Best Place To BuildAnand Rajaraman| The IIT Madras founder who sold to Amazon & Walmart; Now owns a cricket team| Ep.12
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60 min read · 11,955 words- 0:00 – 2:00
Introduction
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to boldly go where no one has gone before.
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Yeah.
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So that's how we ended up investing in Facebook.
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That's why we decided to name the company Junglee.
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Washington Post ended up investing in us, but then they told us, "Look, we don't like the name of your company. It doesn't sound corporate enough."
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So Yahoo! was the one company that was ahead of us. [upbeat music]
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Hi, my name is Amrit.
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We've heard that IIT Madras is the best place to build. [upbeat music] So we've come down to the Sudha and Shankar Innovation Hub. We want to meet some people. These are builders. We want to talk to them about their work, and also ask them, what makes IIT Madras the best place to build? [upbeat music] Hi, welcome to The Best Place to Build podcast. Today, we are sitting with Anand Rajaraman, alumnus of IIT Madras from '93 batch. He's a deep tech investor and entrepreneur, a tech entrepreneur, and recently a founder- or no, founder, a, a sports entrepreneur. Would that be right?
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Yeah, I think that's a fair way of describing it. Actually, uh, the traditional way is maybe a sports team owner.
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Sports team owner. So welcome to the podcast, Anand, and we would love for you to just introduce yourself a little bit, and then we'll get started.
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I'm, uh, an alumnus of IIT Madras, uh, class of '93. It's amazing to be back on campus today, by the way. I was just... Uh, I came in early, uh, and I just realized that today there's Saarang going on. It's the last day. Uh, you know, the- we- it used to be called Mardi Gras when, uh, I was, uh, on campus. Uh, and I still haven't gotten used to this new name, by the way, Saarang. Uh, but it was just, you know, so nice to just wander around the campus and see the energy and all the stalls and-
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Yeah
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... uh, and all those-
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It's the most colorful day on campus.
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The most colorful day, for sure, and also with great weather for, you know, frankly, because I think it rained yesterday, so the weather's nice. It's sort of very magical to be on, uh, on campus today. So that's, that's kind
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Early Career and Junglee
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of a detour, but so class of '93, uh, IITM, and then, uh, and after that, uh, I went to the, uh, US to Stanford to do my grad school. Uh, but then I got sidetracked along the way and started a company, um, and then got into investing in startups. Um, and, uh-
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Uh, wait, can I stop you there?
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Right.
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When I, when I joined Insti in 2003, 2008, I stayed from 2003 to '8, your first startup journey was like a big success story for us, and we used to hear about it a lot.
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Right.
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Uh, and this is, of course, the story of Junglee, uh, which you sold to Amazon, and then you were with Amazon for a while.
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Mm-hmm.
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Uh, can you
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The Story Behind "Junglee"
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lead us through how that came about, and a little bit about that story? I, I wanna just say that at that time, we would really look up to this story. We would listen to this story and like, "Wow, our alumnus did this?"
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Right, right.
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But now maybe some distance has passed, so people would have forgot.
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Sure, fair enough. So, so as I said, I was- graduated in '93. I went to, uh, Stanford University. Um, and, uh, so I was in the PhD program doing, uh, you know, do- computer science, and I was with a group of people, uh, including, uh, fellow IIT Madras alumnus, uh, Venky Harinarayan, who's five years my senior from IIT Madras, um, and, and a couple of others. Uh, you know, Ashish Gupta from IIT Kanpur was one of them. Um, and, uh, we were doing, um, research on, uh, what used to be called information integration or data integration back then. You know, there's a lot of data and multiple database systems. How do we put it all in one place and, and ask interesting questions to, to combining data and so on? Uh, so that was the research project that we were doing, uh, at, at Stanford. But at the same time, in 1993, the World Wide Web was small, um, and was just really taking off. Um, and it was very apparent to us that the m- most interesting information in the world was not in some corporate dat- database or somewhere, but on the World Wide Web. So we said: How can we take the research that we're, you know,
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Stanford Research & Online Comparision Shopping
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doing at Stanford and apply to the World Wide Web, and have anybody ask any question, and have the web answer that question, right? So that was kind of the, the, the origin of the idea. And we were interested in, uh, more structured queries, not, uh, not keyword searches like you do on Google, uh, but more, uh, structured queries. Like, suppose, uh, you wanted to say, uh, you know, "I, I want to find this product. Uh, show me all the places where it's available and the prices." So what we'd call comparison shopping today, right? So those are the kinds of use cases that we, uh, that we had in mind. So we built a technology stack to, uh, to enable that, and we basically created online comparison shopping. Um, and our company... Uh, so the four of us, uh, founders, as I mentioned, it was Venky, who's also from IIT Madras, um, uh, Ashish, who was from IIT Kanpur, and then Rakesh Mathur, uh, who's from IIT Bombay, uh, who was kind of the person who'd been around the block once, and so he was, he was the CEO, and we were all kind of straight out of college. I actually dropped out of my PhD, uh, to, to, to start this company. Technically, I took a leave of absence, uh, to, uh, to, to-
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But never went back.
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No, but I did go back. We'll come back to that.
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Right.
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Right? So yeah. So we started the company and, uh, you know, one of the, um, uh... And then, um, so we did comparison shopping and so on, and then, uh, we were approached by Amazon, uh, in, uh,
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Amazon Acquisition of Junglee
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in 1998. We started the company in '96. Uh, in 1998, uh, uh, Amazon and Jeff Bezos approached us, um, and, uh, they wanted to buy out the company. And, uh, Jeff wanted to buy the company because he... You know, at that time, uh, on Amazon, you, you could only shop for books.
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Yeah.
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Uh, but Jeff already had this vision that he wanted Amazon to be the place where you could find any product. Uh, and so he saw what we were doing by combining information from the web as a way to make that happen.
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Fair enough. So in '90- Amazon started in '94. This, you're talking about '98, so it's a four-year-old company now.
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Amazon had just gone public.
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Okay.
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I think this might have been one of, uh, or maybe Amazon's first acquisition as a public company, right? So, uh, when they, uh, when they, uh, when they bought Junglee. So they'd just gone IPO, and they were just selling books at the time. I mean, the whole of Amazon was a small company that fit in one building, right? In, uh, or actually in two floors of one building over an Indian restaurant, so in Seattle. So that was, that was the company back then.
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Oh! [chuckles]
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Right, so that was the entrepreneurial, uh, journey. And then I worked at Amazon for a couple of years, and our team helped build, uh, the, you know, the, the idea of, uh, a third-party, uh, retail merchants on Amazon. The idea-
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Right, because Amazon, in the beginning, was a seller, and then it moved to a marketplace.
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Yeah, so the whole Amazon marketplace, uh, uh, that was what the Junglee team ended, ended up, uh, building.... uh, uh, for, for Amazon, right? And now that accounts for, I think, the bulk of Amazon-
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Yes
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... uh, uh, transactions.
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In India, it's all of it, because Amazon can't be a seller.
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That's right, that's right. So, so that was the entrepreneurial story of, of Junglee. But, uh, you know, one of the things that, that always tickles me about it, and, uh, is, is that we decided to call the company Junglee.
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Yeah.
