The Innovation Leap that's happening in India/Kumar Ganapathy ~ 3iPartners, Deep Tech, Impact - Spark of Ages Ep 31 - Spark of Ages

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello and welcome to the Spark of Ages podcast.
Today's guest is my good friend, kumar Ganapati.
Kumar is currently a founderand managing director of 3i
Partners, an early stage deeptech impact fund that invests in
promising entrepreneurs inIndia.
3i Partners focuses on deeptech startups in the areas of
tech, bio, climate tech andfrontier tech, seeking to

(00:27):
support visionary founders whoare disrupting industries with
innovative technologies andscalable business models.
Kumar has founded multiplesuccessful startups, including
VXTel, which was acquired byIntel for voice or IP technology
.
Verident, acquired by WesternDigital for high-performance
flash storage, and AcroData, acurrent AI startup that

(00:47):
specializes in solutions forvisual data processing and
computer vision applications.
Kumar holds a PhD from theUniversity of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, an MS from theUniversity of Massachusetts at
Amherst and a bachelor's intechnology from IIT at Chennai
that's India Institute ofTechnology.
We have a lot of those greatfolks here in Silicon Valley.

(01:09):
He's also a recipient of theDistinguished Alumnus Award from
IIT Madras and a fellow atConnexion slash Rockwell.
Some of the key takeaways youcan expect from this episode
go-to-market strategy in India,impact investing in India, the
differences in perspectives oninnovation and scaling in the US
versus India, how deep techcreates moats, along with the

(01:32):
insights from the mind of aserial entrepreneur.
So Kumar, welcome to the Sparkof Ages.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yeah, thanks, Rajiv.
That sounded like a mouthful.
It didn't sound like me, butgood to be here.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
That's you.
That's why you're here.
We're going to make this show alot like our car rides up to
Tahoe it's going to be a littleshorter, but it'll be just as
interesting.
So I've known Kumar for a long,long time, so excited that
you're here with me today.
Let's go into where you are,where you're going and some of

(02:08):
your thoughts.
Let's start with a little bitabout deep tech.
Often when we talk to investorsand entrepreneurs, they're
looking at the world and they'retrying to find a problem to
solve.
Can you tell us a little bitabout how you were inspired to
launch 3i Partners.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
A lot of people don't quite understand what deep tech
is.
The companies we used to start20 years ago, which were founded
by Silicon Valley VCs, were alltech companies and today's
partners deep tech companies.
So deep tech simply is astartup that has a
science-backed or atechnology-backed IT mode that's
hard to build, usually first ofa kind in technical difficulty

(02:47):
or engineering difficulty goinginto known or emerging markets.
So think about it as a two bytwo matrix right Technical
complexity or technicaldifficulty, and market risk or
market difficulty.
Deep tech is in the quadrantfour, typically High technical
difficulty, low market risk,whereas traditional tech like
SaaS, b2c all of those have hightechnical difficulty, low
market risk, whereas traditionaltech, like SaaS, b2c all of
those have lower technicaldifficulties but tend to have

(03:09):
higher market risk, which meansthey would create new markets.
B2c markets are more complex orSaaS is more of a go-to-market
motion and so on.
So we don't go after quadrantone, which is really high
technical difficulty and highcommercialization difficulty.
That tends to be more researchand tends to be in labs and we

(03:31):
need to wait for the applicationof the use cases.
Our venture fund is a 10-yeartime horizon, so we need
commercialization in five tosix-year timeline for these
companies right.
So that's the definition ofdeep tech.
So for us, what it means ittranslates as really the few
sectors you mentioned.
We think of it in broad terms.
As you know, health and climateare the two biggest challenges
for investors and startups goingforward.

(03:51):
And in that health space we arelooking at, you know, new
molecules, microbes, you knowproteins, protein engineering,
biopharma, plastics all of thatthat could come together in
interesting ways, from enzymesto plants to human drugs, right
All across the spectrum.
We also look at med tech anddiagnostics in an interesting

(04:13):
way.
India is an emerging country.
Largest population in the world, by the way, it's one and a
half billion now.
Just surpassed China, right Justsurpassed China, and in that
context, diagnostics play a verycritical role.
It's very different from the USand low-cost accessibility of
diagnostics through techinnovation is something we look
for.
So that's simply put.

(04:33):
I'll say start in India, goglobal is our basic strategy and
we are trying to find the nextgeneration of scientists and
technologists who are subjectmatter experts, who want to
build these interestingcompanies.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
That's pretty cool.
When you think about deep tech.
It's a very complex technology,tends to be lower go-to-market
risk because it's complextechnology that solves very
specific problems.
You see that as somethingthat's really interesting to you
and the reason you liked that,versus going into something like
a SaaS sort of thing or regularsorts of technology is yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
So a couple of reasons.
First, I'm trained for it.
It's a sparse space.
You see a lot of capital goinginto traditional go-to-market
risks and go-to-market motions.
You have traditional SaaScompanies, b2c companies are all
trying to figure out how toimprove or decrease the market
risks.
Lots of capital there Almost, Iwould say, 80% of today's

(05:31):
venture capital, or 75%, is inthat bucket already in the world
.
A lot more, over 90% of thefunds are there.
So deep tech in the sense, ourbiggest challenges going forward
are going to be how to improvesociety, quality of life,
quality of health, climatechange all of that through new
tech innovations and they haveto be done all over the world.

(05:52):
And we have a specific thesisaround India we can get into.
But that's what excites me.
I'm a PhD, as you mentioned.
I love tech.
I like complex things that canapply in a simple way to the
world.
So, for instance, if you find,you know, like we are looking at
a company that does gasturbines right, these are
complicated turbines but whenthey work they go into jet
engines to diesel generators, toall the way down to missiles

(06:13):
and turbines or propulsionsystems.
So it's very simple to adopt,but it's a magic when the
product works.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
It's amazing.
So that gets you to the pointof India.
So on the product board, it'samazing, so that gets you to the
point of India.
So how has your perspective oninnovation and scaling changed?
Your companies that you'vestarted were primarily companies
where you made your market inthe US.
You might have worked withfolks that were overseas.
I know you did a lot of workwith folks in Asia for flash
drive obviously fast flashstorage, but the market was in

(06:42):
the US right.
So talk about how thatexperience about innovation and
scaling has changed between theUS versus India, and how does
that help you in terms of yourapproach or inform your approach
at 3i Partners, the firm thatyou started?

