Jeffery:
well, like anything we’re already rolling and jumping into things. So Aditya very, it’s a pleasure. Thank you very much for joining us today. And welcome from Delhi. It’s very exciting to have you and we’re excited to jump into a conversation with you around everything that you’re doing. So welcome.

Aditya:
Thank you so much, Jeffrey, thank you for having me

Jeffery:
100%. So the best way for us to kind of jump in and get familiarized with yourself and where we’re going with the conversation today is maybe you can give us a little bit of a background on yourself, kind of where you come from, what you’ve been up to and kind of where you’re going and then share one thing about you that nobody would know.

Aditya:
Yeah, sure. So my name is editor and I hear from the capital city of India, which is New Delhi. I’m an entrepreneur Tony angel investor where, and I helped turn around struggling companies. Um, my journey started when I was 17. Um, I had a startup in which we were digitalizing and transforming the content space on Youtube and post.

I’d have done multiple hats, I’ve been into multiple businesses and in my current role in capacity, I helped invest in startups and I also manage an investor network for startups. Well then we of course invest in early-stage transactions and also help them to grow to the next level. So that’s what a world watch, what’s been keeping my day. That’s what I’ve been burning the midnight oil for.

And yeah, I just want to be in the, in the last year we’ve invested in about 25 companies. I want to grow this number by up to 200 or 300 in the coming years. And then yes, had the maximum startups I can, uh, not just from India, but all around the world.

Jeffery:
No, that’s very exciting. Well, maybe you can give us a little bit more of the background on the entrepreneurial side. You mentioned the Youtube piece, can you give us a bit more understanding of what that was made up of, and then we can carry that through?

Aditya:
Sure. So this was an idea somewhere around 2015 2016, where of course, uh, it was the new dawn of social media, right? People started utilizing that digital is the key, right? Uh, to help you grow in terms of an online presence. And we did not have Instagram back then. We did not have Snapchat back then. We had Youtube, which was a growing community where people were putting a lot of content, right? So it was like a California gold rush where people were just jumping on the bandwagon and putting a lot of content out there. So we figured out that white space and you wanted to monetize that. So not only voice solving a problem in which we had people to create quality content on Youtube, but also a platform in which we can help these creators find analytics for the videos, right?

Because most of the times you upload thousands of videos, but you never actually know that are you improved with your videos? But how are you videos doing on an individual basis? So that’s where we of course provided them the much needed insights and analytics so that they can help grow their content piece and can also importantly use that for re-marketing. Right? So they want to re-market on do affiliate marketing around it. The analytics and metrics becomes much, much more important.

That was something that of course he started and then post that I switched onto a multiple businesses. One of the business was in the housing accommodations right? Where in what I used to do was we were providing quality housing and accommodations to students around university. Right? So in India there are some universities in which students come from all around the country to study. These are some of the most prestigious university universities, not just in India but around the world and some of the toughest to get into. So of course students come from all parts of the country and around the world to study in them. But the problem is that they don’t get access to the right kind of housing or the right kind of accommodation because hostels all uh condominiums can’t house everyone right?

You have to go out and look for your own housing and accommodation as well. So that was one thing where we were trying to provide them and also quality food at cheap prices. Was was was also a photo areas apart from housing. And that’s why we created a very beautiful concept around student housing and accommodation. So you’re both of my business is Jeffrey. I ended up selling, uh, to other investors because, um, uh, of course I wanted to help more and more startups to come up.

And that’s the area, that’s where of course I became from an entrepreneur to prove an investor

Jeffery:
awesome. And can you give us one thing about you that nobody would know?

Aditya:
Uh, so yeah, I guess investors have a lot of things which, which, which a lot of people don’t know about, right? So one thing about me is that I’m though I’m in the serious business of money, but I’m very relaxed and a very humorous person, my heart. I love comedy. In fact I’ve been a comedian myself. I’ve done some comedy myself, so I love comedy and I love things which had been on the, on the lighter side.

Jeffery:
Very cool. I like that, having a little bit of a side passion and making humor one of them that’s pretty exciting. So you mentioned in your first company that you built that it was around helping and figuring out what to do in the Youtube space and move this out. So how important was it to learn how analytics and data helped to grow a business? How important is that to all the things that you’ve kind of structured over the last 10 years? How much has that been built off of data and analytics?

Aditya:
Yeah, uh, I guess, uh, definitely the pace at which we are moving in. Data is going to be the new oil, right? Because every industry is now getting data-oriented, Every sector which was an organized is trying to get organized in these coming times. And of course data is that medium through which you unorganized, which we organize the unorganized sector. Right? So data is going to be the key. And again, someone who holds that data in his or her hand has paramount and amount capacity to change around things and to make useful insight out of it.

