07 – Once You Have the Mindset, Things Will Happen – Venkat Vallabhaneni – Managing Partner at Inflexor Ventures

• Graduating from Manipal Institute of Technology and going to the United States for his Master’s degree
• Building technology for Wall Street trading desks
• Moving back to India after almost two decades in the United States
• Different work styles of India and the United States
• Being a multiple-time founder
• India’s great pool of technical talent, but they need business help
• The benefits of multi-stage investing
• Venture investing being the thing he loves to do most

1. I Learnt It on the Fly!
2. We Bet on the Winners
3. The Effect You Create in Venture Capital Is Huge
4. India for India
5. India for the World

Read the best-effort transcript below (This technology is still not as good as they say it is…):

Michael Waitze 0:27
Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to India GameChanger. Today we are joined by Venkat Vallabhaneni, a Managing Partner at Inflexor Ventures. Venkat thank you so much for joining the show. How are you doing today?

Venkat Vallabhaneni 0:41
Pretty good, Mike. Good to be here.

Michael Waitze 0:44
It is great to have you. I just cannot get the image of that chair. Like I feel like you should have like one of those driving games. It’d be killing me because I’m terrible at them.

Venkat Vallabhaneni 0:53
I mean, I love this chair, by the way, right? I mean, so, you know, I sit most of my time. Yours and other things. These credits. This chair is great, actually. Yeah. Yeah. So

Michael Waitze 1:03
my whole goal in life is just to get the same chair I had at Goldman Sachs.

Venkat Vallabhaneni 1:07
Let me know I need some help.

Michael Waitze 1:10
Fair enough. Before we get into the main part of this conversation, can we get a little bit of your background for some context?

Venkat Vallabhaneni 1:18
Absolutely. So I’ve done my bachelor’s in engineering in India from Manipal Institute of Technology that’s called Indian MIT, let’s say, right? So

Michael Waitze 1:28
wonderful Institute of Technology. Well done.

Venkat Vallabhaneni 1:30
Right. So that’s where from constantly such another laugh, Microsoft front, right, so. So anyway, so after I’ve done my engineering, I went to the US and in 1988, so I have done my master’s in computer science there. And in New Jersey. And after that, you know, after finishing my master’s, there are two ways you can go right, either go join at&t and Bell Labs or our go to Wall Street, right. So I chose the later I went to Wall Street and worked in few companies in Wall Street, and worked on sales and trading, obviously, on technology and on different trading desks. And in fixed income. For few years, I’ve done that it’s a great learning experience, though a lot of pleasure, but a great learning experience, right, working with traders and, and financial models and everything right, so after that, I started my own company in about 2000. And in the US, and that was again, you know, serving the same clientele in on Wall Street, really. So what we’ve worked with many banks are there and and that company got acquired by a company called can be in 2005 Currently, no, it is part of Capgemini right can be so, I was there for a year I didn’t have as part of my you know, agreement with the company. And after that, I was at the crossroads and I thought let me go back to India after 19 years in the US and figure out what to do in India, because at the time India story was pretty vibrant, right. So, and came back to India in 2000 and end of 2006 timeframe. After coming back here, I started looking at entrepreneurial activities. So, I invested in a company called energy leader that that manufactures industrial batteries. So from software to manufacturing industry in India, that was a great learning experience, but on the hindsight and look back, I mean, that was a tough experience as well right working the manufacturing is not easy in India, especially in India, right. So raising the funds working with the banks and, and, and establishing greenfield projects, and getting the required permits environmental clearances, so many things and it gave me so much of learning the platform to learn in India how things work. And that got eventually acquired by US based company, right? My sister company, and then after that I went into healthcare, and a little bit, you know, telemedicine and connecting the patients, the doctors kind of model in 2009 timeframe. And that was a bit early. And the infrastructure was not there in India at the time, right for video conference and stuff like that. So it didn’t work quite well. But eventually but one thing we realized is healthcare in India, when you serve without the pyramid to the bottom government would be involved, right. So we ended up working with the government and covering up the model where we were serving the patients with working with the government and that worked very well. Eventually that company also got acquired by Singapore and USPS us Consortium. In the meantime, what happened was I knew some friends in Bank of America in the US and they were trying to set up in our Technology Division in India. So I joined them, because it’s like entrepreneurship, right, starting from scratch and building the team. So I was the first guy to join there, and was there for a few years with the team up to probably six to 7000 folks out there. And across different areas. And you know, both tech and some ops as well, operations as well. Yep, great experience working with Bank of America, right. And all along. I’ve been entrepreneur working at a small company, and now working with a large company, how things work and stuff like that.

