-Bharatt Kailash Banka, Managing Partner at Bharat K Banka LLP
Team 100X interviewed some of the top investors across the globe about their venture investing journeys, startups, and India.Here,Bharatt Kailash Banka, Managing Partner at Bharat K Banka LLP shares his responses.
It helps me connect with bright minds and visionary entrepreneurs to learn about new ideas and bold visions to either develop solutions and/ or newer ways to execute solutions for unresolved / part-resolved challenges; and to share experiences/ collaborate with them to collaborate with a destination of pole position. With the process succeeding, value creation is an obvious outcome.
When one is pursuing passion, workdays and leisure days do not look much different.
While I trust that given the demography, India will always continue to be a giant, strong and commercially attractive market; I am also equally optimistic about the next 10-20 years for India to become a global hub serving strong Indian brands to the global markets.
I prefer to associate with a venture at as early a stage as possible, to help co-create and shape the venture better with fewer mis-steps which; for mentor/ advisor equity or investment or a combination, whatever meets the objectives of the founder. The main thrust is on assessment of founder/s and compatibility, besides on size of the problem and approach to solution.
(a) Alignment/ compatibility of investor (as angel/ VC/ PE) and the Founder is most crucial
(b) The process to reach an investment decision should be respected and the grind is essential
(c) It is important to build an independent investment thesis; evaluation and participation by other investors is good-to-have but not sufficient condition for own investment
(d) The early-sign of challenges faced by a venture should be tackled early and head-on
(e) While a venture is raising additional funds and/ or providing an exit option, avoid second-guessing the founders as they know more about the venture than an investor (always)
(a) The longevity of brand loyalty in young consumers will keep getting shorter
(b) The life-cycle of continued consumer preference will keep getting shorter
(c) The societal noise will force ESG and climate to become inseparable (and not good-to-have) ingredients of the entire business value-chain; be it sourcing, manufacturing, products, consumers.
(d) Low-code/ No-code in technology will become a hygiene within next one decade just like AI/ ML/ VR became in last decade
(e) In healthcare and human body, technology will play role with 100x magnitude, especially in neuroscience
I like to be a sounding board, besides proactively bouncing off ideas and initiatives. I prefer to jointly ideate/ co-create by asking questions as it is important for entrepreneurs to find and build their own path with a right to learn/ fail/ experiment. The other areas are sharing networks of businesses, thought-leaders and investors.
I have kept it simple all through; do and continue to do what you find fun to do and do it till the time you find it stimulating, move to the next thing when it no longer is; be at peace with self. I do not quantify or assign a benchmark to define ambition.
About Bharatt Kailash Banka:
Bharatt Kailash Banka is thought-leader, solution-provider, expert in spotting & predicting trends ahead of time and first-mover to leverage predicted trends in business & practice. He founded Bharatt K Banka LLP in 2016 to provide consulting on Business, Strategy, M&A, Joint Venture, Family Business Advisory to Corporates & PE/ VC Funds and niche curated I-Banking; advised $250Mn+ deals. Select advisory include TVS Capital, Sterlite Tech & Sterlite Power. He is an independent member of Investment Committees at an early-stage Accelerator Fund and an Impact Fund. He has been an advisor/ investor with start-ups for over a decade. Select investee/ mentee start-ups: IHO (acquired by Aetna, US), OYO Rooms (SoftBank & Sequoia), Perpetuiiti Tech (Intel Capital), Arya.ai (YourNest ), TalView (Mayfield), Instasafe (acquired).
