Transcript: Pankaj Jain: COO Workomo & Investor

Host: In this episode of The Startup Project, I talked to Pankaj Jain, who wears many hats and is currently working as chief operating officer of Workomo, and also is an advisor for Angelist India's The Collective Fund.

Pankaj has seen the evolution of Indian startup ecosystem, both as a founder, as an investor, and both as an insider and an outsider.

We had a wide-ranging conversation from various topics including how Jio affected India's ecosystem, to how Angelist India thinks about angel investing itself. I had a blast talking to Pankaj. Hope you will too.

Host: Hey Pankaj, welcome to the show.

Guest: Hi, Nitiraj. Thank you very much for having me.

Host: Yeah, thanks for being on the show. So, the first uh topic of our conversation I want to start with is this idea of community building, right? Uh, you've started Startup uh Saturday, you've started started Startup Weekend, and you know, you have Headstart. So you're sort of the OG community creator uh in an Indian ecosystem. What was that experience like?

Guest: Uh, it was incredible. Um, so Startup Saturday, um, came out of really a necessity. I had moved to India uh in 2007 and I had uh just begun my startup uh after moving. And I was having a ton of trouble hiring people, looking for co-founder.

Uh, you know, you name it the all of the usual problems that uh first-time founders typically deal with. And um, you know, I had to build a network in India, which I didn't have.

And, you know, 2007, there weren't a whole lot of startups or a whole lot of events or a community that you can tap into relatively easily. So, I found a Barcamp community. I got involved in organizing Barcamps first.

Um, I think Barcamp Delhi 5 and Barcamp Delhi 6 were the first two that I had gotten involved with.

Host: And then you started uh Startup Weekend?

Guest: And then I started Startup Saturday. So I uh through Barcamp, I met a bunch of folks uh across Bombay and Bangalore that were uh looking to start something a little bit more formal.

They had been doing a meetup in these cities called Startup Saturday, and they wanted to start something a little bit more formal.

So I got involved with them and uh became a co-founder of Headstart Network, which was running uh Startup Saturday across I think at that time, it was five cities uh or four cities. Um, and then we kind of expanded.

I think today it's like across 20 cities or more uh in India.

Guest: And so that was like 2008, 2009, 2010.

Host: And why do you think like you were good at community building? Like I mean, looking back, what made you good at community building?

Guest: Uh, I don't know if I was good at it or not. Um, but I certainly had a passion for it. And so, you know, it started with uh a need that I had, which was to meet people, right? Um, and those people could be potential co-founders, they could be um potentially uh people that I might hire. Um, that's really the two lenses that I was looking at it from.

Host: So if I look at like community building right now, right, like everything right now is revolving around community, whether it's podcasts or, you know, influencer economy or passion economy.

What do you see the difference between like creating in community online versus offline? Like, do you see any similarities or differences or sort of what advice you would give to someone who's trying to build a community online now?

Guest: Yeah, I mean, you know, for me, I think online communities are very difficult uh to do. Uh I know people do them really, really well. They do them um quickly and they scale them rapidly.

For me, I found building online communities to be very difficult. Partly because you don't have that um face-to-face contact with people.

And I think there's, you know, unfortunately, uh 2020 has really forced all of us to go online and stay online, but you know, there there's a certain serendipity when things are offline and when things are in person.

And, you know, you don't capture that in an online community.

So it's it's easier to get more people into your community, assuming that you're marketing correctly and getting the right message out to folks, but I think it's hard to really build strong bonds within that community.

Uh, you know, if I look at the Startup Saturday, Headstart community, or if I look at the Startup Weekend communities uh both within India and internationally, the bonds that people have created are very, very strong.

Uh partly because you were sitting face-to-face, you would see each other on a regular basis and you were able to build deeper-rooted relationships. Um, you know, I think breaking bread uh is is important to build relationships.