Speaker 2 (06:53):
Just to clarify right Even at 3i, our thesis is just
the originations happening inIndia.
We think about 60% of thosecompanies, or roughly a little
over half, will go global.
How to start in India and goglobal?
They will attack US markets intheir second step.
That's part of our interest inthese companies, where we could
help them connect race capital,risk capital and help them scale

(07:15):
in the US.
And the other 30% 40% willscale in India and do what we
call import substitutions.
Today India imports a lot oftechnology.
So that's our thesis In general.
We're not trying to exclude theglobal market.
They are the biggest observerof tech.
It's just where the tech isoriginating.
Is what we are looking at atthis point.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
Right as a fund.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
Now, why India?
Right, it's a complex country,it's a big country, it's an
exciting country, but I'll tellyou three reasons at a high
level.
All of you know like I'm aproduct or beneficiary of the
immigration systems in the US.
I came here for my PhD, I gotmy green card within six months
and I was able to startcompanies here.

(07:55):
I've been doing it for 26 years.
I've been fortunate, funded bybig VCs.
We've got a couple of goodexits.
I've been investing in the USfor the last almost 20 years now
.
So far, what I have seen is twoor three secular shifts here.
Now immigration the green cardcycle is now 24 years in the US
and it's now going to beindefinitely more complex in the
new administration, so a lot offounders are no longer coming

(08:19):
out of India.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah, coming from India to the US, it's not as
easy as it used to be so thatqualified high-tech, deep-tech,
founder flow is going to bedramatically reversed.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Right, we've looked at the data out of IITs.
Iits are the premier institutein India.
Up to 15 years ago, 95% of thegraduating class used to
immigrate to the US, almost forhigher studies and then
subsequent jobs here.
Now, under 2% are immigratingnow.
Wow, so it's dramaticallyshifted in the last decade.
That's one Number two India isa country of youth dividend.

(08:51):
Right, when the mean age is 28,there is a sense of optimism in
the air and there is a term weuse called frugal innovation.
These entrepreneurs.
India is a tough, tough country.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
Oh it's.
Yeah, it's not going to besimple to start up something
there.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
No, it's bureaucratic , it's slow, it's complex, it's
hard to win and build businesses.
It's hard to raise money.
So all of that is complicated.
So these entrepreneurs, whenthey start a company, they're
put through the ringer, so tospeak.
They get hardened and if theycan create a business, they are
on average.
What we find is these companiesraise between one-fifth to
one-tenth the capital ofequivalent counterparts in the

(09:33):
US to achieve close to similarmilestones.
Right, so think about a fifthlower capital for about the same
milestones and they take abouttwice as long to do it roughly,
or 80% longer to do the sameeffect.
So net capital efficiency andfrugality is very high in India.
It's one of the best ecosystems.
Actually it's better thanIsrael in terms of efficiency.
It's actually.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
yeah, and this is, I think, part of your
differentiation, right, whereyou're saying they're actually
in India.
Right, you were funded by Exceland even Excel India at one
point for your companies.
In India, the startup ecosystemfor software startups is
actually pretty robust, prettyamazing, like Lightspeed is
there, sequoia is there, excelis there.
All these great funds havestarted up, but not so much in
the deep tech area, not likethis complex technology.

(10:15):
So you're kind of getting a bitof both, right, you're getting
these great IAT folks whopreviously would have gone to
the US.
They're sticking around inIndia.
They're willing to pound it outand grind it out, which is a
challenge in and of itself, andthere's not as much funding out
there for them.
So there's that part of theopportunity, right.
So, of course, ai is rising andone of your companies is in the

(10:36):
area of AI, right, more of themathematical AI side as opposed
to the gen AI side.
But I'm sure you're usingtechniques of everything.
Yeah, we're using gen AI aswell.
So, with the rise of AI andother cutting edge technologies,
what advice would you givethose deep tech entrepreneurs
navigating the complexities ofthis to bring their innovation
to the world?

Speaker 2 (10:55):
It's a big question.
We can break it down into acouple of things, right.
So, look, I look for sort ofthe advice I give entrepreneurs
in three areas.
You have to go to your area ofexpertise.
You have to have a unique,world-class capability on
something to do a company, andthat is an introspection.
You have to do so.

(11:16):
You have to combine yourpassion and your expertise in a
particular subject matter to dodeep tech startups.
So if you have been working inAI for 10 years, then you can do
an AI company.
If you have been working onrobotics for 10 years, do a
robotics company.
So that heritage we look for inour investment.
When we look at founders, weknow we call the founder market

(11:38):
fit.
Right.
Is this founder the right fitfor the market?
Can they solve complex problems?
Because a lot of the problemsare internal.
First, you have to commercializethis thing.
You have to take it to marketand the bar is pretty high.
You need a big wow factor tomake the jaws drop here.
So that's the first rule.
So work in your area ofexpertise.

(11:58):
And the second is which is lessfrequent I see in founders
which is less frequent I see infounders that pick the area of
commercialization that is theeasiest to start.
It doesn't have to be a massivemarket to start.
Every new technology needs whatwe call adoption ramps.
Right, it needs a helpfulmarket, early customers,
friendly customers to round outthese products because it'll be

(12:20):
great technology but the userexperience will be off.
You're going to have tolocalize it in different ways in
different countries.
You may have a $20 millionmarket.
I want the first proof ofcommercialization to be in an

(12:48):
easy segment, right Before wetackle the biggest, baddest
incumbents in the world.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
Right, because these are.
Yeah, because, like, you'regoing to somebody who doesn't
have an established presence asa company, you're taking a big
risk.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
If you're on the other side, you're taking a risk
on hey, this company may behere today or tomorrow, plus big
markets, like a billion dollarmarkets, are hard to penetrate
for any startup, let alone adeep tech startup that has like
90% of the product there.
So you want forgiving, you wantpulling customers, you want
helpful customers.
So that's what we look for.
It doesn't have to be bigmarkets, but your first 10

(13:21):
customers have to help flush theproduct out in a deep way.
Okay, big markets, but yourfirst 10 customers have to help
flush the product out in a deepway.
That's second.
And the third thing, which isequally important, is the team
you build around you.
Deep tech startups are not donein isolation.
You need to build a world-classteam.
We want founders who arecapable of attracting other
strong science leaders, be ableto bring in these people into

(13:44):
the fold and work with themconstructively, because lots of
twists and turns along the wayyou're going to hit and the
ability to have a think tankunder your roof is going to
differentiate your winningversus losing.
And the fourth thing in generalthis is true for startups, deep
tech startups is resilience.
Right, it turns out the theoutcome in startups is more
defined by the resilience of thefounder than the intelligence

(14:06):
of the founder.
There's a lot of studies bytier one VCs here.
So how do you detect resilience, which means in the face of
trouble?
How do you go through it, thevalley of death?
You're going to have a fewextra valleys of deaths in the
deep tech world.
So that's the reality.
You have to deal with.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
I know you've dealt with that before, so even your
first, I know, was probably hard, and so resilience, the ability
to fight, is probably one ofthe most important things.
One of the things we talk aboutwith 3i and the focus on deep
tech is transformativetechnologies.
You want to create a healthier,safer and more efficient world,

(14:43):
so what's a specific example ofa company in your portfolio
that embodies this mission, andwhat's the approach that they
had that made it particularlycompelling to you, beyond just a
financial opportunity?

