I recently met the founders of a quasi-dating app enabling friend discovery via meeting strangers at events. We passed on them, primarily because while we could see that it had the potential to ‘take off’ in metros, or at least the affluent parts of our metros, we couldn’t see how it would work in India2 i.e., the non-english speaking less affluent India in Tier 2/3 cities, and thus expand to …
Startups
Vernacular apps, the English language premium, and monetising the next 200 mn
This was originally published in FactorDaily.
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Over the last few years, we have seen a new crop of attention harvesters spreading across Tier 2 and 3 India spurred by cheap smartphones and cheaper bandwidth. These are all mobile apps, some Indian-born such as Sharechat, Clip, and Roposo and some Chinese including Helo, TikTok, Vigo, Bigo, Kwai, and others. But all of them try to fashion an addictive feed …
The Rise of Hyperlocal Vernacular Video News Apps
(This was published in Mint, 19th November 2018, albeit in an abbreviated form due to space constraints. This is the complete piece.)
The latest and hottest startup sector is presently invisible to ‘People Like Us’ living in metros. Over the past year, several young founders boasting impeccable academic credentials and work experience have been moving to small town India, launching hyperlocal news apps, viz., LocalPlay, Lokal, Awaaz, Circle etc. These …
India2, English Tax and Building for the Next Billion Users
Recently, Rehan Yar Khan, who runs Orios Venture Partners, an early stage venture firm tweeted
Starting with Zomato, then Ola in Australia and now Oyo in China, looks like Indian start-ups have found the answer to beating India's 50M only "real consumers" market: Get out of the box
— Rehan Yar Khan (@rehanyarkhan) May 24, 2018
Rehan Yar Khan wasn’t being sarcastic. He was, in fact, complementing the promoters of …
Kashyap Deorah’s ‘The Golden Tap’ – A Review
I first met Kashyap Deorah sometime late ’08 in Gloria Jeans Coffee in Bandra. We were introduced by Sudhir Sitapati, a junior of mine from IIMA, and a then-advisor to Kashyap’s Chaupaati Bazaar. I was then in the Brand Capital division of Times Group, and the conversation likely revolved around our funding model and whether it made sense for Chaupaati to access it (It didn’t).
We lost touch subsequently, though …
Why Don’t Indian VCs Write?
Sometime in 2013, I restarted my dormant twitter account, treating it akin to a RSS reader, curating a mix of interesting people to follow and learn from. Some of these were writers, some politicians; others included philosophers, flaneurs and a few executives. Consistently I began to find that the most interesting tweets were from (Valley) VCs – Marc Andreessen, Benedict Evans, Paul Graham, Chris Sacca, Fred Wilson (NYC though) etc. …
A Listing of EdTech Investment Themes – Part II
In a previous post A Listing of EdTech Investment Themes I laid out EdTech investment themes into three buckets
- Lifelong education
- Unbundling of the university
- Rethinking existing education business models in light of tech and mobile
In the post, I had shared that I would go into greater detail on bucket #3 in a future post, as to which of the various business models and processes could be rethought, and …
A Listing of EdTech Investment Themes
EdTech funding is hitting record levels, never seen before. A recent report by Ambient Research put edtech funding for H1’15 at $2.5b (in contrast to $2.4b funding for the whole of 2014).
In India we haven’t seen the kind of frenzy around edtech funding we have seen in China. 8 Chinese companies saw funding of $50m+ in the first half of 2015. These 8 companies raised more money than all …
A framework for startups to explore Higher Ed opportunities
Is there a structured way to look at opportunities in Higher Ed? Say, if a startup wants to enter Higher Ed, how could it systematically identify all possible opportunities and thereby map out all potential business models in this space?
Historically, there were 3 clear spaces or opportunity areas in Higher Ed space. First, there was the University. Initially there was just the non-profit research-led university, which morphed into …
A Look at the Venture Investing Arms of Gannett, Advance and Hearst
In a previous blog post, wherein I had analyzed NYT’s venture investing approach, I had promised to contrast this with the approach adopted by similar prolific peers – primarily Hearst, Conde Nast / Advance and Gannett. In this post, I plan to do just that. Here you will find details on all the current ventures they have invested in, as well as a brief look at the …