00:26:29
Kabir Kochhar: when we talk about a specific company and so on
00:26:32
Kabir Kochhar: and so forth or a specific
00:26:33
Saikat Pyne: category and we can take it from there.
00:26:35
Saikat Pyne: Sure, you led me on to my next question, which
00:26:38
Saikat Pyne: is what's your take on investing in loss making
00:26:41
Kabir Kochhar: startups? It's a good time to ask this question. It's
00:26:43
Kabir Kochhar: funny because I remember maybe last year at this time
00:26:46
Kabir Kochhar: or maybe a year and a half ago, there were
00:26:48
Kabir Kochhar: all these big v CS talking about how they were
00:26:51
Kabir Kochhar: priding themselves on.
00:26:52
Kabir Kochhar: We don't give them 48 hours. We do deal in
00:26:54
Kabir Kochhar: 24 hours. We will get you your food in eight
00:26:57
Kabir Kochhar: minutes and five minutes. All that is obviously, that's in
00:27:00
Kabir Kochhar: line with market cycles. So now suddenly anyone you talk to,
00:27:03
Kabir Kochhar: they're like, No, we are. We are only looking for
00:27:05
Kabir Kochhar: profitable companies. You have to have mid point somewhere. So look,
00:27:09
Kabir Kochhar: my view is that it's always been from the beginning
00:27:12
Kabir Kochhar: that they the entry point of your when we're putting
00:27:15
Kabir Kochhar: money in the company, has to make sense for you
00:27:17
Kabir Kochhar: to make money right. That's very important
00:27:19
Kabir Kochhar: now, coming to the point of investing in companies which
00:27:22
Kabir Kochhar: a the onset, merely making losses.
00:27:25
Kabir Kochhar: I have no issues with that, but they should be
00:27:27
Kabir Kochhar: a some path to profitability or some path to saying that. Listen,
00:27:32
Kabir Kochhar: I'm making a losses because I am actually in a
00:27:34
Kabir Kochhar: monopolistic business where, for instance, if I get 30 40%
00:27:39
Kabir Kochhar: market share, I will be able to turn the tap
00:27:41
Kabir Kochhar: on in terms of revenues and so on and so forth.
00:27:44
Kabir Kochhar: So if they are, if the losses are because of
00:27:47
Kabir Kochhar: dealing in market share and ensuring that they're building a
00:27:52
Kabir Kochhar: superior product where
00:27:54
Kabir Kochhar: the customer is so sticky that the Tao now ratio
00:28:00
Kabir Kochhar: is one which is with WhatsApp probably the only company,
00:28:02
Kabir Kochhar: I guess, uh, I'm I'll throw money at that company
00:28:05
Kabir Kochhar: because I know that when they want to, they can
00:28:08
Kabir Kochhar: start making money
00:28:10
Kabir Kochhar: and that visibility has to be there, that they're on
00:28:14
Kabir Kochhar: to something uniquely different, which can make money when they
00:28:17
Kabir Kochhar: need to where, where essentially, the company can support itself
00:28:20
Kabir Kochhar: where it needs to. Now, of course, I want to
00:28:23
Kabir Kochhar: also understand very carefully that how much money does this
00:28:26
Kabir Kochhar: make If I say $3 million check enough is my
00:28:29
Kabir Kochhar: $3 million check enough right now to have this guy,
00:28:32
Kabir Kochhar: because if I or does this guy need 10 million
00:28:35
Kabir Kochhar: and if it's 10 million, he managed to get the other,
00:28:37
Kabir Kochhar: then I'll put the same.
00:28:38
Kabir Kochhar: But if I'm alone with three women, knowing that money
00:28:41
Kabir Kochhar: is not gonna take him to where he has to.
00:28:42
Kabir Kochhar: I will know it as simple as that, because
00:28:45
Kabir Kochhar: as good as it is, you need to ensure that
00:28:48
Kabir Kochhar: they get to that bridge or that selection point where
00:28:50
Kabir Kochhar: they're able to justify burning the kind of money that
00:28:54
Kabir Kochhar: they're burning or just start showing revenues or start showing
00:28:57
Kabir Kochhar: signs of revenues
00:28:59
Saikat Pyne: at least left here about at the fag end. What
00:29:01
Saikat Pyne: are the primary media consumption trends that you foresee are
00:29:06
Saikat Pyne: going to likely inspire future innovation? Sure.