Speaker 2 (14:54):
I'll give you a couple of different examples of
the difference in the spectrum,different in the sectors.
Start with a simple sector,what we call the energy sector
in India.
Okay, energy and commercial.
Today, india is a net importerof energy and it's the biggest
drag on the GDP of India today.
Okay, so this is a company inour fund, one that we did called

(15:17):
1090.
Okay, so it's a company that isbuilt.
A very simple product.
At the end of the day, theseare gel packs that are water
plus salt concentrations.
The founder is a phd out of iotmadras.
He's a thermal thermalscientist, material new age
materials and thermal scientist.
So this gel pack today can keepa narrow temperature range very

(15:39):
, very, very efficiently fordays on, as opposed to hours on.
So cool it for four hours andkeep it in the field for 48
hours.
It's a very simple product.
That way on the cold side, thatway on the cold side, same way
on the hot pack.
Also, you can keep thetemperature range very narrow by
building these phase changematerials that are built into
these gel packs.
He adjusts the thermal phasechanges of these materials with

(16:03):
no salt concentrations.
Now you look at coal chains inIndia.
Coal chains are where produceor things are shipped all the
way to the grocery stores oreven to home home delivery, and
all of that it's very broken.
Today it's run on diesel.
40% of the energy in India,energy usage is spent in cold
chain.
Today, almost half of India'ssmall businesses and these are

(16:27):
street vendors who don't sell.
By the end of the day they'renot able to keep the product in
a hot and humid climate for thenext day or the next two days.
Today, to drive the exporteconomy, we have to send it in
big refrigeration tanks andships, driving the cost of
logistics.
We can net export to UAE orIndonesia.
It's a three-day freight, butwe have to still put it in cold

(16:50):
storage for it.
All of these structural issuescold chain is very hard to do in
India and it uses diesel todayor diesel refrigerated trucks
today.
With this technology it solvesa very unique Indian problem
very, very, very efficiently.
It's one-tenth the cost of anyother competing technology.
This is the number one thing inIndia If cost is cost and cost.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
Well, in India, cost is everything.
That's the bottom line withthat right.

Speaker 2 (17:15):
So he solved that very well because, compared to
any other cold chain technology,his cost is very low.
Cost base is very low.
Then he has hit a very, so hehad a broad market.
But what he did well was hewent after a very unique point
in time.
I don't know if you've noticedthese days India is very big on
quick commerce now.
It used to be 40-minutedelivery times, now we're down

(17:38):
to 10-minute delivery, rightlike for folks who are listening
to this.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
We're used to the old days like Domino's delivering a
pizza in 30 minutes.
In India, you can get a hotmeal in like eight minutes or
less.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
Yes 10 minutes for any hot or cold.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
It doesn't matter, ice cream's in 10 minutes too.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
So for these major companies, there's about 18 or
20 cities in India, which iswhere bulk of the business gets
done and he has set upinteresting.
So he picked that as a segmentand has really executed well as
an entrepreneur, so he's ascientist.
But what he picked up well washe picked an underserved segment

(18:17):
where the customer is able topay and he was able to provide
them a product, which is gelpacks and so on, that allows
them to be very, very efficientin their delivery operation.
And then the third is thebusiness model he did.
He set up cooling as a service.
So in these big cities, insteadof the customer buying the
product, because these are Twoand a half years, he's increased

(18:40):
his revenue from less than onecrore to about 26 crores now, so

(19:00):
26x growth in less than two anda half years.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
And similarly, valuation tracks is around 15,
18x, so it's one of the bettersuccesses for me, it's a really
amazing one, Because one thingis you have to deliver medicines
right and instead of putting itin a refrigerated area, you
have to deliver medicines rightand, instead of putting it in a
refrigerated area, you have toget it.
You know, this allows you toput it in a train or a truck.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
that doesn't have to spend as much.
You can put it in a backpackwith a gel pack, it doesn't
matter.
You can transport it veryeasily.
You can transport it anyways.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
But this amazing innovation he found was now with
the quick service thing he candeliver it.
And then he innovated evenfurther by saying each company
doesn't have to set up itsinfrastructure that wants to be
a delivery service.
You could just go to them andthey'll offer cooling as a
service, as you call it CAS.
I love it.
I love it.
That's super cool.
It's interesting.

Speaker 2 (19:42):
But from here he's expanding to other segments
slowly and systematically.
But that's it.
That's a very complextechnology, simple use case,
underserved segment.

Speaker 1 (19:51):
That's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
Those three line up with the resilience of the
entrepreneur.
It's usually a good fit.
Okay, that's a good examplethat I have some experience with
awesome.
Do you have another one?
Yes, yes, I have many, many.
I can talk on for hours here,right?
So what's the what's?
Another one of the more recentones I'll tell you.
I have another company calledlimano, coming out of indian
institute of science, which isthe premier research institute
here.
Right at a simplistic level,they are building better

(20:16):
membranes.
That's the innovation.
They have built a newnanomembrane or a picomembrane
that allows better transportefficiencies for electrolytes
and batteries and electrolyzersand so on.
It's a sleepy market for 50years.
Nobody has innovated on thesethings for a long time.
If you look at the batteryworld, that is, you know the
older lead acid and redoxbatteries and new lithium ion

(20:38):
batteries Lithium ion is veryexpensive, okay, lead acid is
too imperfect or too not dense.
So redox battery sits in themiddle, has been around, being
used, but it's never improvedits efficiency.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
What is a redox battery?

Speaker 2 (20:54):
It's a type of a battery that is being invented
50 years ago.
It's a chemical electrolytethat allows you to it's got
longer better efficiencies thanlead-acid batteries.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
So is it like lead-acid, like there's
lead-acid, nicad, nickel, metalhydride.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
It's an older battery Lithium ion.
So this is a different chemistry.
Lithium ion is a new energylithium cell base.
These are allelectrolyzed-based
chemistry-based batteries.
But in all of these things theefficiency is determined by the
membrane that sits insidebetween the cathode and the
anode.
So the circuit gets completedthrough the membrane and the
rate at which this membrane canwork and the discharge

(21:29):
efficiencies determines thestrength of the battery and the
life of the battery and the costof deployment.
So the end game here again isreally in the green hydrogen
economy in India.
If you know, india is very bigon green hydrogen.
Government incentives are linedup.
There's huge capital coming up.
Green hydrogen economy iscoming up.
That's the end game.
But, however, it's a few yearsaway.

