In today’s world, no matter who you are or what cause you have dedicated your life to, you encounter a lot of uncertainty all around you. It won’t be a stretch to call this era a VUCA - Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity one. All things you do, decisions you make, people you deal with, virtually all interactions with the external world are in the realm of VUCA.

Input and output are related. But have you noticed that there is an unequal and unbalanced relationship between the two? Have you experienced that a handful of activities are responsible for a bulk of your true satisfaction and happiness? If you think about it, a few critical past decisions in life are solely responsible for where you are today.

Founders’ journeys are many a time lonely unless they have a reliable co-founder or mentor. Their days are replete with many decisions that become building blocks of the outcome and ultimately chart the path to their destiny. Something as fundamental to their business as their business model itself goes through multiple iterations, and the company keeps evolving into a new form for a while. Such is the dynamism and volatility that forms part of a founders daily challenge even as the overall stakes keep getting higher; of eventual profits or losses.

Disruption is all around us. As a venture investor, I am aligned with disruptive ideas and, in fact, seek to profit from them by backing the right set of founders who are about to change the world. As fantastic and alluring an investor’s day job sounds, it is fraught with risks that are possibly among the highest across all investment asset classes.

Let’s go through your typical day. You wake up to some messages, address the urgent ones, go about your morning routine (I hope there’s some workout getting done before your workday begins) and then get down to work. I guess that emails, work messages, and chats are the first things that take up your time.

Startup founders are privileged in that the startup world allows adopting first principles thinking naturally since they start with a clean slate without any past baggage. Yet we have founders who come to us saying, “we are the Uber of Dog Walking”. Excellent business plan, but spurred by analogy, not first principles.

What is ‘rational’? Let’s get that out of the way first. Generally speaking, rational means a choice, desire, or action that you should choose in a given scenario. But you know that each of us is likely to choose differently given the exact same inputs and choices. Does this itself make us irrational? Not really.

The message is clear: decision making is part of our lives, day in and day out. There are simple decisions to make and life-changing ones too. There is always a compromise involved. It is imperative that we start excelling at making good decisions as that leads to a life well-lived, a successful life.

Most startups die. This is the reality of the early-stage ecosystem. Various sources peg the mortality rate of startups between 75% and 90%. There are various reasons that can be attributed to this such as lack of product-market fit, timing, and paucity of funds. While not everything is in the entrepreneur’s control, some things are. One of them is managing their business’ runway and balancing growth. 

To everyone’s surprise, markets have been in a bullish mood despite all the doom and gloom around us. In addition to the fatal health hazard COVID-19 has unleashed upon us, economies have been hit hard, businesses have had to shut down, and millions’ employment status has been endangered. For market participants, making money, at least on a mark to market basis, has been among the few joys we have experienced in more than 12 months.

Ideas are the foundation of Startups. Any startup that has seen a significant amount of success has been able to do that by tapping into an unmet market need or innovating around the product, marketing or distribution, and other ideas. Founders of Airbnb, Uber, Dropbox, Netflix built their businesses around a critical consumer insight or pain-point. Even the success of companies like Apple and Amazon, while not the first players in touch-screen phones or e-commerce, was built upon how they reimagined the user experience.

The word disruption seems to be the most misused word I hear nowadays. It seems most people who use the term haven't ever done any amount of serious research on what exactly is disruption. Most usage refers to an example where meaningful changes have made incumbents in any industry fall or weaken.

Fintech has disrupted the existing financial services industry by altering the way people deal with money - right from saving and borrowing to transacting and investing their assets. Elaborating on the same, Samant Sikka, Co-Founder of an Equanimity portfolio company, Sqrrl, shares, “The biggest mistake that one can make is to look at Fintech as a “theme”.

These are simply the more visible areas where technology can add value in the sector. Agritech in India is still in infancy stage with just 1% penetration of the addressable market potential of $24 billion. The opportunity in this sector remains immense. However, for the Indian agritech market to reach its potential, multiple stakeholders including the agritechs, the government, and the farming community need to proactively engage in order to create a robust agritech ecosystem.

Quality education forms the bulwark of a progressive and robust society. It not only accelerates growth but also acts as a moat against competing economies. Case in point being India’s engineers that continue to helm the world’s leading technology and software companies. The Indian education system has traversed a long journey from the early days of the gurukul system to virtual classes today. It is now undergoing yet another period of transition, in part precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic and in part due to the changing needs of a ‘digital’ India.

Although analytics have caught everyone’s attention in the last decade, analytical techniques have existed for more than a hundred years. Raman has been around since the 1920s, while Liquid Chromatography celebrated its 50th anniversary just a couple years back. Moreover, our daily lives are constantly influenced by analytical devices ranging from PUC machines for our vehicles to mass spectrometers used at airports to scan for dangerous substances and chromatographs to test the quality of food and beverages we consume.

Although analytics have caught everyone’s attention in the last decade, analytical techniques have existed for more than a hundred years. Raman has been around since the 1920s, while Liquid Chromatography celebrated its 50th anniversary just a couple years back. Moreover, our daily lives are constantly influenced by analytical devices ranging from PUC machines for our vehicles to mass spectrometers used at airports to scan for dangerous substances and chromatographs to test the quality of food and beverages we consume.

Businesses in India need to recognise these changes happening around them and need to plan their digital transformation accordingly. They need to appreciate that digital transformation is not another new age buzzword or an independent project to be assigned to a siloed team, but rather a necessary change to an organisation’s DNA.

All things considered, you should start off on this journey of realigning your portfolio to some venture fund or Startups. India is changing for sure and it is about time you ask yourself if your portfolio is aligned to the new reality, to the new age, technology-enabled businesses that are going to be the engine of growth as India grows into a US$5 trillion economy. 

We are currently looking at several interesting Indian companies. These firms have strong business models and have been facing uncertainty due to the recent economic crisis. We believe they not only offer value but also have great potential for environmental, social and governance, and operational improvements.