So, uh, that’s where of course uh V as an economy are headed towards where we want to make meaningful insights from the data. If let’s say I know that the population in one particular pocket of the country’s, let’s say, uh 200,000. But I don’t know the demographics of it. I don’t know the deep down details analysis of. So if I don’t know these minute details to the very cold, to the to the very bottom, I’m not able to generate meaningful insights from it. So that’s where of course that was the motivation. That was the bio of my company when we started. And what we did was we picked up, we picked up about 500,000 videos which are out there on the Internet and we tried generating analytics from it. We crawl some of the data from Google which is available when Google does advertising. And some of it was generated by us in which we were looking at these videos on a very personalized, you know, a 1:1 basis and seeing their growth on a daily level. Once we saw that we know we we now know that what what what is the data and what is the growth of that data and that’s where of course that becomes our selling proposition to any content creator to anyone who’s out there and we take that oil.

Let me say that, Okay, this is this is the meaningful insight that you want from your data and will help you to provide all of that. Yeah, that starts where we’re building all this, centering around data and generating insights from it.

Jeffery:
And I completely agree that data is the new oil and it has been for a few years and content is king.

All of those metrics are really heavily um set up so that you can grow your business and from an entrepreneur perspective. And the reason why I really like this subject is because in order for any company to start to find market traction and figure out where they fit in a market. They need to understand the market but they also need to look at the numbers, look at the data and really pull that information in and analyze it and being that you are on Youtube and creating a business.

That whole thing is about data because if you don’t sign up users, you don’t figure out how many views you have, likes, shares. You don’t have a business. So you really had to really understand that and then figure out how do I get into other pockets That are going to really help my business grow and help people see me, what was some of the approaches that you guys used in order to expand on that? Um, like you said, you had 500,000, but you started with one. So what actually got you moving and interested more in the space and say, Hey, wait, this seems easy.

When I look at the data, I’m able to move this quicker. What were those, some of those key pieces that you could share with the audience?

Aditya:
Uh Again, what we looked at as we figured out that what other data hotspots in any country. Right. When is the time when you utilize your data to the maximum? Let’s say when you’re uploading your video, which has got violent or less, you’re uploading a series of video which has got little response, which has got dull response in both the cases, data is generated, right? Um of course insights and usability of that data is different but in both the cases, data isn’t. So what we’re looking for is that uh that whole series or all, all of those clips were in data thirst up and went down or maybe data went down and we figured out those trains in the form of in the form of charts and of course we then of course did a background analysis. What people do wrong is people start looking at data from a very microscopic point of view. They they look at what are the lights or their followers and then they see how to grow it.

But I guess a better strategy is to maybe set up the upper limit and then do a backtracking analysis of it. Because then you do a mind mapping and you try and see that what is the kind of engagement that I want for that particular point of trying to hit that ceiling limit? And that’s a much much better strategy and a much-focused strategy uh rather than just going out there in the white space and just creating content not knowing whether you will hit, let’s say 10 million views by the 10th video or the 130.

Right, so that’s where of course the corridor of a certain uncertainty is their second thing. What we looked at is uh that what is the user-generated content in? If let’s say it’s it’s an app. What is the kind of data which is being generated by the in-house users? Right. And that is again one of the most critical aspects of it because even if whatever channel you create, right, even even if it’s a Youtube channel or it’s an app, uh a large part of that growth would come in by the users, right? Users would share, users will generate content over it. Users will discuss that product on the forums and users would drive the growth eventually of that platform. So of course, uh we were trying to see that what is the user generated content over that piece. And the third most important thing is the collaboration aspect, right? Which is a very underrated strategy. But most of the digital innovation which has been happening these days, is built on collaboration and synergies primarily, right? Because now users have become much dynamic in their group, let’s say if I am a content creator and people see me for 10 days, people would get bored on the eleventh day. People want some new fresh content to come up. People want me to speak something which they haven’t heard me speaking all this way. And that’s where those key collaborations and this payment. So we figured out that then you are moving towards a piece of collaboration of strategic synergies.

What’s the kind of search or what’s the kind of gone down for that? You get how is your audience reacting to it? How is your audience responding to it? And that’s where we are crawling all of the data from, from the internet, from the user-generated content, and from everywhere. And trying to see that what works best rate. There is nothing which is one size fits all in this space, right?

You have to go very deep down. So that’s where of course you’re trying to generate all of that and move in a very organized, focused manner, then just moving out head play here.