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Right? So, yeah. So, uh, and that's an interesting, um-
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And, and bought by Amazon.
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Junglee was bought by Amazon.
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This is a forest.
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Which is also... Well, I guess so. [chuckles] Yeah, technically a river, but yeah, we'll-
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Yeah, fair enough.
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Yeah. So but, uh, but it is a rainforest as well.
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Yeah.
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And, yeah. So here's what happened, right? Um, when we started the company, uh, uh, back, back in, uh, back in '96, we wanted to find a, you know,
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The Story Behind the name "Junglee"
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uh, find a name for the company, but we hadn't found a name for the company yet. Um, but we had found a... You know, we had to raise some money to get going back in the day to start a company. And so now, if you want to start a company, you don't need that much capital because you have the cloud, and you can just, you know, uh, code up something, and you can serve-
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So you probably get Amazon credits.
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And you get Amazon credit.
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Yeah.
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So back then, uh, to start a company, you actually had to buy servers.
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Right.
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Uh, right? Uh, and you had to, uh, you know, host the servers at, you know, at a data center, and you-
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I was going to say at a garage.
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Yeah, there was... Yeah, but initially we, we were hosting [chuckles] -
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Yeah
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... you know, in, in, in our own office. But eventually, we moved to a, moved to a data- Actually, we were hosting in our office until we realized the servers were, were getting too hot. Uh, and then we moved, [chuckles] moved them to a, moved them to a data center. So it was really back in the early days of, uh, internet startups, right? Uh, so all these things were not institutionalized back then. So but, so you actually needed capital to buy servers and do all these things, so we needed to raise, uh, raise money. So there were some potential investors, uh, that we had to pitch the next day. Um, um, and so the four of us, uh, you know, we were sitting together, and we were coming up feverishly with the, with the investor pitch, uh, at Ashish's house. Um, and, uh, but, you know, we came up with the pitch. You know, we, we had the PowerPoint slides and all that, but we didn't have a name for the company. We said, "Hey, we have to come up with, uh, with a name for, uh, for the company, uh, but we, we, we need one where we can... where the .com name is available, and it's a cool name, and all that stuff." Um, and, you know, we were thinking, you know, um, what do we... You know, one of the interesting, uh, things that, uh... You know, many of them- we tried many names, but the .com was, was kind of taken, and it was just... Even, even back then, a lot of .com names were taken, right? So, um, so there was only one company that had been started before us, uh, by students. So you remember Google has not been started, and Google started in '98-
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Yeah
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... after we were acquired. So there was only one-
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And, and you're mentioning them because Google were PhD students, so?
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Yeah, so we, we, uh, we were in the same, uh, co- cohort, uh, in the, in the computer science program with Sergey and Larry and all that. Uh, but they, they ended up starting in '98. We had started in, in '96. But, but at that point, uh, no other students had started companies except for one, uh, pair of students who started Yahoo!. Okay, so, uh, so Yahoo! was the one company that was ahead of us.
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Yeah.
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Uh, right? And then was... Some- somebody remembered this, uh, song that goes, "Yahoo!
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... "
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Nice. So what comes after Yahoo!? Junglee.
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Nice.
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Right? So that is a great story. Yeah, so that's, uh, that's why we decided to name the company, uh, Junglee. But then once we named it, we came up with a story. Uh, you know, the Internet is a jungle, and you need a creature of the jungle to help you, guide you, navigate, help you navigate the jungle, and all that. So that's why it's Junglee, and so on. But that was... That's the real, uh, origin of the story. But I'll tell you one more thing, one more thing that happened. When we, uh, were trying to raise funding, we initially raised our seed funding, uh, half a million dollars, and we got the company going and all that stuff. Uh, but then we wanted to raise our next round of funding. Um, uh, you know, we had some usage, some customers, and all that, so we, uh, you know, we went to all the VCs, uh, back then, the venture capital firms, and pitched them, right? But back then, the venture capital, uh, firms had no clue, uh, because they had never seen a company started by students other than Yahoo! Uh, right? They, they were used to companies being started by, you know, seasoned entrepreneurs and professors and stuff like this, you know. We were... So they were like, they didn't want to take a chance on us. Uh, so we, we got mostly rejected by, uh, most of the VCs that we, uh, that we spoke to. Uh, so e- eventually, what ended up happening, the, uh, it was that we ended up raising funding from The Washington Post Company.
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Oh, is it?
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Yeah, The Washington Post Company was our ph- one of our bigger customers.
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Okay.
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Uh, and, uh, they were, they were, uh, farsighted enough to see that the Internet was going to be hugely disruptive to online classified, which was the main revenue source for all the, uh, newspaper companies back then. Uh, and they said, "Look, this company, uh, Junglee, is going to be one of the key players in that space." And so they ended up investing, uh, in the company, and being the lead investor. So yeah, so we-
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Again, we are talking like, what, '95, '90, '97?
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Uh, no, we are talking about 1996, '97. Yeah. Right. So, um-
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None of the big internet companies have gone public yet.
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No, nothing.
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And-
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Zero to One Journey
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journey, right? And what is so special about it that-... uh, you have loved and that maybe you fi- you'll feel that others will also love?
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So I think, u- ultimately, right, it's, it's fun to do new things-
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Mm.
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... right? Uh, you know, if you've, "To boldly go where no one has gone before."
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Yeah.
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Right? So, uh, so that's kind of the always been, uh, been a thing, and that's kind of where I feel the opportunity is as well, right? Uh, to be the first person, uh, or group of people to do something, that's when the- you get the low-hanging fruit, right?
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It's also difficult, and painful, and risky, and all of that.
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And, and, and, and all of the above. Uh, but also, you know, uh, probably also the most rewarding if it, if it works out. It's high risk, high reward, and probably that's what appeals, uh, you know, uh, appeals to, uh, me and to the people who, who like doing that. And it also sort of appeals to me in a, in a different way, because
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First Principles Thinking
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I've always believed in kind of first principles thinking, right? Looking at every problem from first principles. Ignore what, what people have done till now, all the conventional approaches people have done. Assume, you know, suppose you were looking at this problem today, w- knowing all the information that you know, and having all the resources that you have, how will, you know, how will you tackle this problem? Uh, you know, what's the right approach to, uh, to solve it? Uh, so I've always been a first principles kind of guy, and that leads to sometimes different solution from, you know, the, the conventional wisdom. Uh, and that sort of aligns with this whole road to one, right? Sometimes-
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Yeah
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... new solutions.
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I, I feel like people who understand, who are good at first principles thinking, they get it immediately.
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Mm-hmm.
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Uh, but sometimes people ask me, "What does that even mean? Like, what does first principles thinking mean?"
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Mm-hmm. That's- The way I see it is, uh, first principles thinking means, you know, so if you take a problem, people have... There, there's probably a way people are approaching it right now, and people are solving it. Um, and there's probably a whole community, there is an ecosystem that's built up around it, and so on. Um, and so i- it's sort of, it's sort of locked in place. Uh, a- and there are, but there are set of axioms behind it that people have not even stated clearly. Why should that be the way of solving the problem? There may be some assumptions that are baked in on that. You- if you question those assumptions, then maybe you get different ways of solving the, the, the solving the problem, right?
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Okay, on that note, now, you're a sports team owner.