(21:50):
So what the founders have foundis this is applicable to a
niche it's a smaller niche again, but heavily underserved that
we can go today, commercializeit, get it to work before we go
to the green hydrogen segment.
So it fits my deep tech quick,underserved market and longer,
bigger disruption that'spossible in a relevant structure

(22:12):
for India.
So it's an example of a newinnovation in the energy sector
that we are interested.
We're coming together withanother VC firm and putting
together almost $3 million intothis company.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
So the idea of this technology is that, because it
enables, like, how much greaterefficiency do you get out of
this type of battery?

Speaker 2 (22:31):
We're talking I mean, these are old structures, right
we're talking like 50 to 100%efficiency, which is magical.
For these guys In the energyworld, 5% is magical.
These guys are talking 50%, Ifyou look at the performance
curve, right.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
Lead acid doesn't get better.
Nickel metal hydride is like 1%, right.
Lithium ion is like 5% a year.
So if someone's going to enableyou to jump 100% or even 50%,
that's huge 50% is what they'reclaiming.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
Wait, 50% is their claims right now on paper.
There are certain cases inwhich they can go even higher.
But let's even take 30%.
Jump in this thing.
It's a dramatic shift in theeconomics of the industry If we
can take an old technology andgive it brand new legs because
the cost goes, very wellunderstood.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
So if you get this, what thing would you be able to
do that you couldn't do before?

Speaker 2 (23:17):
So I'll give you an example of an immediate use case
.
India is very big in energyconsumption.
Today Electrical grids in Indiahave huge brownouts.
I don't know if you guys visitIndia or not.
You will see load shedding fortwo to three hours a day in most
of the metros today becausedemand outstrips the supply.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
Renewables are coming online but there is no energy
storage mechanism to drive itduring the periods of the day
where there is not enough supplyRight Usually if anybody goes
to India, one thing they'll getfamiliar with is, all of a
sudden the lights go off andthen all of a sudden it comes
back on because someone goes toanother part of the building and
flips on the generator.
Correct?

Speaker 2 (23:51):
Usually manually, but they are all diesel generators.
That's right, that's right, andthey are extremely polluting.
So what we are trying to do isthe Indian government has a
bunch of tenders, so all theutilities in India want to build
grid-scale energy storage.
Which means how do we build 100megawatt storage or 1,000
megawatt storage, that it has acost point that's acceptable

(24:15):
with efficiencies that aredecent, and that is where this
redox battery with this membranecould be very compelling for an
initial use case, I see.
And then it floats right intothe green hydrogen on the
hydrogen economy for India, Isee.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
So when you say green hydrogen, at that point it
could be either green hydrogenfeeding into a generator-.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
Hydrogen fuel itself is the end game, right or?

Speaker 1 (24:36):
it's in transport right.
In the end it's still.
Having big batteries and bigtrucks is really hard.
So if you can make it way moreefficient, you can enable
hydrogen.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
Hydrogen has a thrust-to-weight ratio that is
four times better thanlithium-ion.
Today it's turquoise.
There are people working onmaking it green.
Once you make it green, thenit's actually cleaner, better
and more efficient thanlithium-ion.
Pretty amazing, I mean.
You see, here Toyota has builtcars called Mirai.
I don't know if you've seen theToyota Mirai car.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
It's a hydrogen fuel cell.
Every now and then, when you'refollowing it as it changes
something, all of a sudden yousee a little burst of water
vapor.
I don't know if you've noticedthat, but I've seen that.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
You will see, the output is just water.
It leaves water at the end ofthe day.
But in the US it cannot takeoff, given already the lithium
ion penetration.
But in an emerging country likeIndia we can leapfrog, just
like how mobile networksleapfrog landlines in India.
We think this energy will notleapfrog dramatically the whole
lithium ion adoption, at leastfor the big energy utilities and

(25:33):
big consumers of India.
So that's a company yet to come.
Now, something in the middleI'll tell you.
You want to talk about PadCare.
Yeah, yeah, we'll do PadCare.
Since you brought it up, it's agreat example of a company.
Again, that is a combination ofthe three things I told you.
So again, padcare's founder isbasically solving a simple

(25:54):
problem how do we do sustainablerecycling of fibers in the
world Today?
If you look at India, even therest of the world, you know
feminine hygiene products,menstrual pads and diapers are
beginning to really consume alot of the landfills going
forward.
So what he is solving isbasically how do we do that?

(26:14):
Just recycling of that andbuild a business model around it
that's super scalable.
So in a simple way, he's ableto extract 97% of the fibers out
of these pads and be able touse it for downstream
applications and sell it andrecycle it back into the value
chain.
But what he has done well ishe's also set up the front end

(26:38):
service for it, which means hehas signed up about 600
corporations in India and heruns a full service to collect
these out of the bins in thewomen's bathrooms typically both
diapers and menstrual pads inthe women's bathroom and runs a
full service, collects them andruns it very, very economically.
So these customers come to himfor the service.

(26:58):
But he also has a big techcomponent.
That's a second adder to hisfinancial statement and his
process that we awarded is avery simple process net energy
positive in the sense itconsumes less than what would be
put into it.
So all of the checks are onwhat we think is carbon neutral
to carbon negative.
The whole is good.

(27:19):
Plus, he's able to recyclethese things from the landfill
at a 90 plus percent or 95percent.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
And he has a brilliant go-to-market right.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
Which is you?

Speaker 1 (27:28):
go to large companies they call MNCs, multinational
companies and he goes to thosecompanies which have in India
these multi-thousand personoffices and, as part of their
what they call CSR corporatesocial responsibility he goes
and sells them on.
Hey, this is how you solve adisposal problem you build up
your social responsibility andyou really make the world better

(27:51):
.
So it changes even the businessmodel.
They pay him to do this work.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
Correct.
They pay him to do it, theypromote him to advertise it and
then he makes money on the backend.
So it's a brilliant businessmodel.

Speaker 1 (28:01):
Tom Sawyer, make someone paint your fence.
These are great companies Nowyou've looked at.
In doing this fund, even indoing your other companies, you
looked at tons of other, maybethousands of other businesses.
I think something like in yourprocess.
Every month you guys look at ahundred different companies,
right that you interview.
What's the biggest?
As you know, I'm big intogo-to-market, so what's the
biggest mistake you see incompanies today with their

(28:23):
go-to-market strategy?

Speaker 2 (28:26):
I mean this is going to take a long time, but I'll
simplify it into a few bigbuckets.
Okay, the biggest mistake I seeis not understanding what again
what I call the easygo-to-market path or where is
the best fit for the currentproduct.
So I see founders are not asmarket savvy as we see in the US

(28:46):
.
Okay, they are more technical.
They are more sheltered fromthe market.
In India they used to work inlarger companies or in
university labs, right.
So here entrepreneurs are alittle bit more market size.
The mistake they make istypically they don't pick the
segment right.
The price discovery is wrong,which means they're trying to
get into a market where theyhave to beat the incumbent on

(29:07):
cost before they can penetratethe market, which is very hard
to do in real life, whereas youwant to go into a market where,
at a premium, you can sell andthe value adoption has to happen
in the initials.
So that's the first adjustmentwe make when we go into a
company.
We audit the technologyseparately.
Then we try to talk to thefounder and say, look, let's
start trying these marketsegments and try to find the

(29:29):
best fit for you, because if youdon't have initial proof points
, the downstream fundraiserswill become much harder.
So that's the first mistakethey make.
The second is really theirsophistication around
go-to-market mechanisms andmessaging are still well behind
the US counterparts, is what Iwould say.