And unfortunately, that's something that we can't really do today. Um, so I think, you know, for me at least, I find building online communities difficult partly because they are less personal. Um, they require a very different type of attention.

Um, and you know, it's easier to provide that attention, but it's also I I think there's a bit of a disconnect.

And so you can have large online communities, you know, uh I started the Indian Startup Club on Clubhouse uh a couple of months ago and we just crossed a thousand uh members right before New Year's.

So, you know, relatively quick in terms of uh building up the numbers there, but, you know, being able to really build relationships is a whole different problem, right?

And I I think that's one of the things that I see in online communities that's much, much harder to to do is to build strong deep relationships. Um, yeah.

Host: I mean, one thing to me it stuck is uh I think the pandemic sort of changed the idea of, you know, building online communities. I mean, people were not open to have or meet random people over on internet on different communities.

And probably the reason why Clubhouse even explored is because of the pandemic in a sense that people were much more open to the idea of, you know, having conversations uh by meeting people through online events because pre-pandemic for me, if you want to like talk to like-minded individuals, uh I used to mostly find people here in startup communities and Seattle, but right now even in the US, like uh whether it's Launch Club or different sort of tools are emerging where I think there is an avenue to sort of build of even deeper conversation.

I mean, we met on Clubhouse, right? So uh I think it's it's that one of uh things that sort of the positive outcomes of the pandemic is that people have changed their opinion of, you know, uh can relationships be built online.

And I'm sort of hopeful that more and more of this will happen.

Guest: Yeah.

Host: But uh one of the interesting things is uh you've uh I mean sort of closed your company and you've talked about um you know, your difficulty in working with Indian startup ecosystem.

And you know, for example, you've talked about um uh how difficult it was uh to actually getting uh police verification uh in India.

But you actually mentioned one um interesting thing which uh I want to sort of explore is you said you learned a lot about yourself uh with that experience. But you never actually talked about what you actually learned about it.

So I want to sort of uh go into the direction of what did you learn about yourself um in that process that you didn't know before?

Guest: So, a lot of it was just um a lot of intuitive guessing. Um, right? Like I I think over time, um, you know, part of it was because of uh the professional uh direction that I took.

A lot of what drove me was um data and, you know, analyzing things and making decisions based off of that. And in India, I started relearning that relying on my intuition and my gut was probably more important than the data.

You have to bring the two together, but that was one of the things that I realized is like, you know, don't rely only on data. Uh really rely on your gut.

And, you know, there there are exceptions, of course, but um you know, kind of finding that medium is is really important, right?

Um, so that was one of the things that I learned about myself is don't be focused only on the data and, you know, the analytics behind making a decision or hiring somebody or whatever, but also rely on your intuition a lot more.

Um, I also learned that, you know, I was far more capable of adapting than I previously thought I was. Um, you know, moving across the world. I had never lived in India before that.

So, moving to essentially what was a new country that I had spent a lot of time visiting and had many relatives in. Um, but I really didn't understand, you know, popular Indian culture.

I didn't really understand, you know, like I I don't, I think in the last 30 years, I might have seen maybe two or three Bollywood movies. Um, I've never watched Indian television. Even when I lived there, I never had uh television there.

Um, so, you know, without connecting to popular culture, it's it's hard to really connect with people. Uh, so I I started having some difficulty with that when when I when I first landed.

And then I started realizing that, you know, here are certain things that I need to change about myself and certain things that I need to do in order to uh really kind of integrate in and make friends and meet people.

And uh so you know, it it may seem like um something that's natural for a lot of people, but um it can be very difficult also. So I I I realized that you know, these are things that I need to do. So I adapted.

Um I also realized that, you know, I was pretty bad at hiring people. Um, you know, prior to moving to India, I had uh you know, hired a lot of people across a lot of different locations. I never had to fire anybody in my life.

And when I moved to India, it was the complete opposite. There was one person, he was actually the first person I hired who stayed with me throughout the whole journey, but other than him, um, it was a revolving door.