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Taking Cricket to America
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Yeah.
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And you're, uh, uh, uh, you're, you're taking cricket to America-
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Mm
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... which is obviously, like, challenging a lot of assumptions, right? 'Cause cricket is not an American game, and so on.
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Well, yeah.
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How, how did you come to this, and what are you trying to do with, uh, bringing cricket to America?
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Sure. Look, I grew up in India, and, uh, grew up in Chennai, right? I'm huge cricket fan, and I'm, I'm from the generation, uh, that got inspired by Kapil Dev's 175 not out, uh, right? Uh, in the, in the World Cup.
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Which we never saw.
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Which we never saw because the BBC was on strike that day.
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Right.
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Right, so but I actually remember what I was doing that day. I was with a bunch of my friends, uh, playing cricket, uh, on the terrace of the house that we were living in back then, and we had the, the transistor radio on, and we were listening to the commentary of that game, right? So I still remember that, and I remember India winning the World Cup, right? And so that inspired a whole generation of-
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Right
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... uh, you know, people, uh, to become cricket fans, including myself, and then we've been all passionate fans. And then when I moved to the US, I still kept in touch, because fortunately, uh, because of the, the web, I was able to keep in touch with all the games and what was going on, and so on, right? And, uh, then streaming came around, and so on. But having been in the US now for so long, uh, it felt like the right moment, uh, to, to bring the kind of game that I love to the place that I call home now, right? So it's kind of the way to... the way I see it, right? So, uh, the- I think there's a critical mass of, uh, cricket, uh, loving people in the US now. If you just start with the South Asian community, and even just the Indian-American community, there's, there is a critical mass of people, uh, maybe 6 million, who are aware of cricket, who love cricket, and so yeah. And so the market is, I think it's large enough to be an initial market, uh, to, to, to bring cricket into. At the same time, we've also had T20
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T20 Format and Fan Base
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as a format taking off and becoming pretty much the standard, uh-
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Standard, yeah
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... formality or, uh, for, uh, for, for cricket across the world, right? So, um, uh, we grew up in the era of test cricket and ODIs, which neither of which would fit in, in, in a US model, where you want games that are three hours long, but T20s fit that, uh, fit that exactly. So, so we have the right format, we have the critical mass, so it feels like the right moment.
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For, for our audience in India, because we don't know, uh, there, there's
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Major League Cricket Overview
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this thing called Major League Cricket, right?
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Mm.
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And there are five teams.
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Six teams.
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Six teams.
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Yeah.
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And it's like the IPL?
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It's, it's very similar to the IPL. Of course, nowhere as big as the IPL, but you have six teams, 'cause six teams are based in six, uh, US cities, uh, which are, uh, Seattle, San Francisco, LA, uh, New York, Washington DC, and Dallas, Texas. So these are the six, uh, metros. Um, and, uh, some of these teams have, uh, uh, affiliated with IPL teams, and some are not. Uh, for example, the, uh, the, the Dallas team, which is, is called the Texas Super Kings, and they are, they are, uh, affiliated with the Chennai Super Kings. The Chennai Super Kings own the majority of that, uh, of that team. The, uh, New York team is affiliated with Mumbai Indians. They're called MI New York.
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Okay.
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Um, and the, uh, LA team is affiliated with the Kolkata Knight Riders, so they're called LA Knight Riders. Um, so, uh, we are, uh, the, so the Seattle team, uh, called the Seattle Orcas. Um, uh, and, uh, they, they have an investor group that includes Satya Nadella, the, uh, the, the CEO of Microsoft-
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Who's also a big cricket fan
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... who's also a big-
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And we read these news of how he's negotiating with OpenAI, but are checking the cricket score.
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That's right. In fact, the first... We are in the second season of Major League Cricket. The first final, uh, which was last, uh, about the 2023 season, was between the Seattle Orcas and the, and MI New York. So we had Satya Nadella and Mukesh Ambani both, uh, you know, there, there at the same time, right? So
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Anand's Team Details
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the other two are the San Francisco Unicorns, which is the team that where-
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You own
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... uh, Venky and I are the, uh, are the majority owners, and then we have a bunch of other owners, including Shantanu Narayen, the CEO of Adobe, uh, is one of the minority owners of the team. Washington DC team is called the Washington Freedom.... Okay, so, so these are the, uh, these are the six teams, uh, in the, uh, in the league. And we played two seasons so far. Our first season was '23, and second season was in '24. And, um, it's been, been, been interesting. And so what we realized is, uh, when we first started, we were not sure whether this would fly or not, uh, would be, you know, if you play the games, will, will we get the best players in the world, right? We, we were not sure.
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Shane Watson is the coach for-
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For us, for the, for the Unicorns. And look, I think it's not just us. Every team has a star, uh, has a star cast, right? So if you look at, uh, Washington Freedom, uh, Ricky Ponting was a coach for, uh-
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You remember that moment in time when, uh, Beckham went to US and joined the US team?
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That's right.
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And, like, sort of football picked up in the US in a big way.
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Right.
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It almost feels like that, huh?
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The, the equivalent for Beckham, I think, uh, is, is Pat Cummins, uh-
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Mm
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... Australia captain, uh, who plays for the San Francisco Unicorns.
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Yeah.
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So Indian players are not allowed to play in, in foreign leagues. Uh, sort of Indian players, I think he's the closest equivalent to, uh, to Beckham-
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Yeah
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... uh, in, uh-
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And also, I feel like the Indian audience, or the South Asian, or the cricket audience in America would be able to, uh, watch them much closer than if they were in India or any of the venues that-
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No, absolutely, that, that's very true. In fact, um, you know, I walk around the audience, you know, through the stadium, chat to the audience and all that, uh, as any good entrepreneur should do. They should talk to your customers, right? So, uh, and find out, "Hey, are you having a good time?" and all this stuff. And what people say is, "Look, this is great because I'm closer to the action, uh, than if I watched a game in India," right?
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US vs India Cricket Experience
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Or, or anywhere in the world. Because we have small stadiums, it's kind of intimate and, you know, you can, uh, you know, you c- you can actually be- feel like you're part of the action.
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So, um, so that journey from Junglee to now you're a sports team owner, as there's a lot you've done in the middle. And, um, one of the things that, uh, you've done a lot, twice I think over- twice over,
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Venture Capital Journey
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or maybe more times, is that you've been a venture capital, uh, a VC personally, and a VC fund owner.
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Yeah, I was a, I was an angel, uh, then I have also been a, uh, a venture, I've run a venture capital firm. I've done both.
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So I want to come to, uh, [lips smack] like sort of the India thesis that is going around now. Uh, but before that, uh, just quickly, an overview of, uh, your VC journey. Also, you were telling me that, uh, there are some interesting VC stories, uh, uh, companies that you've invested in, if you could just talk a little bit about that.