Michael Waitze 5:36
I don’t, I don’t feel like you’re old enough to have done everything you say.

Venkat Vallabhaneni 5:42
I’m not old, by the way. So definitely, I started my career when I was 10 years old.

Michael Waitze 5:48
In negative three, I want to ask you, I want to ask you about this, though. How old were you when you went to the United States to get your master’s degree?

Unknown Speaker 5:54
I was probably 19 20 years old, right?

Michael Waitze 5:59
So you’d already gone through MIT in India, right? So getting an engineering degree there, then you go to United States to get a master’s in computer science, right in New Jersey, at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, a very good school, by the way, in New Jersey. And then you stay in America for the next 19 years. So you really don’t come back to India until you’re 40. It mirrors kind of what I did, but just in reverse, right. I left the United States when I was 24. Right? And went to a completely different culture and lived in Japan until I was 46 years old. So almost the same amount of time. And I’m wondering, I also worked on a sales trading desk, right? So I, yeah, sales, traded equities and fixed income. I also traded portfolios. So I know what that’s like. I think there’s a special kind of learning that you get when you’re making micro decisions on a moment by moment basis. And you’re also processing data extremely quickly in a way that I don’t think most people understand. But do you feel like, do you feel like that experience even if it wasn’t for a long period of time, right? That it helps you make decisions today as well. But it also helps you process information in a way that’s way more efficient than maybe somebody who didn’t sit on a trading desk, if that makes sense?

Venkat Vallabhaneni 7:08
No, absolutely. I mean, the learning I had in especially first time I walked onto trading desk in bed late. That was a shocker to me. Right? Because it’s huge. It’s so much nice. Took a while to get used to that. But no, it’s a great experience working across different different areas. What can traders know, man, that was that gave me so much exposure and the ability to make decisions. As you rightly said, I did unparalleled in my view, right.

Michael Waitze 7:35
So I talked about this a lot for myself, right? Because I lived in Japan from when I was 24 Until I was 46. But I looked like this. Right? So and I feel free to laugh, right? For sure. Because it is kind of humorous right now. But if you saw me walking down the street, you wouldn’t know that I’ve lived in Japan for 20 something years, you wouldn’t know that I speak Japanese, you wouldn’t know that there’s this cultural impact on me. But there isn’t. I feel like there’s part of me, that has a Japanese sensibility. And I’m curious if you as a 19 year old into a 40 year old, came home and felt like when you got back to India, because I can’t live in the United States anymore. But I feel like when you got back to India, which is very different than living and working in New Jersey in New York, you were like, I think I may need to actually re acclimate myself to what being in India is like, is that fair?

Venkat Vallabhaneni 8:23
Yeah, it is. It is, to such an extent, because I know, the way I feel that it No, I have two homes. Right? One, yeah, India, and the other one is the US because you gave me the carrier gave me an opportunity to grow and establish myself. Right. So two things is I feel like I have to give back to the world, the countries, right. So, and one of the reasons I came back to India at the time is, you know, because I’ve been traveling a lot between India and the US, before moving back. So it wasn’t a lot of a shock to me, or a lot of, you know, change, per se, but the working culture is definitely different. Right? So I’ll give an example. Right? Because in you know, when I was working in the US, we start the day, probably around seven ish, right? I mean, I came back to India, and I joined Bank of America and you know, whenever right and I put up, put a suit and go at seven, right? Nobody’s there. So the desktops here at 11, but NCR later as well, right. So yeah, I mean, other thing is the decision making the way people make decisions is quite different. Right. And so that’s changing today in India right now, but it was very, very different. When I came back to India, that was a bit of a challenge for me for sure. Yeah. And the time it takes for getting things done right. You know, in India, while you know there is a cost arbitrage in terms of labor and other things, but product cost of transaction is probably say much higher in India sometimes right if you don’t know how to get Good stuff.