Jeffery:
So it’s, it sounds like in order to to create a business one, you have to understand the data, understand your audience. But you also have to be very focused and test and retest and keep testing to see what takes. And this doesn’t have to just go on content. This has to go on a specific product that you’re trying to sell. This has to go on any aspect of a business. So in taking these KPIs or these different pieces of the business that generate the data to help you grow while you were going through and getting traction and building this up and learning what your audience was interested in, how much of your business changed from year one versus year three. Did you pivot completely different because of the data and your audience? Or did you stick to your mindset and say, no, this is the best way of doing this, and I’m sticking to my gut and my gut says, do it this way, or did you learn from your audience?

Aditya:
Right? See Jeffrey, the point here is that you can decide what is best for for for you, right? Even if, let’s say, one strategy is best for me, it is, it may not be the best for the company, right? Because every brand has a different audience to create a right, and every audience has a different mindset, has a different opinion, has a different choice. So, if you are if you are very static in this field, you are eventually not moving in a very dynamic industry. This whole industry is about dynamism, it’s about moving with changes, right? So again, you can’t be starting and say, okay, this works for me, let’s let’s let me stick to that.

If it if it does not work for brand, maybe it’s their fault, right? But let me stick to my guns, let me stick to my plans, then it’s like killing your own audience. However, it’s a very fine line, right? I can’t go deep inside and pick up the brand’s marketing altogether by myself. I only show them the way the brand has to create that quality content. The brand has to uh services customer in the best form of money, right? Because there is no growth hack around it if you’re not serving your customers in the most optimal manner, no digital strategy will help you to reach a million followers, right? And that will not help. So I’m just showing them the way their names where I’m opening them up to a pandora box which is a series of innovations and experiments where and we are doing a bit, are staying where we are doing uh ways, we are doing everything that’s required for brands uh in order to fixate one thing. And some of the crazy strategies have all evolved as well. Right. Things. We think we thought that would not work for this brand, eventually ended up becoming the preference marketing strategy of that.

So things happen. But yes, we have to constantly no way you have to constantly change in a dynamic industry.

Jeffery:
I love it. So you were focused but you were taking in all the right key points to allow you to move forward, but you were actually changing with those. So year one was not the same as your three because you were dynamic enough to change, learn from your customers, learn from your audience and that helps you grow and move forward.

Aditya:
Absolutely, absolutely.

Jeffery:
I love it. No, and that’s very valuable because I think sometimes startups in their mind, they get stuck in that this is the right solution, this is the best way and they try to move forward and they keep hitting roadblocks um and sometimes they have to be a little bit more malleable and be able to shift and change because it’s going to benefit them in the long run, but also have an ear and open mind to listen to what your audience is saying, and then use your data to help you drive your business forward.

Aditya:
Absolutely.

Jeffery:
So in your in your next business, how much of that learning did you take into them working with your customers, which are now going to be students? Because now you’re working with a totally different demographic, you’re not working with brands and their customers, you’re working directly to a customer that you have to accommodate, that are all probably in the same age group ish.

And you’re trying to help them find something. So did data and everything else play a big part in this business? Or was this just kind of a gut feeling? And he just went with it and said, you know, I’m gonna try this to get to here?

Aditya:

Oh God, no. Uh see both of the markets were very different. One was in the totally digital innovation space.

One was a very on ground operation focused space. Right? So both are a very different market, I think, which is underrated. Which I’m sure you would also agree. Most of our, most of us investors investing that is called founders. Market for train. We don’t just generally look at product market fit, that is their right. But a founder market fit is more than the product-market fit.

So eventually the founder has to evolve within every market. No market is the same. Every market has a different pain point to solve. Every market has a different strategy through which you approach, right? But again, learnings are there, as you said, the year One was very different from here three in terms of how we, how we were working with their clients. But some things were same from Year One to the three, which was the passion of the founders. This was the, the constant urge to satisfy our customers, which was which was the need to solve the problem and the best way we can. Right? So these principles as an entrepreneur that mindset again, the mindset that I built in the first company would uh eventually held in the second one, but of course how I approach the problem.

Now the whole scenario setup changed. But again, now, I guess second time founders have a much more confident approach. They are much more relaxed and they have of course, in terms of statistics as well, they have a higher chance of success.

Um, even as short as by 35%. I was reading a book playing uh reverse, uh which is a very good book, which it said that 35% is almost the success rate of the second time founders in the second in church. Right? So of course that success rate is there, uh, that learnings is also there. That mistakes is also there because I didn’t know that both You have to satisfy customers in every market rate. But of course, how you approach them, what’s the strategy you find, what’s the go to market, you build, what’s the business model you build? Everything changes, right? Uh, your research changes your notes, changes your thesis, changes, everything changes. But again, yeah, the passion, the vision and the execution should always remain the same.

