Q1. What is your motivation to be in venture investing business?

Passionate about the innovations/disruptions in all the sectors. Also the satisfaction of being part of a successful company from the beginning.

Q2. Describe your workday and leisure day, how does it look like?

Workday is mainly split  in 2 parts;
a) meeting new founders and understanding their ideas.
b) catch up calls with the portfolio companies. Understanding their needs in terms of opening doors, fund raising and any other softer aspects.
Leisure day is Sunday which begins with Cricket, family time and evening swim.

Q3. What is your view on the future of India as a market?

India is at an inflection point. We will see more and more start ups scaling business overseas. Fresh ideas will emerge from India. It will be the best performing ecosystem for the next 10-15 years.

Q4. What are your 5 key learnings from your experience as a venture investor

a. To avoid FOMO at all costs. It is a cycle, do not get carried away with what others are doing.           

b. Networking within the ecosystem is very important, not only to get a better flow of transactions but also to seek a perspective of a company that you are investing in (things about competition, potential company, etc.) as a lot of these Funds/FOs would have looked at them. It is only for things that we could have missed as investors and nothing to do with the actual investing decision.            

c) The biggest learning is that we must have an action of either investing or part divesting in a portfolio company (wherever there is an action), as this makes you think and evaluate again.             

d) We are banking on the founders capability for success, therefore support him throughout (founder friendly).                 

e) Help the portfolio companies in all aspects like hiring, MIS (set a template), fund raising, opening doors, etc.

About Devashish Khanna:

Devashish is a Family Office professional with exposure to different asset classes i.e., debt, equity, real estate, private equity, venture capital and early stage/seed investments. He has worked with 4 large family offices in the last 15 years and has worked closely with other active family offices, funds, investment advisory firms, investment banks, wealth outfits, etc. He has been actively involved in sourcing/evaluating investment opportunities and working with the portfolio companies. Devashish has worked in sectors like Travel, Food & Beverage, Media & Entertainment, Healthcare, Real Estate, EV cab hailing, Drones, B2B tech platforms, mobile advertising, etc. Devashish's expertise lies in providing solutions around asset allocation with respect to the risk appetite. He is passionate about early stage investments.