Vani Kola... on daily anchors, guardrails, and venture capitalism in India

Abhay is joined by pioneering seed-stage venture capitalist Vani Kola, founder and managing director of Kolaari Capital. They talked about rituals and routines, dealing with ambiguity and guardrails, and how accelerate closing the equity gap for women entrepreneurs in tech.

(0:00 - 3:04) Introduction
(3:04) Rituals, basic skills and values, anchors
(19:02) Dealing with ambiguity as an founder or funder, navigating guardrails
(36:07) India as a governance leader in tech, accelerating pathways for women, nostalgia, building trust
(55:30) Conclusion

So I’m always eager to learn from leaders who more often than not are able to manage contrasts.  Now contrasts come in all different shapes and forms and they are literally all around us in every professional and personal environment and my hypothesis is that successful leaders find a way maybe through their own journey to manage small and large contrasts with progressively increasing clarity, patience, and purpose. So it was really a treat to share a conversation with Vani Kola, the founder and managing director of Kalaari Capital, an early stage venture capital firm in India.  Vani is originally from Hyderabad, and after an engineering degree, came to the US to complete her Masters and went on to a career as a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley for over two decades.  She then returned to India to pioneer among the first homegrown Indian seed-stage venture firms with Kalaari Capital, using a philosophy that includes recognizing ambitious first-time entrepreneurs and helping them to scale up. Now mind you, she started this at a time in the mid-2000’s when opportunities for growth and scale for ecommerce, tech, healthcare and many other sectors in India were at the ripening stage.  Vani has navigated and executed successfully through the endless contrasts of an evolving seed-stage venture ecosystem: new vs old, disruptive revolutions vs steady institutions, profiteering innovation vs collective responsibility, and skepticism vs trust… they’re at the core of the face to face conversations that investors and entrepreneurs are having everyday.  Vani has been mentoring, and developing some of India’s top founders and unicorn companies, with not just a keen eye on returns, but on the responsibility too to accelerate women as leaders in entrepreneurship, doing it all with a meditative sense of purpose and a growth mindset of sharing (by the way, you really have to check out her great newsletter called Kolaidoscope on LinkedIn). I had met her briefly once when she spoke at a panel discussion on tech and India’s future, and it was great to catch up with her again to talk about everything from ambiguity and nostalgia, to the guardrails of tech, policy making, and even what she misses about Silicon Valley.  But we started by chatting about the basics of daily skills and anchors, and especially if she had any self- driving and governing rituals or routines?

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