Jeffery:
No, I love that. And uh, the experience level changes dramatically to write. You learned a lot from your first business. You moved in your second business and you know, maybe the principle of what you were looking for and what helped grow business one. What’s a little bit different than what helps you grow business two. But your experience, knowledge and passion is what kept you focused in driving that business out.

Aditya:
Absolutely, absolutely. That’s that’s, well said.

Jeffery:
I love it. So now taking all this experience you have and now you’re moving into the VC world. What interested you in investing in startups versus building a third company?

Aditya:
Jeffrey, maybe that there’s something in, in the founders, my interest rate, the advance. You have buried a couple of companies, You’re scared a couple of companies. Um now you want to give something back to the society right? Where you want to see others prosper as well, because by the time you spend time in the ecosystem, you see a lot of promising faces around, right? And you have those interactions, people celebrate your success as well, and you get close to close to people as you grow the ecosystem.

So of course you want to see some people succeeding, right? So of course, at the end of the day, my larger vision was since I started up young, my problem was that I started off way too early, right, which is a very good thing. But of course in the mindset building, it was a very tough thing because I did not come from non-technology back, I did not have, I did not have anything which was given to be on a, on a tablespoon.

I had literally bring everything up myself from day one, of course, now I figured out that pain and once I started speaking out to more and more different of course from my venture or through various sessions that I did in college, I realized that entrepreneurs something particularly in India is growing fan and that fan needs to, needs to get caught up into a full time innovation might say so yeah, that’s when I wanted to make a shift. That shift was due, right. I figured out that maybe it’s sometimes later I’ll do that, but I saw myself making it out there young and that’s when I saw that maybe if I start out young, I tell to these people that I want to help you, they’ll get even more motivated, uh, that this is someone who takes everyone along the way it helps. And that was the motivation through which of course I joined the world to help other succeed in life.

Jeffery:
Very nice and, and giving back and helping from your experience is gonna certainly lead and help other people that don’t have the experience, knowledge or support system to be able to do that.

So it’s a great approach to helping and building a network and especially as an entrepreneur, a lot of times people just want to build and they don’t think about the people around them that haven’t done anything. So this is a good way to kind of move that needle forward and educate and help others. In this journey of your, the next endeavor that you’ve been on, what are the types of things that motivate you to work with these companies outside of obviously the financial side of things, Are there other things that you really look forward to and working with the startups?

Aditya:
Sure. Um so the best part about backing early-stage companies is of course one is the financial incentive that you get right, but more than making the money, it’s always been impact for meeting every company, which is starting out right now is probably trying to create an impact in the world, right in their own ways.

And that’s what motivates me because these companies are not just creating the, they’re not reinventing the wheel altogether, but they’re helping make the world better all together. And that’s where it’s a very interesting space to come in and right, Because what you are backing is a company is a company which is going to create a train in the next three years, right? It’s going to continue that shaft in the next three years. And that’s what motivates me every Jeffrey uh, that I’m backing strong innovation.

I’m backing founders who are coming from humble backgrounds, who are not someone who have been given everything on a silver platter. There literally struggled hard for themselves coming up to here. So at the end of the day, we are not just transforming, world into a better place, but we’re also transforming the founders that be back into much rounded individuals and the impact for it.

Uh Long term value, what we say, right? The long term value is immense because these entrepreneurs that we’re backing will not just go ahead and raise uh millions and billions of dollars in venture capital, but they will also employ a lot of people. They would be the innovators of change in the coming time and they would actually create the world into a better place uh than what it is. So yeah, that’s what motivates me. Trust me everyday to back these companies.

Jeffery:
Brilliant. No, that’s great. And with the help and the insights that you’re working with these companies maybe give us an idea of how it functions in general. Is it are you working with 100 companies at one time? Is it working in courts of 10 companies and you’re working them through a system. Can you kind of define how that all works and then where you guys come in on each aspect of that?

Aditya:
Yeah. So how would technically look at us? We look at companies in a month on a rolling basis and the company can come up to us either to direct reference so it can apply to our website. And we would love to open. Like our doors are never closed for any company to apply to us. It’s always open. So we look at companies on that basis. But every month we’re short listing three companies which we present to our investor forums and which represent to our network of investors.

And we’re trying to close deals from that three transactions apart from that, there are some transactions which will run in parallel, which are an offline, uh some transactions which we which which which is the result for the close group of investors, for the market investors. So, uh in a month, typically, if I have to look at all of that, you can say it’s a monthly cohort of somewhere about seven transactions on a monthly basis. And uh we’ll keep looking at companies on a rolling basis. So uh every month we’ll be doing this.

