Domestic Funding To Step Up: Sanjay Nayar | NDTV Profit
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00:00 I'm joined here by Sanjay Nair of Soren Investments, also the Senior Vice President of the AsoCamp,
00:05 which is organizing this Startup Mahakam that we're seeing.
00:08 Thank you so much, Mr. Nair, for taking the time out.
00:10 We're at the sidelines of the Startup Mahakam.
00:14 There is chatter of India being the third largest.
00:17 It's been third largest for a while, the startup ecosystem.
00:20 When you see it actually sort of overtaking the other two, the top one and two, and becoming
00:26 the biggest?
00:27 I think if I just see the vibrancy in the halls today, and I think you'll acknowledge
00:31 that, this is not even the first day, first half of the day of the first day.
00:36 I think a big Mahakam like this really accelerates founders and funders, incubators, innovators
00:43 all come together.
00:46 And the kind of facilitation we are getting from the government for so many years, but
00:50 just in organizing this thing, it just tells you that there's an enthused and enthusiastic
00:56 ecosystem.
00:57 And I'm thrilled to see the way the private sector has jumped in.
01:04 I mean, having 900 or 1000 startups here, between booths and all just shows you what's
01:09 going on.
01:10 And I think if we can get a bit more local funding over time from local savings, Sidbee
01:18 continues to play a stellar role and keeps increasing.
01:22 Government remains, as I said, very enthusiastic, so hopefully extremely collaborative.
01:26 I think India can get to the number one startup ecosystem in the world in five years for sure,
01:31 the way it's going.
01:33 We have to obviously make sure that we adapt to some of the new stuff, AI, drones.
01:39 So there's some of the stuff that we have to do.
01:42 And again, the government is very focused on that.
01:45 They're doing a deep tech fund of funds.
01:47 So I think they're also forward looking.
01:49 The rest, we need to do as a private sector and we need to crowd ourselves in.
01:53 And I think this is a good attempt at doing it.
01:55 Just amazed at the energy that is here.
01:58 Super.
01:59 Mr. Nair, you've been a very keen watcher of the ecosystem for a very long period of
02:03 time.
02:04 You're ex-KKR, Sorin now.
02:07 What exactly is Sorin looking at in India in terms of trends?
02:10 Sorin, I think it's horizontal in terms of tech enabled companies.
02:16 Any sector, we are pretty agnostic about sectors.
02:21 Sorin is 165, 167 million dollar fund, 1340 odd crores, 90% Indian money to my point earlier,
02:29 10% foreign money from the KKR seniors.
02:32 But it is a fund where we want to be able to work with good quality founders.
02:38 Everyone does not have all the answers.
02:40 We've got to take risks.
02:41 But then we need to work with founders who are happy to collaborate and work with us
02:46 as mentors.
02:48 We can mentor them, ask us for help.
02:51 Big thing.
02:52 Founders have to ask for help and collaboration.
02:54 We would love to do that.
02:57 Valuation we will all have to be a little bit careful because traditionally people have
03:00 just wanted to grow into valuation.
03:02 I think valuation should be an outcome.
03:05 Yeah, so we're actually pretty focused.
03:07 Our first few deals have been FinTech, we've done a B2B.
03:13 Freed is there.
03:14 We've got to do it.
03:15 [Music]