Michael Waitze 10:00
Yeah. But again, it’s so in this is what I mean with the cultural differences, right? It’s that if you’re sitting on a trading desk at Merrill Lynch or sitting on trading floor at Merrill Lynch, where I was at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, there is a way to make a decision. And it can some cases can be very abrupt with very little care and concern for the person on the other side of that decision, or even on your side of decision. It’s like we’re doing a you’re gonna do it now. And you’re gonna go at it. Yes. But in Japan, that did not work, right? Because that’s not the way Japanese people make decisions.

Venkat Vallabhaneni 10:30
Which one do you think is for you? What do you like, from yourself?

Michael Waitze 10:35
So it’s a really great question. And I’m glad you asked it. And my answer is always the same. If I’m playing football, I’m going to learn American football, on learn how to drop back and throw the ball as far as I possibly can. And in this tightest spiral is humanly possible. But if I’m carrying the same shaped ball, and I’m playing rugby, I’m never thrown it forward. I’m just throwing it backwards and running as fast as I can. It just depends with picture on. Okay, for me, there is no best way. But for people like you and me, for people that are the way we are, we are actually bilingual and bicultural in the sense that you can sit in the floor on Merrill Lynch in New York and just do this that the other thing that then you can also sit in Bangalore and make a decision in a way that’s completely different. And both decisions are right, and both are effective. Is that fair?

Venkat Vallabhaneni 11:22
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

Michael Waitze 11:24
Here’s the other thing after this entire career, right? It’s been amazing. Now you’re an investor, right? But you’ve built your own company. I’m curious, the first company that you built, I don’t remember exactly what the name was. But you said it was in the same space as you as sales and trading. So what was that? I’m really curious about this. The company is

Venkat Vallabhaneni 11:43
called Accutron. Right. And they we were catering to the CSA trading side of it, doing projects for them on the on the, on the trading desk, and working with different banks, and it’s a services company, but doing no projects on an annual basis are now setting up some of the trading application, stuff like that. But for the traders, right, that’s what we were doing.

Michael Waitze 12:07
And what made you decide to leave a job at a big company and turn into an entrepreneur because these are again, two completely different worlds. Yeah.

Venkat Vallabhaneni 12:16
Right. I think, you know, that’s probably ignorance is bliss. I guess? That’s my answer. Because they’re enough. You know, for whatever reason, right. From the beginning, I wanted to do my own my own company. Right, right. enterpreneurship has been there my mind. So at the same time, there was no structural learning for me, to be honest. Right. I was technologist and was sitting on a trading desk. But really, what? No cash flow management to the business planning other things, right. It was a lot it on the fly, you know, as I started the company and stuff like that, right? So I got into that in a once you have the one thing is, as the mindset of, you know, it’s already done, right? Once you once you start something we already done, but that means you’re already successful out there. Right? Once you have that mindset, things will happen. Right? He put the hard work and you do the right things and things will have right. That’s what happened for me many times, I’ve done three companies so far, three exits, all of them happen the same way, coming back to India, working in manufacturing company didn’t know anything, right? So I found a person that can work with me and you know, again, same mindset. So I think it’s very important to have that mindset of once we take up something, you will achieve it. I have the vital one.

Michael Waitze 13:38
I often say you can’t be half pregnant. Yes. Do you know what I mean? So once you’ve made that leap, you can’t like go back up to the cliff and go, I don’t think I’m jumping. Right? I’m just gonna hold on, I think you really have to commit to doing it. And I think that that’s part of being successful and businesses just kind of sustaining it longer than anybody else can and being persistent enough to keep going. When you look at the you know, India is such a vast and dynamic market. Right. And a lot of people that I talked to in the country told me that even if you go like 100 or 200 miles away, you’re talking about different food, different culture, different everything, right. As a as a venture capitalist, right? What is the thesis there for you?