(29:49):
I mean, I look at their deck.
You know like their value deckwill be like eight pages long
with extremely complicatedformulas and so on.
They need to simplify it to acustomer.
You buy this, you get it.
You know.
You buy X, you get Y.
Literally that simple, right.
How do we dump it down?

Speaker 1 (30:06):
That is what we try.
They're putting their PhDthesis in their deck.
All of them make it way morecomplicated.
And, by the way, this is kindof an Indian thing.
They want to prove how smartyou are, and that's part of that
right.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
I want to show my expertise, so it doesn't matter
how smart you are, it's how easyis it for somebody else to
adopt?
So that's the.
We have to take that ego out ofthe equation most of the time.
So that's the second part of it.
It's extremely complicatedmessaging and collatals they
prepare.
And the third is really theteam and training.
They don't put enough valueinto awareness and marketing.

(30:37):
They all believe that once youbuild a product, the genius of
the product is going to sellitself.
Oh, and I'm guilty of thatpersonally.
So I'm not saying that, but itis that I've been beaten over my
career.
To take these more seriously,I'm trying to do the same.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
They're bringing lots and lots of experience to folks
so they don't have to replicatesome of your mistakes, right?

Speaker 2 (30:57):
There's a lot more mistakes than a lot less
corrective things we have donein life.
I know I can tell them what notto do.
I will not be able to tell themwhat to do.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
That's great, that's really interesting.
This is great to learn aboutmistakes people make and go to
market, because I think that'sreally important.
I mean, you build a technologyand one of the reasons I started
Position Squared was you buildthis great innovation.
How do you get it to the rightcustomer?
Right, I mean that's the somany great technologies go
nowhere.
So now, if you look at thebroader landscape of tech
investment, especially in India,what do you see as the biggest

(31:29):
opportunities for disruption andgrowth over the next five years
that are not being addressed orbeing overlooked by other
investors?
Good question.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
I mean, I'll tell you the uniqueness in my own domain
, right, compared to the otherVCs we see.
So I'll give you at least oneexample.
That's clear that we arecontrarian here.
Okay, if you know very well,here in the US, pharma and
medtech are smaller segments.
Very specialized people investhere.
They are supposedly 15-yearcycles.

(31:58):
Nobody wants to.
I mean, you have to be apostdoc with 10 years before you
even become an investor whounderstands these things at some
level, right?
So we are taking a slightlydifferent view of things.
I mean, we are solving thisproblem.
There's a massive problem thatthe cost of drug discovery is
out of control, especiallydiagnostics.
Also, how do you get affordablediagnostics?
So what we are trying to do isgo after tools and platforms for

(32:22):
pharma.
So how do we use AI to generatebetter leads, better in vitro
optimizations, better way to getto phase one at a fraction of
the cost and fraction of thetime?
And we believe these companiesare going to be so efficient in
capital that we'll still get a10x return on our investment.
So that's one of our countertheses we are running in India.

(32:45):
So new molecules, newantibodies, ai driven from our
discovery, and we have a bunchof examples here I won't get
into for the short of time, butthat's an area that we think
that's been underlooked.
How do we create efficienttools and platforms for drug
discovery?

Speaker 1 (33:02):
So you believe that because of the ability now with
AI and other ways to simulateoutcomes and visualize or
simulate or run scenarioanalysis with molecules, that
the typical cycle that wouldlike a pharma company, you got
to look at at least 12 yearsbefore something goes from an

(33:24):
initial platform that you takeout of someone that's already
done the basic R&D and turn itinto a company.
What can you compress thattimetable to based on what you
see?

Speaker 2 (33:31):
I mean we might not be able to compress that time
dramatically, but what we canimprove is efficiency through
this process significantly.
Because there are two parts ofthe cost.
The discovery phase up to phaseone is low cost and then the
cost spirals from phase one,phase two and especially phase
three.
So most startups, especiallyIndian ones, cannot do phase two

(33:54):
and phase threes but you needhundreds of millions of dollars
to do that.
So what we are taking is acounter thesis to say how do we
use AI?
But not just AI front end, butwe also try to couple it with
biological back ends.
Right, how do you do highthroughput screening?
So if you have the ability togenerate a trillion molecules,
you have to be able to match itwith some wet lab technology on

(34:16):
the back end or some other formof high throughput screening
that allows you to pick andscreen these trillion down to a
million or a thousand very, veryefficiently.
Otherwise just the AI front endis useless.
So how do we combine the two?
That allows me the quality ofthe leads, quality of getting to
phase one, much, much, muchhigher probability at lower cost

(34:39):
.
So that's one.
So it may not reduce the time,but it'll improve the success
probability significantly.

Speaker 1 (34:47):
So instead of spending like a typical drug
we'll take like a billiondollars to get to market because
of all the issues that gobetween phase one to phase two,
phase three, which is initialsafety, to human tests and human
trials and human safety.
So you think you can make thatwhole process much more
efficient, less capitalintensive, so then you can then
introduce more things or make itmore personalized.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
Correct.
So I'll give you an example.
We have two.
A company called Sygenicathat's in the cancer drug
delivery space.
She's a postdoc from India.
She has been able to build upto phase one under $6 million so
far, just mind blowing Up tophase one.
Right now she doesn't have fullphase one Under $10 million.

(35:29):
We'll get to phase one data.
She's a preclinical, so it'sstill limited, but 10 to 12
million dollars versus, you know, 60 to 100 million dollars in
the us, yeah, so it's a hugedramatic difference huge
difference, right so that's,that's what our values.
And she, I don't think she willgo all the way to build drugs,
but now she can license theseafter phase one at a lower level

(35:50):
and after phase two at a muchhigher level.
So we think the our bet is thevaluations will catch him after
phase two.
That's pretty cool All right.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
So now, kumar, we've gotten through all kinds of
great stuff about theseincredible deep tech innovators.
We're now going to go to thisgame called the spark tank.
Here we go, welcome to thespark tank, where we spark
unexpected connections in themind of technology's most
innovative thinkers.
And today we're joined by KumarGanapathy, a serial

(36:19):
entrepreneur who's turnedsilicon dreams into
billion-dollar realities.
This isn't just a techdiscussion.
This is where deep technologymeets deep thinking, where
artificial intelligence collideswith human intuition and where
the next breakthrough mightemerge from an unexpected word
association.
Our brains are pattern-matchingmachines, constantly drawing
connections between seeminglyunrelated concepts.