And how would typically very typically come in is that we come in at an at an early stage in companies where in the company’s market operational and they want finds for the next scale of innovation. So these are your typically your seed rounds and rounds and your pre series a round face. So from anywhere from 50 K to about 500 K. Usd is broadly what we look at for investments. Um, and uh our vision with investments is very, very different. We don’t look at investment, as I said, from just a financial standpoint, I guess financial standpoint is the last thing you look at when you do an investment. The primary things that you look at is of course how you can add value in the transaction. And that’s what we believe in.

If you can add value to any transaction, you are hedging their address and you’re creating, you are increasing the challenge, the chances of making it a successful transaction. So we invest in companies, we bring strategic people on company. We don’t believe in like flooding the cap table with thousands of investors. We will be bringing only strategic guys into the cap table where uh, every role uh, of an investor who’s coming in is very defined, is talked with the startups, 1 to 1 basis.

The, the milestones, all the targets are being discussed and that’s where we bring in right onto the camp table. And we guys as well. The last thing, of course that I want to say is our philosophy is also that we also take a piece of the pie. We also invest in companies so that we are creating a space of credibility and trust between the founders and investors and us that we are also backing this transaction and that’s where we have our value as well. The entrepreneurial experience that I’ve got in, um, over the years, I tried to add all of that by taking a small piece of the pie in the transaction is by, so that’s what we believe in.

Jeffery:
Awesome. And so you’re kind of, are you working and operating more as from an entrepreneur standpoint, you’re working as, um, an accelerator incubator slash investor. So anybody that you do invest in your working with them for a set amount of time you’ve built KPIs are adding, investors are adding in other, um, experts to help those companies grow. Is that kind of the structure?

Aditya:
It’s structure as an angel network. We are working for the investors primarily wherein we are helping them get quality transactions and quality founders. We are focused towards that side. However, once we invest in companies, we become startup-oriented. Right? That’s where we of course believe in driving the next meal of changing start-ups. Uh, defining milestones, defining KPI is, um, adding our value over and along the financial transaction as well. So the primary sources and angel network, however, it runs more like in incubator and accelerator where you are very hands on with the company that we invest in.

Jeffery:
Perfect. That’s a good thing. Again, taking your experience and utilizing that to benefit the growth of the company. You can’t go wrong, it’s completely needed, I’m sure statistically when you look at the numbers of companies that have more help than none, there’s a proven track record that there’s going to be more success that’s going to come out of that. Absolutely. So now that you’ve built this network, you’re helping these companies, do you go back to your roots again? Are you focusing it on the data to help these companies grow or is it more of experts just throwing them into the mix where they see problems and gaps and you’re letting the founders share with you the problems that they’re having and then you’re trying to fix them by bringing in the right resources to kind of help that move forward.

Aditya:
So I guess it’s a big soft both rate. Sometimes you have to uh, literally lead the charge as well in certain situations, but in most of the situations you want the founder to drive the boat because it’s their baby at the end of the day. Um, I don’t believe in of course taking over someone’s baby and just running it my way because it’s the founders, we are investing in, right. If I wanted to run the show myself, I would have invested in myself. I would have not dragged the transaction. So I want found us to run the show. I want them to literally go out in the market and figure out the problem we are there of course, in terms of helping them figure out the right answers.

But again, we are the strict in generators who don’t tell the answers in the first cold because we want found us to struggle and that’s where we want them literally the steel from inside there still to come from inside, right? To grow the next countries. But again, I guess Jeffrey, I’m sure you will also be there once you’ve, you’re part of the ecosystem, you’ve lived a certain life into the ecosystem.

You are connected with everyone, right? You can’t, you can’t leave back your roots, you’re always connected. And since it’s a very small ecosystem as well of startups, it keeps coming back and it’s, it’s very circular, right? So yeah, I do go back to my roots often. I enjoy going back to them. Yeah, sometimes I do really, really enjoy throwing founders into the mix.

Jeffery:
That’s awesome. And it reminds me of a story when I was, this was when I started my journey 15 years ago. And it shaped just around that when uh, I was out in a meeting and uh I was pushing that I was a business Ceo I’m a business guy driving my background is technology and software development.

And a lady was sitting having a coffee and the lady came in and we were chatting and a new person had come in and they saw them they said oh I really want you to meet Jeffrey, He is the C. T. He’s a CTO and I looked at her and I’m like no no I’m not a CTO in my head, I’m thinking oh no. Um and it was because it was this idea that I had to get away from what I was good at what I was core at to try and reinvent myself as being a CEO versus a CTO.