Venkat Vallabhaneni 14:20
Right, so, you know, we are doing the second fund right now at Inflexor. The first one I’ll give a little background on on these funds. So after Bank of America, so I was I started investing in companies myself, right angels, Angel, an angel investor, right. But the problem we faced there is really finding good companies because

once the company’s reached certain level, they look for institutional support. And now for next round of funding and stuff like that. So I was not able to find good companies and then we decided to start a fun anyway, you know, and the two on technology, technology focus fun, right? apprehensive because in 2000, end of 2016, I think, and that the VC ecosystem was not as deep as today and technology itself. Now, there’s not a as many funds out there, right? So then we started with small fund about 20 million, right? So, and we put our own money, my own money, and some friends and couple of institutions joined us, and, and invested in oil companies. It was so much learning over the next three, four years. And we were pleasantly surprised by the depth we found in India in terms of technology, and how the system was evolving, right. So that’s a great note at the time, we were doing probably, or the stage companies max, maximum investment, we were doing a million dollars at the time. So okay, we invested in 12 companies. And so for every theory, all the companies are reasonably doing well. And then we started the second fund in, you know, two years ago, these are on $85 million range, depending on where you stand on the rupee at around 640 Crows. And the system has evolved so much that in this in this fun, we do no start with 400k to 1 million, if it’s a early stage, can go up to 3 million for the CCA and beyond. Right. Overall, we might take up to five to 6 million total investment, including the follow ons and stuff like that. Right. So that’s, that’s what we do. But as far as pieces is concerned, we focus on something we call the deep tech investment. Right. But deep Tech has different connotations, in my view, and depending on who you ask. So deep tech in the US is quite different from deep tech in India, because the reason I’m saying that is India itself is a developing nation and the economy’s you know, probably developing as well, right. Now, one of the US maybe the, you know, there is deep tech in the USA is r&d and focused, and there’s a lot of innovation that can come out of either research labs or somewhere, whereas India probably is not ready for that kind of innovation yet that that might happen in the future. What we focus on when we when we say deep tech is that technology from r&d that is ready to become mainstream technology or general purpose technology, right? That’s called let’s take let’s take internet, right internet was deep tech probably in mid 80s. Right then became an A GSG general purpose technologies in 2000s. Right? So we focus on those kinds of technologies in India that are becoming commercialized plays off as we speak, right? That’s what our focus is. On that itself, we look at two three dimensions. One is India, for India, where there is company, there are companies now innovating, on focusing on Indian market, then we look for the scale. I’ll give an example. Now, we invested in a company called atom Berg. They do energy efficient appliances, starting with fans, when they came to us, they were very small now they’re doing you know, probably 600 crores seven crores every year, which is 100 million. Right. So it’s 100 100 million bucks. So, and, and they they focus, they got IP, but their focus is Indian market, because we just got scale. Right. So that’s one aspect. Second aspect is India for global markets like India, for the US and UK were right. So where that’s where we focus on mostly, the problem is, you know, companies going global, with the right, Mindset and Marketing and sales plan, right. So that’s another sector, we look for the software as a service and things of that nature will fall into class. Right. The third one is truly deep tech. Nowhere. You know, we focus on companies early, very early in the game, where there’s a real game changer, right? For example, Patrick aerospace, right. That’s what we, we invested in the space company. They do satellite propulsion systems. This is Bellatrix. Yeah. electrics, great company, a lot of brainpower out there, right. So we find those kinds of companies and invest them in early stage, right? These three different dimensions we’ll look at pretty much. Yeah,