(36:41):
Sometimes the mostgroundbreaking innovations come
from these spontaneous neuralleaps from quantum computing to
climate tech, from biotech to AI, and today we're going to tap
into that creative chaos.
This is the ultimate wordassociation challenge, where
every response could unveil anew perspective.
Here's how it works I'll startwith a tech-related word and,

(37:02):
kumar, you'll respond with thevery first word that pops in
your mind.
No filtering, no secondguessing.
Then I'll respond to your wordand we'll keep this neural chain
going.
The only rule is spontaneity.
So let your mind make thoseunexpected leaps.
Are you ready to see where yoursynapses take us, kumar?
Yeah, I might need someartificial intelligence help,

(37:23):
but yeah, Well, I'm the closestthing you're going to get to it,
so you're at model zero with me.
Okay, the first word, I thinkin this game I have to actually
do it with you, so this will befun.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
IP.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
Data.

Speaker 2 (37:41):
Storage.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
Level one.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
Analog Chips.
Silicon PNP Diodes.

Speaker 1 (37:54):
Transistor.

Speaker 2 (37:55):
Shockley.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
Tesla.

Speaker 2 (38:00):
Energy Nuclear Lener Low Lener, low energy nuclear
reactors.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
Small module nuclear reactor.
Like ASMR All right, we'regoing to do the next one.
So, according to my producer,we're going to call it, because
Kumar and I are still in thatcar ride and we could go on
forever.
All right, that was a lot offun.
We started with packet and weended up with nuclear reactors.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
Yeah, that's at the top of my mind.
I'm looking at nuclear reactors.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
Nuclear reactors.
I mean, come on Next termDisruption.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
Biopharma RNA Antibodies.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
Cell membrane, cancer , drug delivery oh, I like that
Personalized medicine.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
Yet to come future.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
Love it.
Great answer Next termemergence.

Speaker 2 (38:52):
Green hydrogen.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
Efficiency.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Better than lithium ion.
I'm going to pin you down.
Better than lithium ion.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
Solid state.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
Storage technologies New age storage technologies.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
Yeah, but I already did solid state.
I know Plasma.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Reactors Next-gen reactors.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
Oh, thorium.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
Isotopes.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
All right, we've gone down the nuclear path.
It ends up in nuclear.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
We're going to do U35 .

Speaker 1 (39:25):
Are we going there next U35?
This game is just not going toend.
You want to?

Speaker 2 (39:29):
do a couple more, or you're done One more.

Speaker 1 (39:31):
One more Synthetic.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
Okay, I'll try to take you in a non-tech path.
I'll try my best.
No, no, this one's tech.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
Synthetic Synthetic biology.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
That's where it comes from my brain immediately.
Synthetic biology how aboutdata?
Synthetic data?
Restart, restart, yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
Okay, start again.
Synthetic Data Populations AIor generative AI.
Proportional iterativeproportional fitting.

Speaker 2 (40:01):
Gradient descent, better gradient descent.

Speaker 1 (40:04):
You read the same damn paper, didn't you?
All right, you know whatsparked this one for me.
My daughter did her PhD increating synthetic populations,
so apparently you and I read thesame paper.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
You didn't read the paper, but you were thinking the
same paper.
Everybody reads the same thing.
Don't worry, I thought you'llend up with deep seek.
Everybody reads the same thing.
Don't worry, I thought you'llend up with DeepSeek.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
That's what I wanted to take you.
You want to take me to DeepSeek, all right, what would you say
about DeepSeek?

Speaker 2 (40:28):
One word, I mean look , frugal innovation.
It is my entire bet on India.
Okay, frugal innovation.
What has not been possible here?
Everybody had an inclination.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
It's possible, but between NVIDIA and the big model
companies, they overbuilt thisright, yeah, I think the amazing
part is we tried to put exportcontrols on China, so these
folks who win almost every mathcompetition decided to
out-algorithmize us.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
Correct.
What you don't do is you don'tkeep technology out of the hands
of the smartest people in theworld, right?
So if you do that, they willfind a different path around.
That's the brilliant partthat's going to disrupt you
typically.
So regulations for technologyis not a good thing unless you
have clear controls around it,and it is clear.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
Right, it's the application of it.
That's where you catch people,not in the underlying technology
.
Actually, one area that's notin my script is India going to
the moon.
Yeah, $72 million.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
It took in fact interesting point here less
money for India to go to Marsthan it for the Martian movie.
That's right, that was Mars.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
Martian movie, that was Mars, that's right.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
Mars took less than $75 million actually for the
mission, but the Martian movietook over $120 million.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
Most of that's marketing probably.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
It doesn't matter.
That's what I know.

Speaker 1 (41:54):
And the guy in India got free marketing for it.
Okay, we'll do one more of thisand I will say growth,
marketing, scale,commercialization.

Speaker 2 (42:01):
AI Explosion One-to-one buyer journey,
commercialization, ai Explosion.

Speaker 1 (42:04):
One-to-one buyer journey.
Abm the best company in theworld.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
Position Squared.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
You got it All right, kumar.
You win my award.

Speaker 2 (42:13):
I know I have to come on this podcast.
I have to sell Position Squared.
I know that, yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
All right, let's go to some.
We're going to do what we callthe final fast four, and it
might even be fast five.
Let me ask it a different way.
You started two companies it'snot like you needed the cash and
you started a VC fund.
Why?

Speaker 2 (42:34):
It's a question I ask myself every day almost, but
I'll give you a simple logichere.
Right, ultimately, I've been aplayer for 26 years.
I enjoy startups, especiallytech startups.
Right, I was a founder.
I am being an angel investor.
Got a lot of expensive t-shirts, in fact.

(42:54):
Ironically, I started my deeptech investing journey with your
first startup, rajiv, april onBuyer Systems.

Speaker 1 (42:59):
That's right, okay, that's why we argue so much
about the value of going intomedical Correct.

Speaker 2 (43:04):
Correct, but anyway, not just you after about 70
investments mostly I havet-shirts, expensive t-shirts so
I said, okay, if I'm going toinvest, because I don't think I
can stay idle, I'm going to dothis in a systematic way, at
least to the best of my ability.
So I said, okay, we're going tofind a strategy, a tactic and
an execution around it.
So that's why I picked deeptech, because my strengths are

(43:25):
aligned to it.
India, because it's the nextemergence where it's underserved
, and the execution is reallyour ability to select and mentor
these entrepreneurs.
So that's the trifecta.
I thought it was because yourmom Also it allows me to go back
to India very often.
So I mean you go back to Indiafor two reasons for your kids or

(43:48):
your parents.
Asians are more familyconnected In general Asian
upbringing, you know that.
So my mom is in her 80s.
She lives alone in India.
I can't move her to the US,she'll be miserable.
So I make it a point to go seeher every two to three months
and this combines both for me ina nice integrated way.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
So yes, and nobody knows Cricket any better than
her.
I will say that Awesome.
What's your anti-portfolio?