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Sure. Let's start with, uh, with, uh, Facebook, right? So we were, uh, uh, my partner, Venky, and I were, uh, among the earliest investors in Facebook, which is now known as Meta. Then there's an interesting story about how we invested in the company because, um, not too many people were even aware of Facebook at the time. Uh, because it was a very small company that was only on a few college campuses at the time. Uh, they were not like- you know, they were in just a few. They were, I think it was Stanford, Harvard, and a few college campuses. That's all at the time, right? They had not expanded beyond that. Venky and I were, uh, founders of a company called Kosmix, uh, at the time. This is the second company that we founded. Um, this was, uh, and, uh, uh, so I think it was around 2007, 2008. Um, and we, uh, wanted to recruit, uh, Stanford, uh, students to join our company. Uh, so there was some kind of job fair or something, and we were, you know, we were there. And then there was a panel that they put together at that, at that event, um, on which, uh, you know, my partner, Venky, was on that panel representing our company. Um, and Mark Zuckerberg was there representing, uh, Facebook. Nobody had heard of Facebook back then, so it was some company out there. And it was, it was held in this auditorium at, at Stanford, and what we observed was that the auditorium got very full, and we were like, "We didn't expect so many people to come to this, uh, to this panel." They were all students who had come to this panel. And then we observed that all the students were asking questions to Mark, uh, right? And we thought, "Hey, this, this company must be doing something interesting if all the Stanford students are interested in it." Then we did our research and figured out it's called Facebook, and, you know, all the Stanford students are on Facebook, and so on. Um, so that, "Hey, this is a very cool company. We should keep an eye on this company, right? They might, they might become a big, uh, big company." And then as it so happened, uh, Mark Zuckerberg was connected to us, uh, just a couple of months later, uh, through a mutual, uh,
- 22:30 – 24:50
When Mark Zuckerberg was raising funding!
- SPSpeaker
and I think it was Sean Parker or somebody. Well, as it turned out, Mark Zuckerberg was, uh, evaluating who to raise his- around the funding firm, and he had two potential investors, uh, to lead, to lead the round. One was Accel, uh, the venture capital firm, um, and the other was The Washington Post company.
- SPSpeaker
Oh, [chuckles] nice.
- SPSpeaker
Right? So, so, so you see how the world come full circle, right? So, uh, and he wanted to know, you know, how, how's, how, how it is to have Accel as an investor, how it is to have Washington Post as an investor. Of course, you can find many companies that have raised money from Accel, but there's been only one company in history who has ever raised money from The Washington Post. [chuckles] Uh, you know, that's n equal one, that's Junglee, right? So, [chuckles] so, so he had to talk to us, right? So, um, so we- so we gave him all the pros and cons and, and all that. And we also said, "Hey, we really like what you're doing at Facebook. Uh, it would be great if you would let us invest in your company whenever you raise your next round of funding." And Mark was gracious enough. He, he ended up raising the round from, uh, uh, from Accel. Uh, but he, uh, was gracious enough to let us invest as part of that, uh, part of that round. So that's how we ended up investing in, uh, in, in Facebook, uh, you know, back, back in the day, right? So, so sometimes, you know, you got to be-
- SPSpeaker
Was, was this through the Cambrian Ventures fund, or this was-
- SPSpeaker
No, this is a personal investment because we, uh... At that point, we had sort of, uh, you know, after Junglee, we did this fund called Cambrian Ventures. Uh, there we invested in many interesting companies, some of which I can tell you about. But, uh, but after a few years, I think it was 2007, we shut down Cambrian, uh, and we started our, uh, own second company called Kosmix. Uh, so there was no fund at the time. It was just an angel check drawn, uh, uh, from us, uh, into, into, into Facebook. So that was, uh, you know, that was one of the, uh... You know, what this teaches you, I think, is that, you know, there is a large dose of luck involved in these things, and, uh, in fact, in India, it's, it's like T20 batting.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
You know? Uh, there is a large dose of luck involved, right? Uh, you know, if you, if you play like, uh, like Rishabh Pant, you can get out, uh, or you can, uh, or you can score a lot of runs.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- SPSpeaker
Right? So, you know, when the opportunity comes, when the moment comes, you just sort of be prepared to seize it.
- SPSpeaker
... uh, it's- Fair, you know, in the zero to one journey, there's a lot of risk, but when you're an entrepreneur, at least you're in control of some of that risk. When you're an investor, maybe you are completely dependent on someone else.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, that- that's
- 24:50 – 25:23
Entrepreneur vs. Investor Perspectives
- SPSpeaker
fair enough. As an investor, the way you play that is by you have a portfolio of investments. So you, you know, so you have a, a statistical effect going on there, your portfolio. As an entrepreneur, all your eggs are in one basket, right? So, so you have control of that one basket, but all your eggs are in different basket. Whereas as a investor, you spread your bets-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... across a variety of startups, but you don't control any of them.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Right?
- SPSpeaker
Just, just to, uh, put this, uh, out there because some of our audience are from high school or maybe just joining, uh,-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- SPSpeaker
... uh, engineering college. What is a venture fund, and how does VC investing
- 25:23 – 27:40
How does VC Investing work?
- SPSpeaker
work?
- SPSpeaker
Got it. So a venture capital firm is, uh, is basically a pool of capital, okay? So there's a, there's a bunch of people who get together and raise a pool of capital from investors, um, with the goal of investing in startups. So what the venture capital firm does is that it find interesting, uh, startups at, you know, at different stages. Each VC firm specializes in a different stage. Um, so you find a startup at a certain stage, and you give it a bunch of capital, and in return, that startup gives you some equity in the, in the company. So the VC firm ends up having equity in a bunch of startups, um, and many of those startups will die, so that equity will be worth nothing. But some of those startups may end up becoming, uh... may, may end up getting bought or may end up going IPO, in which case, the VC firm can sell that equity, uh, and return the profits to the investors. So that's how venture capital, uh, firms work, basically.
- SPSpeaker
And when you said distribute your eggs in different basket, you are talking about, uh, different kinds of, uh-
- SPSpeaker
But basically, if you look at a VC firm, we, we don't take all the capital and put it into one company. A typical VC firm, uh, our portfolio, you'll invest in 20 to 25 companies. Um, so you're... You know, and, and then what you're hoping for is of VC- The venture capital game is kind of a high-risk, high-reward game overall, uh, right? So of the 25 companies that you invested in, say about, uh, 60 to 70%, you will die, so you'll get a zero return. Um, then about 20%, you might just get your money back or something, or 2X, or something like that. And about 10%, if you are lucky and you're smart and everything, all the planets align and so on, will be a home run, uh, which you might end up getting 10 to 100X of your money back.
- SPSpeaker
I want to say, you said home run, that's not success.
- SPSpeaker
That's right. It's... I guess I should say success, but, you know, it's, uh, it's, I guess it's just terminology, right?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- SPSpeaker
Can I ask that now, uh, over your period of investment, a lot of your... all, maybe, all of your investments are in tech, deep tech, web-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- SPSpeaker
... or data, and so on?
- SPSpeaker
That's right, yeah. Other than the cricket, uh, investment now.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. But did you, did you mention to me while we were preparing that there is a data angle in that also?
- SPSpeaker
At Rocketship, the fund that we're doing now, uh, you know, we, we're using a data-driven approach to venture capital investing.
- 27:40 – 29:19
Data-Driven Venture Capital
- SPSpeaker
Um, so traditionally, the way VC firms have worked, and still continue to work to this day, uh, is that people refer companies to VC firms. Either the, the, the founder goes and gets an introduction to, to a VC fund, to a partner through somebody they know, will connect them to the VC fund, then the founder will go and pitch the, the people at the VC fund, and then the process can-
- SPSpeaker
You told... The example being how you said you and, uh, Venky got introduced to-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... Facebook.