00:29:10
Kabir Kochhar: So, purely from a consumption behaviour perspective of consuming actual content,
00:29:16
Kabir Kochhar: I think there are two things. One we'll start seeing
00:29:19
Kabir Kochhar: a lot of. Let me talk about the film world
00:29:21
Kabir Kochhar: for a second. I got a lot of inside outside
00:29:24
Kabir Kochhar: on that side. You'll start seeing either massive blockbuster projects
00:29:28
Kabir Kochhar: immersive in the nature like a maverick Top one Maverick
00:29:30
Kabir Kochhar: or something like that, which is so massive but you
00:29:33
Kabir Kochhar: it requires a going to the cinema hall and watching
00:29:37
Kabir Kochhar: that film. Or there'd be this
00:29:39
Kabir Kochhar: which are like, you know what, like smaller films which
00:29:42
Kabir Kochhar: are low budget, but they end up performing a lot,
00:29:44
Kabir Kochhar: generating a lot of revenues. I guess there's other films also,
00:29:47
Kabir Kochhar: if you look at some of the Web series, also,
00:29:49
Kabir Kochhar: the they're highly profitable because the cost of production is low.
00:29:53
Kabir Kochhar: As long as the narrative is good, you're able to
00:29:56
Kabir Kochhar: really drive that. And what's gonna suffer most of the
00:29:58
Kabir Kochhar: M m. The other is because it's like you spend
00:30:00
Kabir Kochhar: all this money. And
00:30:02
Kabir Kochhar: if I'm going to just watch it on Netflix or
00:30:05
Kabir Kochhar: on prime or whatever else, how is the money being
00:30:09
Kabir Kochhar: so guys go away? And, of course, experiential consumption is
00:30:14
Kabir Kochhar: gonna be on the higher end. On the lower end,
00:30:16
Kabir Kochhar: you start seeing obviously the fact that the creator economy
00:30:19
Kabir Kochhar: is coming in where everything from financial education to media strategies,
00:30:26
Kabir Kochhar: what we're speaking about right now to everything else will
00:30:28
Kabir Kochhar: be done more by.
00:30:30
Kabir Kochhar: I guess it's enabling true experts to come in and
00:30:32
Kabir Kochhar: do that. And then you think about people I talked to,
00:30:35
Kabir Kochhar: they say. But the world is moving and the consumption
00:30:38
Kabir Kochhar: is just becoming shorter, and now people don't have attention
00:30:40
Kabir Kochhar: span to even watch a three second tiktok video,
00:30:43
Kabir Kochhar: I said that is true to some extent,
00:30:46
Kabir Kochhar: but also there is the consumption for long format podcasts.
00:30:50
Kabir Kochhar: If you look at something like a Joe Rogan. The
00:30:52
Kabir Kochhar: guy has a 2.5 hour podcast. Yeah, and the viewership
00:30:54
Kabir Kochhar: is a ship, and the viewership is through the roof.
00:30:56
Kabir Kochhar: So I guess
00:30:58
Kabir Kochhar: as with everything in the world, anyway, media consumption is
00:31:00
Kabir Kochhar: getting tailored to what the person wants and what the
00:31:03
Kabir Kochhar: I guess the intention is, the other thing that I
00:31:06
Kabir Kochhar: want to talk about is Betty, Right? Gaming needs roblox
00:31:11
Kabir Kochhar: virtual worlds, all these other stuff, but And that, like Roblox,
00:31:15
Kabir Kochhar: is massive, right, as is all the other kind of
00:31:18
Kabir Kochhar: platforms like that. But
00:31:20
Kabir Kochhar: for the Gen Z consumer specifically, and some of the
00:31:22
Kabir Kochhar: insights which came out of that was that a lot
00:31:24
Kabir Kochhar: of them feel more comfortable in those worlds than in
00:31:27
Kabir Kochhar: the real world, which could say it's concerning. But at
00:31:32
Kabir Kochhar: the end of the day, it's a freedom of expression.
00:31:35
Kabir Kochhar: It allows them to be their true Selves.
00:31:38
Kabir Kochhar: And I'm a supporter of that, right? As long as
00:31:40
Kabir Kochhar: it's relatively moderated that people bad actors can't come in
00:31:43
Kabir Kochhar: and screw around there. I think it's a really good thing.
00:31:46
Kabir Kochhar: And if you really distil it to its true meaning,
00:31:49
Kabir Kochhar: true sense, we are we are All these things are there.
00:31:52
Kabir Kochhar: They're promising. They're these shiny mediums. They're not the end goal.
00:31:56
Kabir Kochhar: Same thing with gaming. End goal. What the real objective
00:32:00
Kabir Kochhar: is to communicate with your own peers in an authentic
00:32:03
Kabir Kochhar: manner
00:32:04
Kabir Kochhar: and that if you keep that core inside at the
00:32:06
Kabir Kochhar: centre of everything else you're doing, you will start finding
00:32:09
Kabir Kochhar: interesting companies. Interesting innovations happening in that ecosystem. But when
00:32:12
Kabir Kochhar: you're playing these, some of these battleground games it's either
00:32:15
Kabir Kochhar: audio based or it's chat based if you're all these things.