Speaker 2 (44:06):
Oh, that's way too many.
Pit two, I'll give you abiggest anti-portfolio is a
company called Workday.
Workday I looked at it at theseed stage and I said who is
going to do this?
So I said, okay, that was a badcall.

(44:30):
I would have made a billiondollars on it.
There is lots of smaller ones,but in general I mean I didn't
have a venture fund so I didn'tmiss any of the bigger outcomes
like Google or Uber or Airbnb orany of those things In the
world of angel investing.
Workday was my largest mess.
I saw in the early days, right,but there is a bunch of smaller
exits.
There's companies.
I can't even remember the name.
Google used to buy thesecompanies for $10 million $15
million during 2010 to 2020 or2018.

(44:54):
Kind of aqua.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
Irish we call it tuck-ins.

Speaker 2 (44:57):
So they are not big hits but they are okay.
But I basically didn'tsubscribe into that.
So I did invest in two guyswith a dog and a PowerPoint and
say in 18 months get acquired.
So I wanted them to buildsomething that's right, that's
awesome.
So I miss making money.
I would agree, but it's okay.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
That's good, all right.
What's your personal moonshot?
Personal moonshot.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
I did.
The biggest personal moonshotwas my marathon.
Okay, I ran a marathon, 26miles, in the middle of my
second startup.
I had to train for it and do it.
It took six months.
I was slow as a dog but Imanaged to finish it because I
just wouldn't quit.
So it took me four and a halfyears but, uh, many pulled
hamstrings and calf muscles andeverything later.

(45:42):
That was a, you know, personalachievement from a huge one,
huge one.

Speaker 1 (45:47):
Um took me years to write, friend, my first one, and
I went to the same kind ofjourney.
I think that was the same foryou.
That was the san diego rock androll marathon yes, san diego,
yes, do you have a favorite lifemotto that you come back to
often and share with yourfriends, either in work or life
I mean, I'll tell you what sortof you know shapes my life going
forward.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
I call it the Japanese ikigai concept.
Okay, if you don't know whatikigai is, it's a very beautiful
term to say there are fourcircles in everybody's world.
You know, what are you good at,what does the world need, where
can you make money and what doyou love doing?
And you want to be at thecenter of those four.
Ideally, that is what I'mtrying to get to with my last

(46:27):
stage, currently as an venturefund right now.
So I'm good at startups.
I love working withentrepreneurs and early stage
companies.
I think the world needs it tosome extent.
Technology and deep techinnovations the only thing is
I'm not going to make too muchmoney in the short term, but
that's okay, it gives yousomething great to do for 10
years with a whole bunch of yourfriends.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
Okay, did you always know you wanted to work in
technology?
Was there a specific moment orproject that sparked your
passion for entrepreneurship andaway from traditional
engineering?
How did you discover thatpassion and what got you sparked
?

Speaker 2 (47:01):
So I grew up in India , right?
I mean in the 70s and early 80s.

Speaker 1 (47:06):
Yeah, I mean you must have gotten a high enough score
on your exam to become a doctor.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
Yeah, you have only two choices.
You either become a doctor oran engineer.
That's what my parents told me.
That's it.
You can pick one of the two.
I'm happy with it.
In fact I've even got itnarrowed to one.
My dad was a doctor.
He said you try being a doctor.
If you can, let's make you anengineer.
That's what my life plan was.
So in fact, I couldn't get intomedical school without paying

(47:31):
bribery at some point.
In India you have to paycapitation fees to get in.
If you are what we call forwardclass, in those days you might
have 96%, 98%, but it's not afree access for everybody.
They're a quota system.
I said that's against myphilosophy.
So my dad was in the same board.
So I tried becoming a doctorfor two years in a row after I
joined IAG.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
Very few people know this.
You kept studying.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
Yes, I kept writing the freaking entrance exam and I
keep missing it every year forthree years in a row.
After the second year, I toldmy dad this is not working.
We have to take a plan B.
That's my plan B here.
So I became an engineer.
I mean, I was at IIT, which isone of the best institutes in
the world electrical engineeringand then, once I get down that

(48:16):
path, I come from a deep familyof educationalists.
My uncle was a PhD.
He was a big influence in mylife.
So he basically said look, Igive you again two choices you
have to do a PhD in this area orthis area.
We can pick one of the two.
So I said okay.
So I went down a path, got my.

(48:37):
I almost quit multiple times inmy PhD, but anyway, that's part
of the formation.
I think I almost quit multipletimes in my PhD, but anyway,
that's part of the formation.
I think that's what hardened meto do the startups better.
But it was actually the mostintrospective part of my life.
My most self-growth happenedduring my PhD years.
Lots of dark days, okay.
Well, what the hell I'm around?
What am I doing in life?
You know why am I sittingaround making like $12,000 a

(48:59):
year, so whatever, it might beright.
So all of those questions sataround for a while but I managed
to finish.
It took me four years, fiveyears, and so I finished it.
And then I said I came into thejob market and then I got it.
I mean, after that I just wantto decompress for a few years.
I got into it for a few years,but what got me in the startup
world is an interestingcoincidence.

(49:20):
I'm an accidental entrepreneur,so to speak.
I mean, he's not my.
I mean I'm a south indiandescent, so I was trained not to
take any risk in life, right.
So, yeah, that's true, it'shard for me to do a startup at
that point, right.
So I went and joined a companycalled rockwell semiconductor,
southern cow.
Uh, main reason I went therewas his idm was like it was.

(49:41):
That's it.
It is not that complicated.
After six years inUrbana-Champaign I said okay,
forget it, I'm a Chennai boy.
I got to go to where my bodyfeels a little warmer.
So I spent five years atRockwell.
I became a fellow there.
I designed something thatactually took off in the market,
but along the way, actually, mydad passed away in 96.

(50:01):
And I was only 28 years old.
He was always worried that Iwouldn't make money anymore.
But I said, okay, I got to trysomething in my life that
couldn't work.
I had no idea if it was goingto work or not, but that was the
passion.
I took the plunge in 98 andlanded well.
So far, I mean I got lucky.
Honestly, the first startup wasmore luck than skill.

(50:21):
We were in the right place theright time.
Telecom startups Well.

Speaker 1 (50:24):
I mean Intel bought VXTel for $550 million.
It's not bad.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
Yeah.
So we were there.
It was easy to raise money.
I thought I could walk in 45minutes later, walk out with a
$20 million check and then I domy second startup with all the
arrogance and I got my asswhooped completely.