- SPSpeaker
That's right. Venture funds typically, well, they find their, uh, their investment, potential investments, uh, through a network. Okay, right? Um, uh, whereas we thought, "Can we, instead of finding all our investments through a network, can we find it through data?" And so then there will be a different class of venture fund because they're not limited to our network. So what we did is we end up building a big database of all the startup activity in the world. We, you know, we licensed a lot of data. We, we collected some data by, you know, by crawling the web and all that, and we built a big database. Um, and then we built... We ran machine learning models on that, uh, to try to identify interesting companies. Um, and then we reach out to those companies, uh, and say, "Hey, we'd like to talk to you." So we've sort of inverted the model, where instead of the company approaching us, we approach the company.
- SPSpeaker
Understood. You, you know, you started your PhD in 1993.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
It's been a long journey, and well, sometimes when you talk to people who have spent 30 years in their career, they sort of moved away from the actual technology and are more managers and-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- SPSpeaker
... sort of they oversee things from a very higher.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
But the way you're talking, it seem- it feels like you're still very connected to the, uh, the data and the AI, and the ML or something. And you mentioned to me that you're also teaching a course at
- 29:19 – 30:55
PhD at Stanford
- SPSpeaker
Stanford, I'd say. What is the course about, and how do you, how do you stay interested in the details as you grow in your, should I say, career?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Look, I, I don't know what to call it, but it is something, [chuckles] right? So my journey.
- SPSpeaker
Journey, journey. Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
My journey, right? So, uh, you know, I... Look, I, uh, I got into computer science because I love computer science, I love technology, and so on. Right? So that's how I stay, that's why I stay connected. I didn't get into it because I see it as a way of building a career or making money or something. I got into it because I enjoy doing it, and I love doing it, right? And, you know, the field itself has evolved, and it's been fun to keep up with it, with, uh, you know. I was talking about my company, Junglee. I mentioned that I, uh, dropped out or took a leave of absence from my PhD to start the company. Um, so that was in '96. Then the company got acquired in '98 by Amazon, and then I was at Amazon till 2000. Uh, and then I left Amazon in 2000. I came back to Stanford. I spent one year, and I wrote my thesis and actually got my, uh, PhD, right? So, so this, this is why I call myself a failure. Uh, because if you're, if you build a truly successful company like a Microsoft-
- SPSpeaker
You don't need to go back.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, yeah, or, or a Google, you never go back. [chuckles] So-
- SPSpeaker
And also, then technically, you took seven, eight years to finish your PhD.
- SPSpeaker
That's right. So, you know, if you, uh... The way I see it is, the wall clock time was eight years. The CPU time was only four years, but the wall clock time was, [chuckles] uh, was, was eight years, right? So, uh, so, so I did finish. And then when I finished, uh, you know, one of the, uh, professors, um, you know, who had to sign my thesis, so Professor Hector Garcia-Molina, who was Alasdair Moore, uh, he said, "Look, uh, I'll sign your thesis, but you know what? I'm going to... Uh, next year, I'm going to go on a sabbatical,
- 30:55 – 35:40
Teaching Distributed Database Systems and Data Mining
- SPSpeaker
so can you teach a class that I've been teaching?"... so, so I said, "Okay, I'll teach a class you've been teaching." Um, so that, that ended up being a cl- uh, was, was a class on, I think, distributed database systems or something like that, so I ended up teaching the class. So I found out that I really enjoyed teaching.
- SPSpeaker
Okay.
- SPSpeaker
Um, so s- since that time, uh, which was around two thousand two or something like that, I've been continuously teaching at Stanford, uh, and, uh, twenty years, uh, yeah, about twenty years. I took a break during COVID. And, uh, and I've taught a variety of classes. In the last many years, I've been teaching a class on data mining. Um, so when I first started teaching, uh, data mining, I think it was back in two thousand five, two thousand, two thousand six, and so on. I remember, uh, I had a, a fellow, a co-instructor, Professor Jeff Ullman. He and I were co-teaching the class. Uh, Professor Jeff Ullman, incidentally, later on went to win the Turing Award. But, uh, but he... So w- when we started teaching the class, it was called Data Mining. We used to have five students in the class or ten students in the class. Next, next year, we'd have twenty, thirty, like that, right? But now, then the class grew and kept growing because data became a big thing, and so on. It was a small thing when we started teaching, but, you know, data became big. The data became big data, right? So while we were teaching techniques of big data before there was really big data, but then when big data caught up, it became really relevant, right? Um, so, uh, yeah, and then we ended up writing a textbook, uh, which is still the most popular textbook for data mining, and so on, so. And the reason I like teaching is because it- I learn by teaching, and I also love interacting with students, um, and sort of seeing the fresh perspectives they bring, and they question my assumptions. As I, as I said, uh, it's a... first principles thinking is always about questioning assumptions.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Right? Uh, the students who come in every year question my assumptions by sort of looking at, thinking about things in new ways and asking, you know, "Why are we doing things like this, right? Why, why, why should we not do it?" So I, I love that. Uh, I love interacting with students, and so that's why I've, I've been teaching.
- SPSpeaker
I'm also thinking that you mentioned luck earlier.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- SPSpeaker
But this, this, the, the kind of interactions you would have-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- SPSpeaker
... would also increase your ex- your sort of interactions with potential founders and, uh-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, you know, you're, you're absolutely right. In fact, I can tell you a story about, uh, one of the companies that I invested in. There's a company called Aster Data. So, uh, I think it was back in, I think two thousand three or something like this. My teaching assistant in the class at Stanford was, uh, was this, uh, a PhD student called Mayank Bawa. He's, uh, he was an undergrad from IIT Bombay, and he was doing his PhD at Stanford. We were teaching this class on distributed database systems. Um, and, uh, towards the end of the class, he came to me and said: "Look, we're teaching all these techniques about distributed database system, but they feel kind of outdated, because now the underlying hardware's architecture is changing." Because, um, back then, the, the hardware architecture was all these kind of, uh, big computers, mainframes, and mini computers, and so on. But now, the, the thing that's becoming popular is these clusters of commodity nodes, Linux nodes, and so on. Uh, and that's, that's becoming the new architecture. Shouldn't we sort of bring men distributor databases for this new architecture? I said, "Yeah, that's a great idea." Uh, and, uh, and I told him, "Look, if you, if you want to do it, and if you do it, I'll, I'll fund your company." So he got together a, a couple of, uh, you know, other students, um, and, uh, they built a prototype. Um, and, uh, I ended up funding that, uh, funding that company. It was called Aster Data. Uh, they were the first company to combine, uh, you know, big data and the relational databases. Example, they're the first to combine the MapReduce formalism with, uh, SQL and, uh, put it into a single, uh, database system, and so on. So that company ended up doing really well. Uh, they were, uh, acquired by a bigger company called Teradata, uh, which is one of the biggest, biggest database companies in the world. Um, and, uh, it was, was, it was a huge success. But the way I found that company, uh, was through my, through, through my, through my teaching, right? So, um, uh, I- actually, a lot of the companies that I've invested in are what you would call deep tech companies. Uh, they came through, uh, university, uh, research, uh, program, through Stanford, typically-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... where I've been closely, uh, affiliated, or, or other universities as well, right? So, uh, and, you know, my observation in sort of funding these companies goes back to, uh, what happened when we were doing Junglee, which was a company that was born out of our research, and we found it so difficult to raise funding-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- SPSpeaker
... uh, when we went out. So my partner, Venky, and I, we started our first venture capital firm, Cambrian. Our goal was to fund companies like Junglee-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- SPSpeaker
... which was started by entrepreneurs who were perhaps, uh, you know, from universities, uh, and who had some deep tech background, and they wanted to commercialize some deep technology. But, you know, you needed that initial round of funding and that mentorship to get to the stage where-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... you could be interesting to venture capital. Um, so that was, a lot of our investments were, were in that, were along those lines.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Very interesting. I, I have, uh, two related
- 35:40 – 37:22
The Future of AI at IIT Madras
- SPSpeaker
questions, and I'm just thinking, um, in, in IIT Madras, recently, they have launched a BTech in AI, and earlier it was BTech in CS, and AI was taught as part of CS. And now it's, like, sort of split, and there's a BTech in CS and a BTech in AI. Uh, it's interesting. Is this happening elsewhere? Or, like, what do you think of this cleaving of c- computer science and AI?