Being a technologist versus a business person. And it was interesting that years later it caught on that. Why am I trying to be something that I’m not, why don’t I just be what I’m really good at and over time it just, I was able to accept that it wasn’t a bad thing to have that experience.

And it sounds like and the reason why pulling back on that data thing is that when you’ve got something that’s quick and easy and um needed, it’s easy for you to deploy that into other businesses and see what value that you can help them with quickly and being the debts your background. It’s always a good way to foster that. And I always look at, you’re not looking at the fastest route, the hardest route. You’re looking at, the one that is going to give you the most benefit to share with everybody else.

And that’s why I love what you’re doing because you’re taking all of those things that you’ve experienced and you’re sharing that back and helping those companies grow based off of what your experiences were.

Aditya:
Absolutely. I think that’s not the value of your transaction increases what we are. What we are looking at is that uh, we just get too much involved in the cap table. How much, how much shares do we eventually have? But I guess it’s more than the that story, right?

Investment is a collective, is a collection of so many experiences of so many learnings that you get from so many investors and every learning, every experience is writing itself right. Everyone has done that, some in some form of the other. So if you try and look at it from that perspective, it becomes a very value-adding transaction.

It becomes a very, it becomes it becomes a transaction where in we are literally learning from someone who’s been there, done that and that’s where that’s the best growth act that you that you can do right, learning from people’s experience in people’s stories and I also love going back to the roots and helping with all the data that have got into the companies these days because at the end of the day when you’re creating a portfolio of portfolio of massive companies, you want everyone, you want everyone of course uh to be successful.

Others the rule that not everyone will be successful, but at the end of the day you want everyone to be successful and create some form of impact on the society.

Jeffery:
So when people are engaging with you, do you or they want to engage with you is the first kind of or the best way for you to kind of start that engagement is it to tell them to go out and find one person to help them be mentored or coached with before they come to. Because you want them to get that experience of what it takes to be mentored and to be coached and then come and speak with you because at that point you’re gonna have some groundwork.

They’re going to have, the business is going to be at a certain position and then you’re going to be able to get in there with your team and your network to be able to help them thrive.

Aditya:
So what I look at this again, um, in retrospect of what I look at us, that founders should come up to me with some form of answers to the problems they have great, uh, it should not just become a problem shooting game, right? Where proper? Where founders are on the first call telling me seven different problems and they haven’t actually figured out their problems for themselves, right?

Because I, as an investor as well have limited bandwidth. I can’t spend all of my 24 hours on one transaction and help them get all the right answers. So, uh, with a mentor or without a major, I guess it does not matter. But what matters is that there should be in some form of direction. They should not be clueless. Right? Well I’m there just as somebody who can help accelerate that direction, but I can literally just change directions for them for themselves.

Even if I’m doing that, I’m taking away their vision. I’m taking away with what they started actually. And I don’t want to do that, right? I’m not someone who wants to kill someone’s dream and tell them, okay, this is the right way to follow your dream, right? I don’t want to be that bad guy in the room. So um, yeah, mentor Mentee does not matter, But yes, you should have, you should have something figured out for yourself. Something where you’ve struggled hard, you’ve gone to the market as you’ve gone to end, customers have said no, right?

It’s okay for me. If, if 10 customers have said no, but if you don’t even know why they said no, then that’s a problem for me, right? Because then it’s a spot of bother. It’s like aiming in the dark without even knowing where the direction is. And that’s where that’s a big put-off for me. So I want them to figure out some things for themselves, uh in the direction where they’re headed.

Jeffery:
Aditya that’s awesome. It’s spot on. I love it. Uh Well said, so I’m going to, we’re gonna kind of transition now. We’ve kind of went through this amazing little journey of kind of where you come from, where you’ve gone to, how you help people. It’s brilliant. I love it. We’re gonna jump into the rapid-fire questions before we get into a couple of personal questions. I hope out speed works for you.

Aditya:
Absolutely. We are all about speed.

Jeffery:
I like it. All right. Um, well in some of the questions you’ve kind of answered, so we’re just going to kind of re take another picture of you at this, but um, so we’ll skip through a couple but what is your favorite part of investing?

Aditya:
Ah exit.

Jeffery:
All right. It does work. It does work. How many companies do you invest in per year?

Aditya:
Uh, about really 25.

Jeffery:
25?

Aditya:
Yeah

Jeffery:
Massive! You’re on the upper echelon of investments. I love it. Any verticals you like to focus on?

Aditya:
A tech, education, tech, Fintech and SAAS companies.

Jeffery:
Okay. In the due diligence, is there before you make a commitment, is there a certain thing that you need to see from that due diligence before you make an investment?