Speaker 1 (50:40):
That was a hard one.
That was a hard one, yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
I had to reset it, I had to fire all my friends you
know once through, and then Ihad to recap the company twice.
But again, you know, it built adifferent type of cap.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
And eventually that one sold to Western Digital for
685 million.
So it's not bad, you got over1.2.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
On those two In return for a few.

Speaker 1 (51:03):
It's a good return, hopefully, for you and a bunch
of your investors.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
Yeah, yeah, definitely, I mean it was in
fact my second startup was thehighest multiple or the fastest
IRR in the storage space ever.
Unbelievable, yeah, For a bunchof investors.
So anyway, it worked out well,I can't complain.
And then again I got a littlecarried away.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
I started doing this studio model called Enterprise
Labs.
Yeah, you thought you could runfour companies at once.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
Yeah, I thought you know I could be a mini Musk here
, right?
I mean, how hard can it be?
Well, no, no, no, no, no, no,no.
Along comes COVID and I got myass whooped.
Okay, along comes COVID and Igot my ass whooped.
Okay.
So I said okay.
So this is how it works, right,it's that every other one
succeeds in my life.
So right now I'm on 3i Partners, which is hopefully the success
.

Speaker 1 (51:50):
Second fund for 3i Partners.
It's an amazing fund.
It's a great concept.
I think you've built it in away we didn't go through all the
mechanics, but you've built itin a way that it's very
inclusive of the investors.
It's not like a typical fundwhere you write your checks and
they do all the work.

Speaker 2 (52:05):
In this one you are an active participant as an
investor, so it's a reallyexciting way to build and run a
fund.
Look, in our fund there's goingto be 50 founders and
executives of high-techcompanies in Silicon Valley and
in the United States who areactively involved with it on a
monthly basis.
It's the one leaf fund of itskind where you get your voice

(52:27):
before the selection is made.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
It's not like a typical angel group where it's
kind of throw here or throwthere.
It's actually you're voting tomove an investment, and what I
love about it is you guys lookout of the 100 companies, you
bring two or three to theinvestor group, they mull it
over, you take votes and thenyou make investment decisions.
So it's really cool, reallycool way of doing it.
So, kumar, thank you forjoining me today.

(52:50):
I thought this was a lot of fun, tremendous amount of learning
and lots to share about whatgreat entrepreneurship is like
and in unique spaces.
So I really appreciate youcoming in today.
I know you're suffering from abit of a cough and a cold, so I
know you gutted it out.
But I've known you for so manyyears and when I take you skiing

(53:11):
, even if you don't have theright form, you'll gut down any
mountain.
So you'll gut down backdiamonds, your thighs will be
burning, but you'll keepfighting.

Speaker 2 (53:21):
It's the entrepreneurial training, is the
adversity training in my life.
I'm still recovering from it.

Speaker 1 (53:27):
Sorry, no yes, you're the ultimate frugal
entrepreneur.
You're the only guy that Iwould go skiing with.
That would say ajiv.
Uh, we paid 150.
We must do 15 runs, so get itdown to 10 bucks a lift and 10
bucks a run awesome.
Thank you for joining me today.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
Thank you.
Thank you for having me, rajiv.
It was fun to have a chat withyou, awesome.

Speaker 1 (53:58):
That was just an amazing conversation and I just
want to share a few things thatI took away from it.
Every conversation I have withKumar is a blessing.
He teaches me so much.
I mean every time I meet aperson like Kumar who comes from
a place like India.
They come to the US.
They don't have initially a lotof people.
They know and they come into adifferent environment and they

(54:20):
make their way and that's whathe does.
He has this undeniable spirit.
I was joking about him andskiing, but you go down any
trail.
I'm a pretty good skier.
I started skiing when I wasseven.
He started when he was in histwenties and he'll go down any,
almost any slope.
Even those form is terrible.
Like he's still doing the.
You know, he's still doing thepizza thing as opposed to the

(54:43):
french fry thing, and it's justbecause he thinks that he can
accomplish anything.
Like he'll get punched andhe'll just keep punching back,
and that's the one thing thatreally appeals to him.
I've had multiple punches andfailures and whenever I sit with
him I feel like I can keepgoing.
That spirit that he's bringingto entrepreneurs like as an

(55:03):
entrepreneur myself who'veworked with various investors,
there's nothing moredisheartening than when your
investor says they want to giveup, and that might actually be a
good thing, but Kumar's notgoing to be the one that tells
you to give up.
He's going to be the one thatwill always find another way,
and I think that's what hebelieves about anybody he works
with, and he really is rigorousabout how he decides to work

(55:26):
with his investments, just likehow he was with how he started
his companies.
He would just keep looking forthe right open spot for the
fundamental technology that he'slooking to build, and I think
that he's looking for that inpeople, and I think when you're
building these types ofcompanies, that's what you got
to pick.
It doesn't mean that ago-to-market style company won't
work.
It just means that there'salways a way and he'll show you

(55:47):
that way.
And I think where he thinksabout things, where there's
multiple like he talks aboutthat model the ultimate Venn
diagram of do something you love, do something you can make
money with, do something you canpersist with a long time, or do
something people really want,putting that perfect Venn
diagram together.
That's the way to think abouthim and his life, and I think
what he didn't tell you todaywas one of the reasons he

(56:08):
started the fund was because hismother said to him Kumar,
you've made a lot of money for alot of wealthy people.
Now you need to do somethingfor the folks at home.
You need to show them some ofthat path.
I think that's what motivateshim and drives him where he
doesn't after he can hang out atthe beach and instead he does
this.
So that's what I got out ofthis.
I really want to thank everyonefor listening and sharing in

(56:30):
this conversation that I hopefelt like one of our ski trips
to Tahoe.
Thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed the pod, take amoment to rate it and comment.
You can find us on Apple,spotify, youtube and everywhere
podcasts can be found.
And if you know me, text me andtell me that you're listening
and why you're listening,because I just love hearing from

(56:52):
you.
It makes such a difference inmy life.
The show was produced bySandeep Parikh and Anand Shah.
Sandeep again is dealing withthe LA fires and there's so much
going on there and theaftermath of that, and I just
deeply appreciate all thosegreat, creative people that are
out there that are trying to gettheir lives back together.
Production assistance is byTaryn Talley, edited by Sean
Maher and Aidan McGarvey.
I'm your host, rajiv Parikhfrom Position Squared.
We are a top-notch AI-orientedgrowth marketing company based

(57:15):
in Silicon Valley.
Come visit us at position2.com.
This has been an effing funnyproduction and we'll catch you
next time.
And remember folks be evercurious.

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The Innovation Leap that's happening in India/Kumar Ganapathy ~ 3iPartners, Deep Tech, Impact - Spark of Ages Ep 31

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Innovation Leap that's happening in India/Kumar Ganapathy ~ 3iPartners, Deep Tech, Impact - Spark of Ages Ep 31