- SPSpeaker
I think AI is becoming a field on its own, right? I think AI is going to be big into everything now, right? Uh, I think the whole world and everything is going to become AI plus X, right? So, um, you take everything, and, and AI is going to be in it. I think it's, uh, uh, I think, uh, IIT Madras is fairly, uh, I think, uh, forward-thinking, uh, in, in, in, in doing this. I think Stanford is doing something similar. Uh, they've set up a center for, uh, AI now. They've not formally kind of s- separated it, uh, although they have been talking about, should we separate out AI and data from the rest of computer science, and so on? This has been an internal discussion there as well, but they haven't done it. Uh, so but I think, uh-
- SPSpeaker
It's going to happen.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, maybe. I think it's just a sign of things to come, I think, right? So I think CS is just becoming, uh, a big discipline, and AI sort of, uh, has enough critical mass, I think, to stand as its own discipline at this point, right?
- SPSpeaker
Very interesting. Uh, Professor, um, Ravindran was here. He's the head of department at, uh, AI here, and he was saying that AI is the new CS. Of course, he was a CS professor earlier.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- SPSpeaker
So it's like he's continuing his work.
- SPSpeaker
That's right.
- SPSpeaker
... Uh, the other thing that I noted is that many times when you, when you talk about your work, you say Venky and I.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- SPSpeaker
And, um, it feels like you've had this long collaboration. Um, and honestly, um, you do read about these, uh, sort of two people collaborations
- 37:22 – 38:57
Collaboration with Venky Harinarayan
- SPSpeaker
across companies. Um, uh, how, how did this come to be, and, uh, would you like to s- share some stories around that?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. So Venky Harinarayan and, uh, and I, we are both IIT Madras alums, but we never met at IIT Madras.
- SPSpeaker
Okay.
- SPSpeaker
Why is that? Well, because we are five years apart.
- SPSpeaker
Okay.
- SPSpeaker
Right? So we never overlapped at IIT Madras, so there was no chance for us to meet here. So he had graduated, uh, five years, you know, well, before I, before I ever joined. Um, and he went on to- went off to UCLA to do his master's. Um, and, uh, then, uh, he, after he finished his master's, he worked for some time, uh, and then he joined the Stanford PhD program. Whereas when I graduated from, uh, IITM, I went straight to the, uh, Stanford PhD program, and we ended up meeting, uh, at, at Stanford. And, uh, because Venky, well, he w- you know, had worked for a couple of years, um, he made some money, he had a car, and I did not have a car. Uh, and if you lived on Stanford, uh, campus, you know that you need a car to go grocery shopping.
- SPSpeaker
Okay.
- SPSpeaker
Um, and, uh, so, uh, Venky was kind enough to take me, uh, grocery shopping, and that's how we first, uh, first met. Uh, this was, I think, back in 1993, when, then, uh, when I joined. So it's like, it's been 32 years or so, 31, 32 years or something like this. Um, and so we ended up, uh, having the same research advisor, uh, Professor Jeff Ullman. Um, and then, so that's what led us to collaborate and, uh, on some research projects together and, uh, led us, uh, you know, that led to us starting our first company together, Junglee, and then both left Amazon at the same time and ended up starting this, uh, venture capital
- 38:57 – 39:20
Cambrian Ventures and Kosmix Founding
- SPSpeaker
firm, Cambrian, which we ran for some time. And then after that, we said, "Hey, you know what? We are investing in other people's company. Let's do one more of our own." Uh, so we, you know, mothballed Cambrian, and we, uh, started a company called Kosmix. We were an AI company before AI was kind of cool. Uh, you know, so, uh, it was before deep learning had come, but we thought, you know, we already could do enough to the AI with, uh, with the, with, with the data-driven techniques we
- 39:20 – 40:52
Acquisition of Kosmix by Walmart
- SPSpeaker
had. Turned out to be a little bit ahead of its time, but ended up being acquired by, uh, by Walmart, uh, in 2011. Uh, within Walmart, uh, we set up, uh, a group called Walmart Labs.
- SPSpeaker
Oh, okay.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, and we are just... So basically, uh, what happened was, when Walmart acquired us, uh, uh, they came to us and s- uh, said, "Look, help us compete with Amazon."
- SPSpeaker
Okay.
- SPSpeaker
Right? Uh, and what we realized is to compete with Amazon on, uh, in online shopping, you need to, to have a deep pool of tech, tech talent. And, um, it's very hard to hire-- It was very hard to hire tech talent into Walmart, uh, back in 2011, because Walmart is not known as a technology employer. They were known as a-
- SPSpeaker
A retailer
- SPSpeaker
... as a retailer.
- SPSpeaker
So that, too, like a big-box retailer.
- SPSpeaker
Like big-box retailer. No cool, you know, hotshot-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... uh, technologist wants to work for that-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... that company. So what we did was we created a new brand called Walmart Labs.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, and we sort of branded that as a cool place to work.
- SPSpeaker
Nice.
- SPSpeaker
Um, and we said: Look, here is where you can get a Silicon Valley culture, but with the scale of Walmart, right? So, uh, so we ended up... And then branding ended up working well in, in, in, and in fact, it is a place-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... where you can get that, right? So we actually made-
- SPSpeaker
And it competes with Amazon pretty well.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, it, it, it yeah. So, so we laid the seeds for that, and now it's grown into a huge entity and so on. Uh, so actually, I also set up the, uh, Walmart Labs office in Bangalore. I went back and hired the first, uh, set of employees there as well. So, so that's now grown into, into a big thing.