Um, like it was really tough. you know, I had to really reassess like what are the what are the parameters and what's the criteria that I'm uh hiring people according to and reevaluate that and rethink a lot of those things.

Uh so kind of ties into some of the other things that I had learned about myself while I was there. Um, I also realized for the first time in my life that I'm more American than I am Indian.

Um, prior to moving to India, I always thought of myself as being Indian first and American second. And after moving to India, it's ironic.

That's when I realized that, you know, the way I think, the things that I value, I'm more American than I am Indian. And, you know, I uh developed a much deeper appreciation for both sides of myself, the the Indian side and the American side.

Um, and you know, I think that was coming to that realization is what allowed me to do a lot of the other things that I started doing uh after I wound up shutting down my startup.

Um, because I realized there are certain strengths and certain weaknesses that uh both sides have, so why not use them um as much as I can to bring a certain way of thinking to other people.

And I think with the startup community just in general, the way startups operate, uh is, you know, it's more about getting things done and people are a little bit more open-minded.

So I think that kind of really fit well with what was needed uh amongst the startup ecosystem in India at that time. So, you know, that to me was like an interesting uh learning that I had.

Um and that you know, there's many others and we could probably like sit here for another hour and talk about a lot of the other ones, but you know, to me it was more than what I learned uh it was a time for me to learn how to introspect, right?

Like every day as a founder, uh failing was becoming the norm. And prior to that, uh you know, I I'd been lucky. I never really had any failures.

Well, you know, not LTCM was a big failure, but not for me. uh for me it was a great learning experience uh very early in my career.

But you know, it it was the first time that on a daily basis, I had to really struggle uh to find any sort of wins as an entrepreneur in India. And, you know, that forced me to learn how to introspect and to to look inwards and see what am I thinking?

What am I doing? Who am I? Uh and what should I change about myself?

Um, so you know, that was probably the most important thing that I learned about myself was like, how do I how do I look into myself and really uh objectively uh criticize myself and change what needs to be changed?

Host: You're also like uh I mean it was almost like the fertile ground when you came into Indian startup ecosystem, right?

And at some point uh I mean after building this networks and, you know, with your experience uh with your own startup, uh you also started uh doing some angel investing, right?

So what is the first uh angel investment check that you've written and what was your thinking at that point of time?

Did you I mean, did you think you were like a traditional angel investor uh in US who's you know, he's thinking it has a portfolio or uh were you just um you know, it's just like you met a great guy and you invested.

So what was the process like what was your thinking behind writing that first check?

Guest: Yeah, um, so you know, I I would argue that when I landed in India, it wasn't fertile ground. It was more of a desert. Uh, there was nothing growing. It was just, you know, arid land. But you know, that that was changing.

And I think, you know, the real first tipping point was in 2010. Uh, when you saw a real first boom in the e-commerce space. Um, and I think that started changing people's mindset. And when I say people, I mean really investors.

Uh, there were no angel investors to really speak of in India at that time, except for a handful. Uh, and, you know, then on the founder side as well. Uh, it really got founders thinking about what was possible.

So, you know, coming back to the angel side, you know, at that time, we had Indian Angel Network, we had Mumbai Angels, but there were there weren't really many independent angels uh in India.

So, um, people were still operating as a group and I think a lot of the angel networks uh were really thinking about uh investing in a very traditional sense at that time, 2010, 2012. My first angel check was in 2012 uh into a company uh was it 2012?

I'm trying to think back. Yeah, I think it was 2012. Um, so you know, timing is a little off because sometimes you agree to invest in a company and the uh investment doesn't close for months afterwards.

Um, so there were there were two investments that happened virtually simultaneously. The first one was Data Weave. Uh Data Weave was a company that I had spent a lot of time with and working with when I was at T-Labs.

And then there was another company called Gazemetrics. Gazemetrics was a company that actually came out of a Startup Weekend event that we had done. Um, and I had gotten to know the founders quite well.