Michael Waitze 19:28
yeah. Can you talk so I’m interested in this as well, right. And I want to get back to some of these portfolio companies, because I do want to talk about companies that are changing the game and maybe even get a company like Bellatrix on the show to learn more about what that deep tech angle is because it’s fascinating to think about satellite propulsion being driven by water. Right. It’s just super interesting, right? Really interesting to me. What is the benefit for you? As a firm right, being a multistage investor, and I want to frame the question more properly, and that is so many funds say we just do it. early stage investing, I always feel like they’re missing out on their own ability to help the companies going forward. And you mentioned this in two in two places, right? You said, even as an angel investor, you can’t find great companies, because the really great ones want execution help as well. Right. So in a way, it means that not only does the companies need to have great teams, but the investors need to be great teams as well. Is that fair? Right. So it’s a give and take? Yeah,

Venkat Vallabhaneni 20:24
absolutely. I think that that the question you asked is more relevant in the ecosystem, in my view, because Indian companies is a great talent pool out there. But yeah, they need help. In the initial stages, right, especially the venture capitalists, or the investors need to become semi operators, right along with, along with the founders, in some cases, right. So I think that would be a great help to share your knowledge and experience with the younger generation and make sure that they are successful.

Michael Waitze 20:59
Yeah, but I also think that if you’re investing, I want to get these numbers, right, like 400,000 to a million dollars in early stage company, let’s say you, I’m just going to make up a number, right, because I know it’s the wrong number. But just because the math is easy. Let’s say you’re taking up 10. But let’s say you’re investing in 10% of the company. So you’re making a million at a $10 million valuation, just for simple math people can understand. If you don’t invest in the next round, you still think it’s a great company, and you’re actually helping on the execution side, you’re allowing yourself to be diluted, a lot of people don’t talk about this, right. So if you invest again, you at least maintain your holding amount, if not get even a little bit more. Right. But then you also have another incentive to then help even more. This is why I like multistage investment companies as opposed to your we just do seed. And that’s kind of the point that I want to make as well. Right? That’s important. Yeah,

Venkat Vallabhaneni 21:45
absolutely. So the way we look at it is right, when we invest in a company, we look at probably allocating 50 person capital for the follow ups, I say we have, we have now $85 million. Fun, right? In that, I would say 40 million would be allocated towards follow us. Right. So what that means is now we bet on the winners, right? That’s a that’s a that’s a way venture capital works anyway, right? Once we know, this company, which we know in 12 to 18 months, by the way, right? Once we know the company is winning, we need to maintain our our share, sometimes we would like to have super product, right? More, more actually. Right? So because as it is, it’s hard to find good companies, once you find the winners, you got to invest in them. Right. That’s that’s the way we work. And it’s a multi stage investment, as you rightly said, and we’ll continue to invest at least three, no first one, followed by at least two more investments, at least

Michael Waitze 22:42
right. So it’s funny that you say this, because one of the trading rules that I learned when I first started trading US government bonds was you always had to know before you went into a trade. This was one of the rules that my boss Tommy Judo Bach taught us. And he was like, before you get into a trade know where you want to get out on the upside. And know where you want to get out on the downside as well, like have a stoploss and have it be real and have it be like fixed because we don’t operate in the realm of hope.

Venkat Vallabhaneni 23:09
Absolutely. Right. So I don’t have top losses right now. They

Michael Waitze 23:12
don’t they don’t they just go like, Oh, it’s close, I’ll just let it I’m waiting a little bit longer. Normally, what that means is just more losses. But the other the flip side of that is let your winners run. Because if you’re winning, you already have money on the tip, just like let those winners run. And it’s the same thing. You’re saying we know what the winners are, it’s pretty easy to identify them quickly. And I like this idea of super pro rata. It’s really just going, I want more of this. I’ve already tasted it. It tastes delicious. I’m having more. Is that fair?

Venkat Vallabhaneni 23:41
Absolutely. So when we invest in very early stage, we try to get right now, at least in person, if not from our side, right? We don’t get that we try to get super pro rata in the next round the next round. So that way, at least we have 10 to 15% of the company as well. Yeah.