- SPSpeaker
It's huge.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
I, I cross the office once in a while. Um, I, I wanna come back
- 40:52 – 41:40
IIT Madras Ecosystem
- SPSpeaker
to IIT Madras and, um, some of your investments of Rocketship, now IIT Madras companies and the sort of the deep tech ecosystem here. And also the way you describe the deep tech, like, uh, you, you mentioned the word luck, but it feels like a lot of things have to happen together in one place for there to be sufficient luck, right?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Like, you need to have a TAs who come up with great ideas. You need to have friends who-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- SPSpeaker
... are in some panel discussion, whatever. All of that has to happen in the same-- It has to be co-located almost, right?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, yeah.
- SPSpeaker
And, um-
- SPSpeaker
So you gotta, you gotta be in an opportunity-rich environment.
- SPSpeaker
Oh, yeah, that's a great way to say it-
- SPSpeaker
[chuckles]
- SPSpeaker
... opportunity-rich environment.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- SPSpeaker
Do you feel that that can happen at IIT Madras or is happening?
- SPSpeaker
I think IIT Madras is an opportunity-rich environment, and, uh, you know, it's like, look, I think this is a great place where, uh, there are really other talented
- 41:40 – 43:20
Co-founder and Mentor Networking
- SPSpeaker
students and, uh, alumni and for faculty as well, but also alumni who've gone, gone through the journey and who can mentor-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... and who are actually eager to mentor students, right? So, for example, I'm happy to mentor, uh, IIT Madras, uh, uh, students who are starting, uh, your company, and I have done that as well, right? So, uh, in the past. So, uh, so i- when, when people come to me and ask me, you know, uh, uh, their advice on starting a company, I always tell them, "The first thing you need to find is one or more co-founders." Um, right? When I think back on my entrepreneurial journey, the fact that I had in my Junglee, uh, uh, Ashish and Venky and Rakesh as co-founders was hugely important. I think co-founders, uh, if so many valuable functions in sort of increasing the, the odds of success, uh, for, for a company. So, uh, I- and IIT Madras is a great place to find co-founders. So you should always find, right? [chuckles] So you should always find, uh, co-founders who, you know, you, where you've been stress-tested with. So if you've been pulling all-nighters with them and not killing each other, then you're probably okay, right? [laughing] So, uh, you know, so, so I think, um, so I think, uh, IIT Madras is an opportunity-rich environment in terms of finding co-founders and in terms of finding mentors. From brand name point of view, it's a great brand name for finding funding as well. So, so all these things come together, I think.
- SPSpeaker
Nice. I recently interviewed, uh, on this podcast, we recently interviewed, uh, Sharan, who is the CTO of Mindgrove, and I know that Mindgrove's, uh, funded by Rocketship.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
So I guess, um, it's interesting how these things sort of-... come around. Um-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, I guess I'll, I'll tell you, I'll tell you another story of,
- 43:20 – 45:00
The Story of Medibuddy
- SPSpeaker
uh, uh, of an IIT Madras, uh, alumni-funded company that, that I, that I ended up funding, that I, that I ended up doing well. There's a company called Medibuddy.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
All right? So, uh, Medibuddy is, uh, started by two IITM, uh, alumni, Satish and Nimba. Um, I think 2013 or 2014 batch, right? So, uh, then, uh, you know, uh, I ended up, uh, fund- you know, uh, uh, funding them and mentoring them as well. Uh, and now they've grown into like, uh, you know, a, a big company with, uh-
- SPSpeaker
Telemedicine.
- SPSpeaker
Telemedicine, and they're the biggest company in that space, and-
- SPSpeaker
Online medicine.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, online medicine. Uh, you know, over, uh, you know, uh, over a thousand crores in revenue and all.
- SPSpeaker
Amitabh is their brand ambassador.
- SPSpeaker
Amitabh Bachchan is their brand ambassador. You know, they're, they're probably one of those companies that can go IPO anytime, right? So the interesting story there also is that, um, you know, they were one of the first companies, uh, that, uh, that went through the IIT Madras Entrepreneurship program. Uh, and they gave, uh, IIT Madras, like, a small, uh, you know, or equity ownership, uh, as part of that. So when the company grew big, they were able to sell... IIT Madras was able to sell the stake, and, and I think they got, like, 14 crore rupees or something like that, which, which can then fund a lot-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... a lot more, many more companies, right? So, so the-
- SPSpeaker
I, I feel like the period you're talking about, 2012, '13, '14-
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm
- SPSpeaker
... um, Ether is also from that period-
- SPSpeaker
That's right
- SPSpeaker
... Hyperverge is also from that period.
- SPSpeaker
That's right. I'm, so I'm an investor in both Hyperverge as well. I mentored those guys as well. Yeah. So, so that period is interesting because I got involved, uh, with, uh, with IIT Madras Entrepreneurship during that period significantly, because I was invited to give a talk, um, at, uh, uh, in 2012, I
- 45:00 – 46:14
The Entrepreneurial Journey Talk at ICSR, IITM
- SPSpeaker
think, at ICSR, uh, about my entrepreneurial journey. And we had just sold, uh, Kosmix to Walmart, uh, so that was in the news and so on. So they invited me to come and give a talk. So I gave a talk about my entrepreneurial journey and all that stuff. There were 250 people. I think that was, that's the capacity.
- SPSpeaker
It's quite possible I was in the audience.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, you might have been in the audience, but I don't know whether you raised your hand. But so I, I asked [laughing] ... Oh, no, I shouldn't have said that. [laughing] So, so at the end of this talk, I said, "Hey, we're all about starting companies," and all that stuff. So I, I asked, "How many of you wa- you know, want to start a company, you want to become founders?" and so on. Uh, out of those 250 people, like, two people raised their hand. I was shocked because, look, you know, I wa- I want- I thought there'd be more people who wanted to start companies at IIT Madras. So that's why I say I don't know whether you raised your hand or not. Then I had, happened to have a chat with, uh, the, the, the then, then director, uh, Professor Bhaskar Ramamurti. Um, and I said, "Look, you really need to encourage entrepreneurship more at IIT Madras." And he said, "Why don't you figure out some plans?" So I got together with a bunch of friends in, uh, Silicon Valley, um, which include Venky and Kittu Kolluri, and uh, uh, Arvind Purushotham, and the, uh, Rohini Chakravarthi. These are all alumni from, you know, who... IIT Madras alumni who are in Silicon Valley. Uh, and we put together a, a, a
- 46:14 – 47:34
IIT Madras Entrepreneurial Fund
- SPSpeaker
fund, I think it was half million dollars, called the IIT Madras Entrepreneurship Fund. And we said, "Let's give seed capital to companies affiliated with IIT Madras." Um, and we solicited, uh, business plans, um, and we gave out seed capital, and those companies ended up giving a small equity stake to IIT Madras. And one of the, uh, you know, I think, uh, some of the company names that you mentioned, including Medibuddy, including Hyperverge, were among that.
- SPSpeaker
Nice. I think, uh, the incubation fund and the incubation center has come a huge distance from there.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, that's it. That was the origin. And after that, obviously, IIT Madras, you know, they, they, they saw that it was successful, and they invested behind it, and it's grown, became, became the incubation cell, and it's-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... grown to, you know, great heights.
- SPSpeaker
In this year, Ether has filed its, uh, red herring prospectus, probably going to go public in a-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- SPSpeaker
... few months.
- SPSpeaker
That's right.
- SPSpeaker
Or maybe by the time this releases, they would have gone public. I don't know.
- SPSpeaker
Maybe. Right.