00:32:17
Kabir Kochhar: So people are just finding better ways to communicate with
00:32:19
Kabir Kochhar: each other. So it's just a It's a layer on
00:32:22
Kabir Kochhar: to what
00:32:24
Kabir Kochhar: a WhatsApp would do in some way, and also discovery
00:32:26
Kabir Kochhar: and meeting new people and so on and so forth.
00:32:28
Kabir Kochhar: So if you can figure out what is driving authentic
00:32:32
Kabir Kochhar: communication between people, that is your next billion trillion dollar idea.
00:32:37
Saikat Pyne: Through that, the last question I had was around the
00:32:41
Saikat Pyne: phenomena of creators now starting to bankroll media startups. What's
00:32:46
Saikat Pyne: your take on what it takes to be an investor
00:32:50
Saikat Pyne: in media startups? I
00:32:51
Kabir Kochhar: have your answer, but I would love for you to
00:32:53
Kabir Kochhar: give me an example. Also, if you'd have people of
00:32:55
Kabir Kochhar: the
00:32:55
Saikat Pyne: likes of and with Alaba investing in media startups, you'd
00:33:01
Saikat Pyne: have influences the likes of a
00:33:04
Saikat Pyne: investing in media startups and fintech startups.
00:33:08
Kabir Kochhar: Sure, so I'll break it up into two parts. But
00:33:09
Kabir Kochhar: I think broadly, if you look at on the highest
00:33:12
Kabir Kochhar: end of this, says Mr Beast, there was apparently raising
00:33:15
Kabir Kochhar: 100 50 million or billion of valuation. And who am
00:33:18
Kabir Kochhar: I to judge, justify or judge that if he's got
00:33:20
Kabir Kochhar: the at the end of the day, he is the
00:33:23
Kabir Kochhar: Media Channel. If at that scale that Media channel, I
00:33:27
Kabir Kochhar: may argue that's a very high valuation.
00:33:29
Kabir Kochhar: But if there were people willing to pay and he
00:33:30
Kabir Kochhar: can show that and show his corresponding revenue metrics to
00:33:34
Kabir Kochhar: go in line with that, then who was? If he
00:33:36
Kabir Kochhar: can generate a billion, all of the sales, then that's
00:33:38
Kabir Kochhar: a cheap deal right at the end, the over time
00:33:40
Kabir Kochhar: and then you have same thing with the Nas daily
00:33:42
Kabir Kochhar: and all these guys right now, coming more to the
00:33:44
Kabir Kochhar: to the more in guys,
00:33:46
Kabir Kochhar: I think more power to them. I can't obviously speak
00:33:49
Kabir Kochhar: to any one of their investment criteria. Some people are
00:33:52
Kabir Kochhar: good at investing. Some people are not so good at it,
00:33:54
Kabir Kochhar: so they'll be hidden. Me. But if I look at
00:33:56
Kabir Kochhar: it from a look, they have to. Obviously, they'll have some,
00:33:59
Kabir Kochhar: like evaluation criteria when it comes to investing in startups. Right?
00:34:03
Kabir Kochhar: But what I would tell an angel investor in anything
00:34:07
Kabir Kochhar: is to look at the fundamentals of the business
00:34:10
Kabir Kochhar: and understand how it will make money, or at least
00:34:12
Kabir Kochhar: how you can potentially get an exit. How you can
00:34:15
Kabir Kochhar: see this company growing up to a certain stage where
00:34:18
Kabir Kochhar: you'll get the exit. Second of all, you gotta have
00:34:20
Kabir Kochhar: a stomach plan. You gotta have a stomach for investing
00:34:22
Kabir Kochhar: and anyone tells me I will do one investing. I'm like, OK,
00:34:25
Kabir Kochhar: how many more have you done, or how many more
00:34:27
Kabir Kochhar: do you plan to do because we don't plan to
00:34:28
Kabir Kochhar: do more than one? Then you are setting yourself up
00:34:30
Kabir Kochhar: for failure. You need to do
00:34:33
Kabir Kochhar: a certain number to allow for the risk of failure
00:34:36
Kabir Kochhar: because that is what this business is about. This business
00:34:39
Kabir Kochhar: is about being comfortable with failure
00:34:41
Kabir Kochhar: and the other hand, and obviously you have to look
00:34:44
Kabir Kochhar: at product market, you have to understand, Do I Do
00:34:47
Kabir Kochhar: I like this founder? Do I believe that this person
00:34:50
Kabir Kochhar: has that has the wherewithal to build? And that is
00:34:53
Kabir Kochhar: something you don't need to be a media expert to
00:34:54
Kabir Kochhar: really understand, to understand the motivations that drive a potential
00:34:59
Kabir Kochhar: founder and what they're doing? That is something anyone can
00:35:02
Kabir Kochhar: be good at. But
00:35:04
Kabir Kochhar: the note of caution are two things
00:35:07
Kabir Kochhar: don't fall for the bright lights
00:35:10
Kabir Kochhar: because you may see on a funding announcement that Unicorn
00:35:15
Kabir Kochhar: Founder is investing in this company. But, hey, do you
00:35:17
Kabir Kochhar: know that Unicorn Investor has 100 investments? Yeah, if this
00:35:20
Kabir Kochhar: field doesn't make a
00:35:22
Kabir Kochhar: should have a difference to him because he's or she is,
00:35:25
Kabir Kochhar: has enough exposure across the space and their motivations might
00:35:28
Kabir Kochhar: be different. We don't know, right? We don't know. Maybe
00:35:30
Kabir Kochhar: it's a There's a famous Fintech founder who invests in
00:35:33
Kabir Kochhar: pretty much most fintech, and at the other it gives
00:35:36
Kabir Kochhar: him coverage. He's able to cover all of them, the
00:35:38
Kabir Kochhar: ones which don't work and do work. Maybe the ones
00:35:40
Kabir Kochhar: that don't work right now will turn out to be
00:35:42
Kabir Kochhar: great that but he'll be there in that company so
00:35:43
Kabir Kochhar: you can double down of them, right? So we don't
00:35:45
Kabir Kochhar: know what the motivations are.