Michael Waitze 23:59
So if the VC or if the investor is almost like an execution partner at some level, and I love the way you smiled when you said it, because you’re like, money may be a commodity, but execution experience is definitely not a commodity. Right? You really need to know how to do this. Absolutely. But do you think founders themselves and you being a three time exited founder as well? Like are, what is it like if they’re not so open to that? Do you know what I mean? We’re like, Hey, I had the idea. I know what I’m doing or do you find it most founders are like, my ideas. Great. My ability to build a tech is good. I understand the marketplace. I’d love some help with X, whatever x is what’s been your experience?

Venkat Vallabhaneni 24:35
Like? That’s that? That’s a great question, actually. Right. So what happens is during once we start engaging the founder or company before we invest in the company takes around three to four months, right? Because, you know, the initial conversation to writing the check. Yeah, and during the time we spent a lot of time with the founders. And what happens is once the documentation is happening, post the term sheet didn’t know, acceptance, there’s a lot of work for the lawyers and all the stuff but we focus on business plan. And, and and then looking at the people and and working with the founders on a kind of help the need, right? So we kind of do a road map and say, Guys, what do you need, right? And then it’s a dialogue. And it’s a collaboration. And they got to be honest saying that this is the place we need help. And then we identified those gaps, and then put, you know, either condition subsequent, which is called CES, right? Saying that, hey, you need to hire these kind of people in the next one year, we can help you this way. Or technology, for example, a couple of instances where they got technology platform, but that is not scalable enough for in the future. We try to look I mean, we can help you here is the architecture you can look at next one year, you got to do that. That’s a CSV, put it and somebody last first last thing you want to do is become a problem right? Now you breathe on

Michael Waitze 25:57
getting in the way and breathing down people. Nobody wants.

Venkat Vallabhaneni 26:00
Nobody wants it. Right? Yeah. Like identify these gaps, work with them to help them how how we can get better, our punter capsules, right? That’s what we do. And generally, what happens is, after the lecture, we come in at pre series or early stage, by the time CEREC happens, you know what they do? Right at the time we let them go right? And then we our engagement levels go down? And then next, next, next round of investors come in, they take it all right, so so that period, initial period of 12 to 18 months is very focused on most of the time. And do

Michael Waitze 26:35
you find that your portfolio companies that actually become successful with whom you work well together, actually end up in reverse referring you as a team to other founders? Because they’ve had such a great experience?

Venkat Vallabhaneni 26:49
Yes, yes, absolutely. So probably no, we take pride in getting at least 20% of the opportunities from referrals from our own models, right. So that’s something we look at as a one of the channels for for our sourcing, right? Great, but very well for us.

Michael Waitze 27:05
Yeah, it’s just so interesting, right? Because so much of the technology ecosystem is sort of ecosystem marketers focused on, you know, talking about how founders who are successful, then invest in other successful founders, which is great, right, paying it forward, or whatever you want to call it. But I also think, differentiate being oneself in the VC market, it’s also relatively easy to do if you’re good at it, right? Because I think I was reading a statistic yesterday that something like 1100 new funds were founded in the last like three or four years, most of which will end up contributing nothing, right? So being again, being a great VC, in a way, it’s like being a great founder. It’s super harder than it looks, and easy to differentiate yourself. Do you feel like when you go to talk to founders that you haven’t met before? Do you feel like you have an edge because of all the background experience you have? And all the investing? You’ve already done?

Venkat Vallabhaneni 27:55
Right? For sure. So as you rightly said, though, I call myself as a startup, right? I mean, yeah, well, we are invested. We are a startup actually. And but you know, because we had an experience in running the companies, right? I’m an entrepreneur. And that kind of shows up, right, you get you cannot get out to people. They’ll figure it out. It’s a two way street. As much as we are looking for the for the right people, they look for the right partner. In our discussion, they figure out now how we can help that. And and in a couple of cases right now, they they we won over the large funds in the first one, right? Because they like what they like, what, what they saw, and what happens is more than telling, saying and publicizing that we could help this way. I think doing is the thing, right? Once you help them. And then word of mouth, as you rightly said, it kind of goes just small universe, and people talk and your reputation gets built up over the period of time. Just saying yourself, it’s not going to help. No, you got to show and prove yourself and help the companies to grow. Yeah,