- SPSpeaker
Do, do you feel like sometimes we hear this, um, especially from the government and a lot of, like, the official, uh, marketing material, that this is the decade of India, and there's a lot of tech that we should be building, and this is the right time for India to build tech? And, uh, uh, how, how, uh... What would I say? Like, from a VC point of view, is it very promising? Is it promising? Like, how, how do you- how does a VC look at it?
- SPSpeaker
There, there's two ways of, uh, looking at India, right? One is, there's a lot of
- 47:34 – 50:25
India's Tech Potential & Market
- SPSpeaker
talent in India. There's a huge amount of technical talent in India, um, right? Um, which can build, uh, solutions that can be huge, not just for India, but for the whole world, right? So that's, that's one way of, uh, looking at. The second way of looking at India is India is a huge market. India is a big market, uh, for, you know, and it's a young population that adopts new technologies fast. Um, so there is huge opportunity to serve the Indian market. So there are two axes along which you can look at India, and both these things put together is what make India a very interesting place.
- SPSpeaker
But wouldn't you say that this was true 10 years back also, or 15, 20 years back when you graduated?
- SPSpeaker
No, it was definitely not true when I graduated. When I graduated, let's say in, in '93, uh, India, uh, w- was, was a very different country, right? Uh, the, uh, the India was, um, uh, a much smaller market, uh, right? In terms of, uh, you can sort of view, there was no, uh... The market opportunity for any company in India was way smaller and restricted, and there was no-
- SPSpeaker
The talent pool were- talent pool was also-
- SPSpeaker
And the talent pool was also fairly small. Uh, so, so in 1993, I mean, just to use, give statistics, right? If you look at my computer science class, uh, in 1993, um, I, I think 90-plus percent, uh, of the, you know, pe- my cohort ended up going to the US for higher studies. That is because that was the default path, because it was well-recognized that there was no future, nothing we could do in, in India. Whereas now, if you look at India, you see that the m- it's, it's a small minority that go, uh, to, to go abroad for higher studies than many, right? So, and that just reflects what's going to happen in India over the, over the time frame.
- SPSpeaker
... fair enough, the statistic that we hear from the placement office or the IT of, I don't know, the right department-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- SPSpeaker
- is that about 15 to 20% of the batch goes abroad now.
- SPSpeaker
Right. So, so it's, it's, it's flipped, right? It used to be for you, it used to be 10 or 15, e- even less than 10% that used to stay behind in India. Now, it's around 15% that go, goes abroad. So that tells you, uh, you know, how much India has, you know, how exciting a place India has become, how much more opportunity there is in India now compared to, uh, compared to then. So if, if I were graduating now, I don't think I would go to Stanford. I'd stay behind in India and start a company.
- SPSpeaker
Um, do you have any, uh ... One of the things that we do often is that we interact a lot with, uh, s- students in class 11 and 12, and their parents.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
And they're quite, I would say, um, nervous or confused, and they, uh, really want their children to do really well, and they think that computer science is like one ... I mean, they should just blindly go and do computer science. But I think the world has kinda changed, and I, I'm interested to hear from you what you would talk when you would talk to a parent whose child is now going to come into IIT. Uh, what advice
- 50:25 – 53:00
Advice for Students and Parents
- SPSpeaker
would you give them about their child's future?
- SPSpeaker
First, I'd say I'd congratulate them for the fact that their child is going to get into IITM, because that's a, that's a very, you know, um, very small and prestigious club-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... uh, to-
- SPSpeaker
And it's much harder over the years.
- SPSpeaker
It's become much harder over the years to get into IIT, right? So that's, I think, a huge accomplishment in itself. And the second thing I would say is that these branches at IIT, they're very artificial, and they're completely meaningless. In fact, I was just having lunch with some of the faculty members, and we were chatting, and including Professor Aravindhan, who's been on your, uh, podcast, and we believe that this ... It's, it's an outdated system, frankly, that we have these branches like computer science and mechanical and civil and so on-
- SPSpeaker
And now AI.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, and, and now AI. Uh, ultimately, what, you know, IIT prepares you for is to s- sort of makes you a, a general problem solver, right? Um, gives you analytical skills, uh, to go do g- interesting things in the world, uh, right? And be one of the leaders in, in doing those things. And exactly what you studied, whether you studied civil engineering or naval architecture or mechanical engineering or computer science, doesn't ultimately matter in the, uh, in the scheme of things. If you look back 10 or 20 years later, if you look at many of my friends who studied in those different branches and you look at what they're doing now, there's absolutely no correlation between what they ended up doing and what they studied, right? So, but ultimately, what matters is that they went to an IIT, uh, particular IIT Madras, because the ... By going to an IIT, you sort of, you get a peer cohort, uh, that's, that's the best in the world at some level, right? You sort of get to interact with, uh, uh, with an amazing group of peers. You get, uh, get an amazing group of professors. You get in touch, and you keep in touch with the, uh, uh, the your, your cohort, and you have a great alumni network to tap into, right? So, uh, so this is why, I mean, I was just ... uh, somebody was saying, right? "You had to choose between, uh, a low-ranked branch at, at an IIT and computer science at, you know, some other school in India." Go for the low-ranked [chuckles] branch at IIT any day, because what really matters is the IIT network.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Right? So-
- SPSpeaker
And you're increasing your surface area of luck, and, uh, you go through trial by fire together. Opportunities are more ... All of those things we just-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- SPSpeaker
... spoke about.
- SPSpeaker
Exactly. Yeah. So I think, so ultimately, there's nothing like it, and, uh, so I think you don't even worry about the branch and all that. Ultimately, it's what you do with what you learn that matters.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Thank you so much for that. I, I love the work you've done, and, uh, I, I was quite nervous before this interview because, um, I mean, you're super senior of mine, and I, I don't think I'd
- 53:00 – 54:33
Conclusion
- SPSpeaker
prepared well enough. But thank you so much for, um, sharing so much. Uh, and, uh, yeah, uh, any parting words?
- SPSpeaker
So first of all, thanks for giving me the opportunity. It's, it's amazing. Um, and, you know, I didn't know this, this podcast existed till you reached out. I'm so glad that you're doing it. I think it's a great service that you're doing to, uh, you know, both students and potential students of, uh, of IIT Madras. Um, and, uh, in terms of, um, uh, parting advice, the only thing I would say is you should enjoy your college days, uh, right? Because you always look back, uh, fondly on them and, uh, uh, say, "You know, those were the best days of my life." You know, as I was wandering around, uh, today, looking at the Saarang, uh, this is what-
- SPSpeaker
Mardi Gras.
- SPSpeaker
... X, uh, which used to be called Mardi Gras. Um, this is, this is what I was thinking, you know, you reminisce, right? So those were ... These are the, you know, at some level, you want to accomplish, you want to do great things, but you also want to enjoy your, your college days. So you, you know, so you, you go ahead and, and have fun over the four years and, and sort of bond with your, uh, you know, uh, with your fellow students and so on. Because these are the students who will ... You know, these, these networks will be super valuable in, in years to come.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Okay, you heard it from Anand Rajaraman. Thank you so much for being with us. Please like, share, and subscribe. Thank you. [outtro jingle]
Episode duration: 54:34
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