00:35:47
Kabir Kochhar: And the last thing I would say is please be
00:35:50
Kabir Kochhar: extremely wary when you see a celebrity investor on the cap,
00:35:54
Kabir Kochhar: because you must. You don't know what the celebrity investor
00:35:57
Kabir Kochhar: is doing there. Did they get free advisory equity for that?
00:36:00
Kabir Kochhar: So then they have no schedule in the game. If
00:36:02
Kabir Kochhar: they're in it without, how do you know? For all
00:36:04
Kabir Kochhar: of they're getting paid, and then they they're getting they're
00:36:06
Kabir Kochhar: getting paid, and that money they're putting into the company
00:36:08
Kabir Kochhar: has equity. So just be careful of some of those
00:36:10
Kabir Kochhar: things because I guess celebrities to some extent
00:36:13
Kabir Kochhar: can be mercenaries in this business because they're receiving a
00:36:18
Kabir Kochhar: lot of things for free. And more importantly, they're very
00:36:20
Kabir Kochhar: hardworking individuals, right? They just you only don't have the time. So, uh,
00:36:25
Kabir Kochhar: other than some endorsement aspects, if you have to see
00:36:29
Kabir Kochhar: the real underlying intention behind why people do something
00:36:32
Kabir Kochhar: So yeah, so good luck to all these guys. So
00:36:34
Kabir Kochhar: for us, it's all good, man. You know this, right?
00:36:36
Kabir Kochhar: The more people who are in growing the media ecosystem.
00:36:39
Kabir Kochhar: The happier we are, the more information there is, the
00:36:41
Kabir Kochhar: happier we are. We get to do our job better.
00:36:43
Kabir Kochhar: We get to see more companies. We are able to
00:36:46
Kabir Kochhar: keep our nose to the ground and just do our work. Well,
00:36:49
Saikat Pyne: Lovely. And if I'm an aspiring media founder with a
00:36:53
Saikat Pyne: kick ass product, how do I reach you?
00:36:56
Kabir Kochhar: You can reach us through our website. I'm on LinkedIn.
00:36:58
Kabir Kochhar: If there's a cold outreach, then try to make it
00:37:01
Kabir Kochhar: a little bit more specific to get my attention. And
00:37:03
Kabir Kochhar: also just do your home work. Yeah, I get. Sometimes
00:37:06
Kabir Kochhar: I get mails with so random things. I'm like guys,
00:37:08
Kabir Kochhar: you should know that our media focus 400. So please
00:37:12
Kabir Kochhar: show me that there is that space and always there
00:37:14
Kabir Kochhar: to help people grow the ecosystem. There is always limited time.
00:37:17
Kabir Kochhar: But if you reach out to me through these different
00:37:19
Kabir Kochhar: that we could share after this, we're happy to answer
00:37:21
Kabir Kochhar: that
00:37:22
Saikat Pyne: lovely. And on that great note, it's a wrap. Thank
00:37:27
Saikat Pyne: you so much for being on the show. Ka beer
00:37:28
Saikat Pyne: really appreciated you taking time out.
00:37:31
Kabir Kochhar: Thank you. That's really good speaking with you and I
00:37:33
Kabir Kochhar: look forward to doing this much more often with you guys.
00:37:36
Saikat Pyne: Please tune in next week for the next episode of
00:37:38
Saikat Pyne: the U Incorporated podcast. See ya.
00:37:46
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00:37:51
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00:37:56
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