That
a large proportion of Consumer Internet companies, at least in the
past, have been funded by Corporate Investors. Perhaps regular VCs have
preferred topline first businesses like restaurants, healthcare chains, pharma manufacturing (!).The early
stage VCs in India have done a decent job, however, of following these
corporate nurtured ventures with Series B/C investments, in a slightly
herd like behaviour (the way everybody queued up recently for a certain
on-line fashion co was funny.)
…The operating word for the failed ones was ‘revenue’. The operating word for the successful ones was Product and Usage. Revenue is the best strategy for continuous funding rounds in India. Having
a corporate venture fund who will go all the way up to $10-20 M
investment without seeking validation from one more VC is a big
advantage.
Going after a large market was another big mistake
that many made. That explains the pivots pretty much every E-Commerce
company made AFTER raising a large VC round. This also explains the
pivots that many content companies did into E-Commerce. What are
the chances that Zomato would have been doing table reservations/food
delivery/gourmet food E-Commerce after raising the first $2M?
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