I wound up investing in the company at uh 500 startups uh as well as uh personally. And the well, I invested first and then uh 500 startups invested after I joined 500 as well.

But you know, I I didn't really think about either of these companies in terms of a portfolio. I I I really thought about the the founders and what did I like about the founders? What did I like about working with the founders?

What did I see the potential for what they were trying to do? Not from a economic perspective, but from really a product and technology perspective. Um, and I think the economics would come later um if they were able to do what they wanted to do.

So I don't really think about it um as a professional angel investor. I in a lot of ways I still don't.

Um, you know, my my angel investing is still kind of it's a little bit more narrow than it used to be, but you know, there are exceptions to the rules um that happen all the time.

And I think, you know, for for me, one thing that's stayed consistent over the last 8, 9, 10 years, it has been the fact that I'm more likely to write a check into a company where I connect with the founders on some level.

Um, and you know, sometimes I'm wrong. I I want up being wrong about that, but uh in most cases I think if I establish a strong connection on a individual level, then the company still may not work out, but the relationship does work out.

And I think, you know, that's one of the things from an angel investor perspective that I uh have learned since then is just thinking about longer-term opportunities that come because you've built strong relationships.

Host: Did you always engage with all the founders that you've invested with and uh sort of been there uh you know, go to guy or was it more of a passive investing?

Guest: So, uh you know, it was you know, I think angel investing to a large degree has to be passive. Uh you don't want to kind of stick your uh finger into the pie when it's not wanted, right?

Uh but you also want to be the um the cheerleader when it's needed, right?

Um, so the way my angel investing happened, uh, you know, for many years, I couldn't angel invest uh when I was at 500, but prior to that and post that, um, in most cases, the investments that I've done have been people that I have known, uh people that I have met, maybe not have had deep relationships with, uh but there have there've been people that I have met through whether it was Startup Saturday, Startup Weekend, um, 500 startups, uh some of the advisory work that I had done uh over the last couple of years.

So it there have been some exceptions where, you know, I didn't know the founders before. Um, but in those cases I I'm always clear with those founders. I look, if you want a check for me, I have to get to know you.

Uh, it's not about the business only, it's about who you are and who I am and there needs to be some sort of relationship that gets built before I'm going to write a check. Um, and yes, there are exceptions to that, of course.

But generally speaking, I think, you know, most of the companies that I've invested in uh will reach out to me when there is something that they need help with. Uh, many of them I don't hear from for months uh or even years.

Uh, but they know that if there is something that they need help with and they reach out to me that I will do what I can to help them.

So, which is nice, you know, like, okay, you know, you kind of stay in the background, you're there, it's almost like um, you know, having like kind of like a big brother or big sister relationship like, you know, you know somebody's got your back and you can reach out to them when you need that help.

Uh but you know, they're not going to interfere otherwise. So that's generally the approach that I take.

Host: You you've touched upon uh working at uh T-Labs, right? I mean, uh that's the incubator uh by Times Internet, which is sort of iconic in its own way. Uh what was the experience like working with them and what was the model that you guys took uh in terms of like incubating startups?

Guest: Yeah, so you know, T-Labs was a typical accelerator model.

Um, you know, a it was very similar in the Techstars and 500 startups uh model of having an on-site incubator, where a physical incubator where the startups would come and work out of.

Um, you know, Abhishek, my partner at T-Labs and I both felt that having that um in-person incubator was important. Um, serendipity happens uh when people are around each other.

And so it was kind of designed as a cohort-based accelerator right from the beginning.

Um, you know, the plan was to do about 8 to 10 startups per cohort uh run two cohorts per year, uh primarily consumer uh focused because you know, that's kind of what Times Internet understood and did.

Uh but there wasn't necessarily any um limitations saying that, you know, it has to be something that would be strategic for Times Internet.