Aditya:
I need to see the founders due diligence. I need to see that our founders actually in terms of confident of what they are saying, something that never gets covered in due diligence, but I want to see the qualitative aspects.

Jeffery:
Okay, timelines for investment.

Aditya:
About 30 to 45 days.

Jeffery:
Okay. Is there anything that you focus on in your due diligence outside the founders? Is it on the paperwork? Is it on the legalities? Is that the product market fit? Is there other things that really jumped to the top of the, of the pile?

Aditya:
So I focus more on technology due diligence. When I look at what’s the kind of technology they are building? Have they done a thorough research of who the competitors near competitors are in the technology they are building?

And more than that. I look at the process is how the company is moving like internally. Right? With respect to invent three or with respect to filing off their taxes and everything. What’s the process? Right. Even if there are delays? I’m not worried on that. But what’s the process with which you approach your internal health of the company.

Jeffery:
Okay. Do you lead rounds?

Aditya:
Uh, not yet. Not yet. But we will lead from, from the coming year.

Jeffery:
Okay. Do you have any preferred terms that you like to invest on? Pref shares? Common shares, safes, anything like that?

Aditya:
So again, uh, that, uh, think the preferred form of instrument is something which is, which can be workable. It’s not, which is a hard fixed, but evaluation is something which of course I would want that Uh, typically 2 $2.5 million. We should not exceed at least when you’re investing in the second round as a founder. I want the biggest as investor. I want a bigger piece of the pie Evans. I’m investing in early stage transaction here.

Jeffery:
Okay. Uh, do you do follow up investments?

Aditya:
Yes, Yes, we do that.

Jeffery:
And percentage.

Aditya:
Uh, so it’s a new portfolio. So we’ve just done follow-ons with the two companies that we have, we have done, but most of the companies will raise follow-ons from this year. So we will, we will take that.

Jeffery:
Okay. And do you take board seats?

Aditya:
Uh, we take observer seat. So we don’t take, uh, like a voting seat, but we take observer seats as a part of a network.

Jeffery:
Okay, perfect, so the last question and this is kind of more of the um, the positive, exciting story that you can think of, of working with a start up, it could be one you’ve invested in, it could be just ones that you were working with, and it’s kind of that heart felt, trigger pulling kind of startup entrepreneur where they were able to overcome the world’s craziness and launch amazing business and do and have some success. We’d like to tell those stories where it just is amazing. It blows your mind because there’s stories out there where it motivates to start up in a cheats an entrepreneur, show them what it really takes to be an entrepreneur. You have kind of that quick story that really makes people feel like, wow, that’s what it takes to be an entrepreneur, I’m in.

Aditya:
Definitely.So there are plenty of stories that of course I’ve witnessed and I’ve been a part of, uh, but there is of course the first investment that I made, right, uh, we made the company called clear. They go, so it’s a, it’s a budget. I will retail chain companies. Uh, so there’s a lot of, lot of play, a lot of global brands which are selling either. There’s exotica, There’s, this will be paco, there’s three bands of the world, Right? Uh, but there’s a very untapped market segment which is particularly prevalent in India, which is the rural segment. Right? A lot of people have problems of correct eye vision, correct eyesight, but they don’t have that paying capacity to afford the luxury brands. So you need either, uh, for the, for the lower strata of the society, for the, for the bottom section of the society. And that’s where Kia they cause a company which came in. It had no sophisticated technology. It has no, it had no sophisticated lines of code which was written on it. It started out with a simple problem that we want to empower one billion people in India which have a problem of correct vision and we want to empower them. And uh, that’s where we invested in just the founders. There was no correct business model, There was no correct technology. There was no correct marketing plan acquisition story. There was nothing on the table but he invested in the founders and the vision and once we invested they are just just one story.

And the valuation was well below half a million dollars. Uh, so once you pick that investment and again that investment was something which was loved by everyone that how would this investment actually work? How would this model work? Right, Where, and it’s no technology, how will you scale this up? So, uh, we made the investment, um, I, of course had something that maybe this will work and we now, of course, have about 90 plus goes across the, across across the country in about 2.5 years, our valuations are probably well over $10 million.

Uh, we’ve raised multiple rounds of funding post tax and yeah, we’ve been generating some crazy amount of revenue and I would say we are, um, almost half in admission of empowering about one million people. So that’s the, that’s one of the craziest stories of investment that I personally have witnessed in my short (inaudible).