Michael Waitze 29:02
I mean, look, I often say it’s not what you say that matters. It’s what you do that matters, because that’s where your reputation really manifests itself. As you get closer, and I’m just making this up in a way right. But as you consider raising a third fund, your first fund you said was small. I like how 20 million small but it is in the context of venture capital. Your second fund you said was what like 600 something or it’s around 85 depending on Yeah, exchange rates, but you made a really good point you were like we are smaller, but it also gives us more flexibility, I think, right? Do you want to be a billion dollar fund or do you still want to be like 100 to $20 million fund to have that flexibility, you know,

Venkat Vallabhaneni 29:39
so, we would like to play an early early stage multi stage investment, as you rightly said, Right, right. If it helps, right, I mean, if we are able to find companies would like to come in at day one, right, but doesn’t happen as often but we’d like to come in as early as possible and continue to invest in them. Right, they grow right at least three three rounds of Capital, not providing capital, right? That’s what we want to do. Right. But what we want to evolve into now, we would focus on technology. But we would also like to focus on cross border investments. That was today. Today, we are India focus one, then and we can do 25% For our purpose outside India. But, you know, we don’t have any presence in the US and, you know, and it’s hard to find good companies from from the US, right, are not there, it’s impossible. Yeah. So what we would like to do in the future is now would definitely grow in terms of size and corpus, that’s, that will happen, but we’d like to focus on cross border, some companies in the US, obviously, with some relevancy to India, where we can use some you know, intellectual capital from India and stuff like that, but we want to do the cross border across different countries and help the companies grow bigger, right today, India, Mark India, for India, India, for global endeavor global is a little smaller compared to India for India, want to make that switch? And then fun fund will grow? Right, based on the return to provide enough? You don’t provide it once you’re done. Right. So, it all depends on your success and performance. Right. But our goal is to focus on technology Go Global as a fun, just like our companies.

Michael Waitze 31:26
Yeah. I mean, I, my expectation was that the India for India is I mean, obviously very important. The India for global has been taking place for a couple of decades, right, with some pretty well known companies, not in the not in the VC space. Right? Aside, yeah, mostly on the services side, right. And we can we know what the names of those companies are, we don’t have to talk about them. But then this idea of the rest of the world into India, as well as and India, investing in the rest of the world is also fascinating, right? Because as you generate returns, then you can have impact globally as well. And that’s actually really interesting. I have one more thing for you before I let you go, Is it hard for you as a guy and probably as a team, right? That are your entrepreneurs yourselves? Do you sometimes feel the itch to say like, and I know, you feel like you are an entrepreneur still because you’re you treat your company like a startup? I get it. But there’s something a little bit different executional Lee right, from building a company with technology with many, many customers from scratch and scaling that from running a venture capital company. Is there an itch somewhere that says, I missed that feeling? You don’t I mean, of building something from scratch that you’ve you feel like it’s satisfied to the VC world?

Venkat Vallabhaneni 32:39
No, it does. But I’ll tell you one thing. I’ve done so many jobs, right, right, from Wall Street to work mill manufacturing and other things. Probably this is the best profession. I’ve been it right, I think, now the job every day, right? Because the main attraction here for me, if I’m running, running a company, my universe of learning is probably smaller. But in VC world, the learning happens so much continuous learning, whether me are in a human for the younger generation, I can by talking to them I can learn so much. Right? That’s one thing I love. Second thing is your experience. You can kind of share with the people and help them in a way that’s a second 1/3 one is financial benefit. For sure. I mean, if you do the right things, definitely good financial returns not only for you, but also the LPs and the network effect you can create is huge in which Capital One right so with these benefits, I think I found the right profession for myself for the rest of my life actually.

Michael Waitze 33:44
Yeah. That is the best way to end Venkat Vallabhaneni, Managing Partner at Inflexor Ventures. That was awesome. Thank you so much for doing that.

Venkat Vallabhaneni 33:52
Thank you, Mike. Appreciate it. Good to have good to be with you. Thank You.