Um, you know, the idea was really to just find great founders um with big ideas on the consumer side and write a check and try to help them um both from a individual perspective uh as well as from a corporate perspective. Right?

So, you know, we we wrote uh at that time when we started, we were writing 10 lakh checks um for 10%. So it was a basically a one crore post-money valuation. Um, and there were priced rounds that were happening at that time.

So this was you know, 2012 uh late 2011, early 2012. And that was kind of this the norm. Um, you know, I think Times uh quickly saw that the market was adapting and started changing uh the model for T-Labs uh as the market was also changing.

A lot of accelerators started popping up in 2012, 2013. Uh most of them are no longer operating. Uh I think Microsoft is one of the few that's still operating an accelerator in India.

Uh T-Labs is also moved from having a physical incubator to having a um a virtual accelerator program and even now that's kind of not, I'm not sure exactly what T-Labs is. I think they've kind of morphed T-Labs into T-Ventures.

So it's kind of multi-stage uh investing that they're doing now. Um, so yeah, there are not many accelerators left in India that I can think of.

You know, I think uh there was um, one out of Bombay that just got started last year or something I'm drawing a blank on the name.

Host: I mean, a lot of uh we I mean, the Surge had from Secoia the sort of combination of virtual plus uh I mean, with pandemic everything moved on to virtual, right?

Guest: Yeah. You know, Surge, you know, is is is an interesting one because it's not your typical early stage accelerator that has been the traditional model uh over the last 7, 8 years.

You know, Surge you you see companies that are coming in at the idea stage, but you also see companies that have been around and raised multiple rounds. They've been, you know, operating for 4, 5, 6 years before they go through the search program.

So I think Surge has been really interesting in in in the fact that they can be almost multi-stage in their approach. Um, you know, they are uh working with companies across multiple regions.

Like you said, the the hybrid physical and virtual now, of course, it's all virtual, but um, really kind of I I think Surge really changed the game uh in terms of what people's expectations from an accelerator are.

Uh, of course, it doesn't hurt that Secoia is writing very large checks. Um, you know, I think it's a million and a half dollars um that they're writing per company. Uh, the valuations are variable.

So, you know, they will theoretically they could take a company that's been around for 4 or 5 years, already has a $20 million valuation in India and still invest.

And also take a company that is at an idea stage and maybe, you know, invest at a $5 million valuation, right? Um, so I think that's really interesting how they've done that and they've done it incredibly well over the last year and a half, 2 years.

Host: Yeah, I mean there's some incredible companies coming out of uh Surge. I mean, and pretty much every VC firm is sort of trying uh in terms of I mean linking it back to the community building, right?

Like uh I think both Secoia, Light Speed and others are trying to sort of build this network of uh companies and do more to attract startups. Um I I I want to like uh little bit unpack uh how you guys worked at T-Labs.

So in what exact role did you work there and like what was the approach in terms of like did you actually select the startups or you had like different uh applications from the startups and you picked uh who will actually work in the physical space?

What was the exact model there?

Guest: Yeah, so, you know, like I said, it was a very traditional accelerator model. Um, I was asked to come on board basically to help with deal flow.

Um, having launched Startup Saturday and Startup Weekend, I had a fairly strong network amongst founders uh across Delhi and increasingly across the country. So, um, I was asked to really focus on sourcing companies.

So, you know, for batch one um and batch two, there wasn't yeah, we had an application process.

Uh, you know, companies would come in and put in their applications, but a lot of it was really about Abhishek and I being on the ground, you know, traveling, meeting companies, talking to them, um, and in many cases asking them to put in an application uh as a formality.

Um, but you know, it was really driven by our existing networks. So, you know, um founders that we knew might in introduce us to other founders that they knew that were starting companies, etc, etc. So there was that uh sourcing side.

Once applications came in, we would run through the applications and kind of, you know, weed them out.

And the companies that we liked, then we would start, you know, spending a little bit more time with them, interviewing them, diving into specifics of their business and kind of where they were and what they were doing, etc, etc.