Jeffery:
I love it. Great story. And you’re right, sometimes people don’t see the opportunity because they feel that it’s over saturated or there’s a million reasons, but you were able to see that and jump into it and help them grow. So that’s exciting. And, uh, you’re right. It’s, it’s about the founders, it’s about their drive. It’s about understanding what the opportunity is and what they see in their eyes. Right?

Aditya:
Absolutely, Absolutely, definitely. But that’s well said,

Jeffery:
I love it. All right, we’re gonna ask a couple of personal questions just before we get close to finishing up here. All right, favorite sports team.

Aditya:
Uh, it has to be Manchester United.

Jeffery:
What, uh, should be an Arsenal fan, but that’s okay. You have it. Let you have it. That’s not a bad team.

Aditya:
I love Manchester dating from the old era and Ronaldo and, uh, Rooney and every, all of these guys with their name.

Jeffery:
No, that’s brilliant. Yeah. They’re they’re all great players for sure. Okay, next, what is your favorite movie? And what character would you play in the movie?

Aditya:
My favorite movies, joker and I would definitely be in Green phoenix. Yea.,

Jeffery:
joker and Greenfield. Yeah, I like it. I like it. I haven’t ah is that the new one? You’re talking? Like the joker one that just came out?

Aditya:
The one from which Joaquin phoenix won? The Oscar.

Jeffery:
That was an intense movie.

Aditya:
Very intense. But it was a crazy movie. I loved his free spirit and spirit nous about life, how he was just living life to his own choice.

Jeffery:
Yeah, well that’s a, that’s a great choice. Well, I would say that it’s something I would need to see again, but it wasn’t too long ago that I did watch it. So great movie and you know what? You learn a lot of about, how someone envisions themselves in a character in a movie. So I get to learn a lot about you today, learn about the styles and all the things that you guys have done.

Congratulations on all the success and uh continue to keep pushing and helping startups. You’re a good man, you’re doing a lot of great things in the environment. I listened to lots of your podcasts and other things that you’ve done and uh you seem to be um very well positioned down to earth and very approachable and I’m, the mind that comes to me is a very dalai lama style of a person, which I think is amazing.

So kudos, I’m glad that we got to spend some time talking today and explore again everything and what you’re about and what you’re doing. I want to thank you again for joining us today. So thank you.

Aditya:
Thank you. Thank you so much. If it’s a pleasure pleasure being being with you and thank you so much for your kind words always. And of course I wish you the best as well. You’re doing a great job with this podcast and 1000 other things through what you’re empowering the ecosystem and yeah, I wish you the best of your journey and, and look forward to seeing connected.

Jeffery:
Awesome. I love it. And then the way we like to end our podcast is we like to give you the last word. So anything that you want to share to the investor community or to the startups, I turn it over to you. But againAditya thank you very much for all your insights and keep up the great efforts.

Aditya:
Thank you. Thank you so much. Everyone listen up us here till now. Uh, all the investors community as well that I would say is that, uh, guys are doing a great job, but the job is not even halfway done right. Uh, it’s a long haul. It’ll be empowered, more startups all across the world to come up and solve exciting problems, not just from one country but across the world.

And we have a very important role at times because we are literally at the shape of our innovations. So I just wish you all the best and I hope that you bring more and more of people into the ecosystem uh, into the investing ecosystem. And you are there, you spread more knowledge and awareness about startups and about investing in startups as an alternative asset plus, that’s, that’s about me and always add value. Don’t just look at investments from a financial strategy that would happen eventually. But look at always adding value in whatever you do. And bringing valuable people to any transaction. Yeah, that’s, that’s what I want to say.

Jeffery:
I love it add value done. That’s the day. That’s the line for today, add value. I love it. All right I need to you’re a good man. Have a brilliant day and thank you again for joining us.

Aditya:
Thank you so much If you have a great day as well. Thank you.

Jeffery:
Awesome. That was great. I really enjoyed talking with the data. He has uh listen to lots of his content and things that he’s done and he’s come a long way in a short amount of time and I love that add value.

I can’t say that enough find ways to add value to start up community, to the investors, to people in your life. Just find ways to bring value and you will find that a lot more things are going to come back out of it when you’re able to be there and be a crutch for somebody and help other people out there is a lot of value there for sure. And again, you know, going back to some of the things he talked about which was um certainly focused on data analytics, being able to understand how this helps shape your business, look and learn all of these things are gonna be beneficial to the growth of your business, Pay attention to the numbers and have that passion and keep growing. He made a lot of valuable points and like anything. Check us out on all the streams for podcasts we’ve now made that live so you can check it out anywhere from Apple to you, name it.

All of the places you can find that. Check us out opn. ninja supporters fun dot com. All the places where we share content, share like at us on social and looking forward to keep communicating. Have a great day.