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2021 was an exciting and challenging year for us. Backed by Dr. Malpani and his family office Solidarity, we ventured out on our own this year where:

- We made 5 investments (2 follow ons, 1 debt, 1 Management Buyout, 1 LP investment), and 2 fresh equity commitments, 1 in Education & SaaS each (please watch this space for an update!)

- We were joined by Dhruv in April. After all we are a growing startup too. This post started it all.

- We incorporated a new entity and will be moving forward with a distinct identity.

Investments

Multibhashi is a language learning platform that enables its users to learn multiple languages in live, one-on-one, and group settings. We have backed the company in the past when it was a purely B2B enterprise. Today, the company earns majority of its revenues from B2C, approaching consumers directly. Exciting days for the company and its founder Anuradha!

Zipgrid is a proptech company operating in full-stack society and building management for both residential and commercial properties. It has over 35,000 households under their ambit (and growing!), works with the top developers pan-India, and has also made an acquisition recently to strengthen their operations. We followed on our investment in the company earlier this year.

Bibox is a company in STEM learning, and operates Atal Tinkering Labs in hundreds of schools across South India. Considering our long-standing relationship and the nature of business which is close to our hearts, we invested in the company via debt instruments. This may have been our shortest TAT since we went from a text message checking debt options to cash in bank in under 10 days.

YLG Salons is a chain of salons, predominantly based out of Bangalore. The company has 54 salons in Bangalore & Chennai, and was backed by investors like Everstone & Helion. The promoter Rahul Bhalchandra started the company in 2008, and previously worked with Pantaloons and RPG Enterprises in leadership roles. We participated in the Management Buyout which enabled the promoter to regain control of the business while undergoing a massive turnaround in operations.

We rarely invest in fund managers. Primarily because we want to do this ourselves. However, Anand Lunia and his team brought amazing insights into the world of early stage venture which was impossible for us to pass. In the past few months, we have had a great time interacting with Anand and his team and hope to continue the same as our relationship deepens.

LP Investments

Along with India Quotient, we continue to work with Inventus, and Aavishkaar.

Special mentions

We really liked interacting with the below mentioned companies and were close to investing in them. However, we ended up passing because somewhere they did not fit what we were looking for. Sharing learnings:

Watch Your Health

We loved the alternative approach of Watch Your Health to work with insurers directly rather than policyholders. We learned that consumer is difficult to crack, and banking on B2B partnerships as an early stage company is a very cost effective way to grow your business sustainably. We also learned that every growing business does not necessarily need outside capital to grow. Many founders will thrive when they retain equity and have the freedom and flexibility to operate without the fiduciary responsibility of an investor.

Refrens

Think Shopify + LinkedIn for freelancers and you have Refrens. We loved our interaction with Naman, and quickly understood the importance of insights and design while building a startup. Our only grouse: rich valuations. What is a fair valuation you might ask? We don't know. But we work with a certain scope and rarely make exceptions. We wish Naman our best!

Exprto

Another fantastic founder who built out a full-fledged MVP without spending a dollar on tech and started making revenues. We did not have conviction on the long term use case for a platform like Exprto especially in peer-to-peer learnings which have offline pockets of influence. Having said that, Varun is probably one of the best founders we've seen who believes in the essence of frugality.

Exits

We invested in Chalo in 2017 and have seen the company grow in leaps and bounds. We got an exit during the company's Series C raise.

We invested in DoSelect over 5 years ago. The company subsequently raised from investors like Aarin & 3One4. InfoEdge acquired DoSelect this year providing us an exit.

Delhivery acquired Primaseller this year in a bid to strengthen its product portfolio before its public offer. Although we did not make money from this investment, we loved interacting with Ali and know that we will be the first number he calls when he is building his next company.

Resilience

Much is said about flair and pizzazz of founders. But resilience of founders is rarely spoken about. We have a case of two such founders in our portfolio this year who, against all odds, managed to show resilience.

COVID-19 hit everyone hard. And it hit the 2 wheeler industry a bit harder. Garageworks & Ajjas are portfolio companies that work in the 2 wheeler space. Garageworks is an on-demand doorstep 2 wheeler servicing platform. Ajjas is a 2 wheeler ride safety device. During COVID, neither were riders venturing out (for them to need safety), nor were vehicles being serviced at their doorsteps due to movement restrictions of mechanics and restriction of outsider entry in residential apartment buildings.

These companies, against all odds, managed to stay on, and have not only strengthened operations, but also secured healthy funding lines to ensure undisrupted continuity of business.

Social Impact

While we have funded numerous social impact entrepreneurs in education, we have worked the most with Beyond Exams, and Learn with Comics. Our thesis is to fund social impact entrepreneurs in the education domain who will offer free-to-extremely affordable options for students to learn, while building in public. You can read more about our initiative here.

Beyond Exams

Beyond Exams is a Section 8 company operating for the greater good and promotion of education at grass root level. We saw remarkable progress in the company which operates from a design-first philosophy, while managing to stay true to its purpose. In addition to a video-based learning platform, Beyond Exams is experimenting with cohort-based courses to upskill college students and make them employment ready.

Learn with Comics

Learn with Comics is an interesting take to make education fun and less taxing for both students and teachers. While the world is crazy about comics, we fail to see its adoption in mainstream education. Learn with Comics is trying to solve for this gap and reach out to a million students with comics as a learning aid.

How the year shaped our thoughts

- We do not understand the consumer space, and will stay away from it.

- We understand B2B SaaS, and we welcome it

- We find outliers while experimenting and will continue to do so in small capacity

- Great founders make everything look easy

- The resilience of a founder is massively underrated

- We come with small ticket sizes, smaller network, and the smallest (if any) value add, hence we will not compete with those who can outshine us in all these departments, for we are playing a different game

- We used to, are, and will keep looking for camels who can return our entire fund, we are not chasing mythical unicorns

Closing thoughts

We have not changed the way we think, but our investment thesis has evolved. We want to work with exceptional founders at pre-seed or seed stage who have insights we don’t, are solving problems their customers want them to, and have the ability to raise capital if and when required.

Happy Holidays to everyone! See you in the new year.