Um, and the companies that we liked, you know, we would make them an offer. Some in some cases uh companies would try to negotiate that offer.

In other cases, companies would turn down that offer and and in other cases, companies would fortunately accept the offer. So, once the offer was accepted, we had an official start time for the program.

Um, and you know, like a Techstars or a 500 startups, the companies were expected to move uh if they were from uh outside Delhi, move to the NCR region and physically set up their offices in our offices in Noida.

And um, you know, we would all be working in the same space on a daily basis.

Um, you know, we would invite on a weekly basis, we would invite different parts of the ecosystem, sometimes other uh founders, in other cases, we had investors, angel investors and VCs who would come and you know, the idea was to give a talk on a topic uh and then also to just spend some time with the companies and build relationships.

Um, so that's, you know, that's pretty much how it ran like a traditional accelerator program and then once the it was a four month program, once the program was over, there would be a demo day, right? Uh just like every other accelerator program.

Mhm.

Host: So uh at some point you also started working with funded startups for their India strategy, right? How did that come about?

Guest: So I actually met 500 startups when I was running Startup Weekend in India. Um, I saw that they were doing Geeks on a Plane. Uh, this was in 2011. So 500 startups hadn't reached the level of notoriety that um, it did soon afterwards.

Um, in Indian places like India, it was relatively unknown. So, you know, it was uh it was interesting kind of explaining to founders in India why it was cool that 500 startups was going to be at Startup Weekend.

Um, but um, yeah, so I reached out to 500 startups when I saw that they were doing Geeks on a Plane uh to India for the first time and just said, hey, you know, if you guys are going to be in India, love to, you know, do a Startup Weekend around it, love to have you at Startup Weekend.

Um, and had a couple of conversations with uh Kristen and uh she ran all of the events and the Geeks on the Plane and and all of that when at 500. So, you know, we talked through some of the plans and she's like, yeah, this sounds great.

We've done Startup Weekend uh in a lot of other places, so this sounds really interesting. It'll give us a good kind of intro into the Indian market.

So it was funny, they uh they landed uh I think it was a Thursday night and Friday night they were at Startup Weekend Delhi and they were there uh pretty much I think if I remember correctly all three days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

That's how I met um Dave and Paul and Kristen and Christine and everyone else. uh and you know, spent a little bit of time on the side just introducing them to other folks in India uh across different cities, people that they may want to meet, founders, mostly founders. uh very few investors, but mostly founders at that time.

And um, you know, when I was at T-Labs, uh you know, we were in regular touch. Yeah, I was sharing deal flow with them on a regular basis. Uh Paul was making more regular trips to India to see and scout companies in India.

So, yeah, I was helping him with um meeting companies and founders that I hadn't met or known uh or even had invested in uh across India.

And, you know, the relationship just kind of grew from there and then they asked me to come on board and, you know, run all of the India investments uh in October 2012 is when I joined them.

Host: One of the interesting uh things you wrote about while you were at Fan Startups was your take on uh food startups, right?

And there was a particular period of time where uh a lot of uh food delivery startups were going bust and you correctly predicted that, hey, this is not the whole sector and it's obviously overfunded, but uh we're sort of we'll come out of this and it did happen.

So how is it now seeing the whole food space right now? Like, you know, we have Swiggy and other companies doing sort of okay. I mean, we've come out of that uh 2016 era where a lot of companies were going bust. Um, how do you see it now?

Guest: You know, I think things are very different today than they were in 2019, uh from a food startup perspective.

Um, I think the the pandemic, the lockdowns, the somewhat um a little bit of fear around uh going out to eat and things like that have really propelled some of these guys into a different stratosphere.

Um, you know, I think the the thing that, you know, back in 2015 when I wrote that blog post, um, that concerned me was that the there there was a cultural issue, right?

For for the most part, most Indians at that time, uh and when I say most Indians, I mean most Indians above the age of 35, 40 uh still prefer to eat at home.

Uh, eating out was expensive and it it was also you know, from a let's say mid mid 20s to mid 30s age group, it didn't really matter so much because you can call up pretty much any restaurant in, you know, a few kilometer radius and they would deliver to you.

Um, you know, there was never any problems getting in the large cities at least. In the smaller cities, uh, I think it's different. But in the large cities, you call up a restaurant and if it's 2 kilometers away, they'll deliver the food.

And if the food isn't uh cooked properly, you can call them and they'll exchange it or they'll tell you, okay, next time you come in, uh you know, we'll take 50 rupees off your bill or whatever that is, right?

Um, so to me, it just didn't make sense, why would I pay a middle man? Why why should I introduce something in the middle when I can go straight to the source, right?

Um, now there was a component of flexibility like, okay, you have a family of five and one person wants Dominos, another person wants, you know, pizza uh I mean uh some Mexican food and somebody else wants pasta and somebody else wants Chinese.

Okay, you just place that order in one place and you get kind of get everything.

And I think that kind of started changing things, but the problem was really from a business perspective, I just didn't understand how any of these companies could ever make money.

Because to me, it was there was a ton of money that they would spend on marketing, they would lose money on every delivery uh and a lot of that wouldn't change until a certain point.

And getting to that certain point which is require a lot of venture capital to get you to that point. And a lot of them just didn't really understand logistics that well, right?

The founders, they they didn't come from a logistics background and delivery is a logistics business, so you really do need to understand in logistics to make that work, I think.

So, you know, I think those were some of the things that really concerned me about that space back then. I think fast forward to 2020, um, a lot of those things have been changed, right?

Like today, it is normal for non-technical, non-startup people to whip out their phone and want to order some food. Why? Because Jio made data ubiquitous in India.

You know, I remember even in 2015 and 2014, having conversations with relatives about why I need 3G data on my phone, right? Like they saw it as a waste of money. Like what why why do you need this, right? I well, this is what I live by, right?

Now to me it was hilarious that people would be walking around with, you know, 30,000 rupee iPhones and Android phones, but not have any data on them. And when you go to somebody's house, the wifi is turned off.

They turn on the wifi for a little while, they use it and then they turn it back off, right? And a lot of it was driven by cost.

So when Jio just completely upended the whole market for data, I think that uh was a huge shift that occurred at the end of 2016. The other thing uh to add to 2016 was demonetization. Right?

I think that also forced a lot of people to become comfortable with paying online for certain things, right?

Whether you were using Paytm or Mobikwik or credit card or whatever, people started becoming more comfortable paying online where whereas prior to that most people still preferred to do COD, right?

And for many different reasons, but I think those had a lot to do with. Those things had a lot to do with it. I think the the startups themselves, right?

You you you saw a bunch of startups fail, you saw a bunch of startups um kind of morph into something else. Like Dunzo was a company that I saw in 2015. Um, and I passed on it because they were doing food delivery, right?

And today Dunzo, at least in Bangalore is a verb. Yeah. Um, right? Like, you know, so they morphed. They they they they picked up on the whole logistics uh angle.

They really doubled down on that and they saw that, hey, food delivery by itself is too small of a category for us. We're going to expand it out to other things and we're going to be really a logistics company.

So, you know, I think founders have done amazing things in kind of adapting to the circumstances and those that couldn't have failed. So I think that has helped change the landscape considerably.

Now, whether Swiggy, um, is going to or Zomato are going to be multibillion dollar exits in the space? I don't know. That's way above my pay grade.

But you know, I I I think the the founders of these companies one have the deep pockets to hire the right people to do this. They also have enough brand recognition nationally uh to continue growing.

Uh I don't know what the economics are, what kind of relationships they have with the different restaurants and things like that.

So I don't know how that I know there's, you know, periodically there's a little bit of a uh a push and pull between the restaurants associations and you know

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