Dear Friends,
Like many across the world, I have spent the last few weeks worrying about Covid-19 and its implications. We all have stories. In my case, it is worrying about my girls, how one of them is faring with the lockdown in San Francisco, whether we will be able to attend the graduation ceremony of the other and when will be able to connect again and be together as a family?
Our entrepreneurs, too, are facing unprecedented challenges with circumstances that were never part of the worst-case scenario planning. They are the front line warriors trying for business continuity amidst disappearing revenue, scarce funding sources, and employee responsibilities.
Covid-19 is causing not just economic impact but also human impact. So, each of us, first as human beings and then as leaders need to think about our choices and actions. There is no doubt there are implications to each of us, our families, our communities, our employees and our customers. How can we support each other, stay strong for each other and survive for each other?
At Kalaari, we want to actively support each of our entrepreneurs to manage this crisis and create a stronger future. Read More
Regards,
Vani Kola
Managing Director
Kalaari Capital
Stay informed on Covid-19
- McKinsey's perspective on what business leaders can do in light of Corona: Read here
- Live tracker & information from Center for Systems Science and Engineering: Link here
A Masterclass in Crisis Communication
 In times of crisis, leaders need to guide and coalesce people through deep conviction towards strong outcomes. This is as true for leaders of companies as it is to leaders of nations. Vani's thoughts and reflections on Narendra Modi's recent speech. Read more
A Call for Women Pathmakers
 All it takes is one leader to inspire and illuminate a path for others to follow. As a topic that they have been talking about all their lives, Vani Kola (Kalaari) and Kirthiga Reddy (Softbank) shared their perspectives and also called on other women leaders to weigh in. Read more
Harsh Jain reveals Dream11's Playbook for Success
 What does it take to build a loyal community of 50 million users, scale-up the business to a billion dollars and define a new category? It's grit, passion, focus and much more. Watch it here
What Leadership means to me
 What is leadership? Such a simple question and yet one that people continue to ponder upon to capture its elusive nuances. Here are Vani's thoughts on what leadership really means to her. Read more
New Investments
 Wysh is a two-way celebrity engagement platform, where fans can get or gift personalised video messages from their favorite celebrities. Wysh raised $2M, as part of its series-A round led by Kalaari. Read more
Recent Fundraise by Portfolio Companies
 Curefit is a health and wellness platform that offers experiences across Fitness (Cultfit), Nutrition (Eatfit), Mental wellness (Mindfit), Primary care (Carefit), and Apparel (Gear). Focus on delivering superior customer satisfaction has led to a strong NPS brand with a revenue growth of 2.5x in the last 12 months. The company recently raised $110M Series D round from Temasek, Accel Partners, Ascent Private Equity, and others. Read More
 Vogo is a self-drive scooter rental company that provides customers the ability to pick up and drop scooters anywhere in the city. In the last 12 months, Vogo has grown 7x on rides and 10x on revenues. The company raised a $28M Series C round led by LGT Lightstone Aspada. Read more
Portfolio News
Watch Mukesh Bansal talk about the art & science of high performance
How CureFit is building an end-to-end healthcare ecosystem for Indians
How Simplilearn follows the 80/20 rule in engineering to enhance user engagement
Instamojo acquires Times Internet’s GetMeAShop to serve more SMBs in India
How knowledge-sharing platform Vokal is partnering with brands to make money
Milkbasket bets on private labels, expects 40% increase in revenue by year-end
How video security startup Indee landed 21st Century Fox as a client
Curated Podcasts - what we are listening to
 At Kalaari, we like absorbing information and distilling insights across different form factors - be it books or podcasts. Here is a curated list of podcasts that we enjoyed listening to:
1) Capitalmind Podcast: India's Financial Infrastructure
2) Feeding 10 Billion: Serving up the Future
3) The Knowledge Project: Josh Wolfe
Here is the entire list
Book recommendations By Vani Kola: I have known Mukesh Bansal for over a decade, but I got to know him anew through his recent book “No Limits” which covers topics like myths about talent code and how to discover and unleash one’s full potential. The book distills Mukesh's finding's on deliberate practice, mindset, habit, willpower and learning. It also covers topics like myths about talent code and how to discover and unleash one’s full potential. My key takeaway from the book is about how talent isn’t something people are just born with. It is mainly a function of training and circumstances. One may not be able to become world-class in everything but people can train to become significantly better in many aspects of their life.
The book breaks many myths and provides a blueprint for anyone who wishes to achieve greater things in any aspect of their life. I would highly recommend this book to every entrepreneur and anyone interested in unlocking their true potential. Read the article
 By Tushar Behl: Nobel laureates Banerjee and Duflo answer some of the most relevant questions of our time, such as immigration, trade, climate change and income inequality, with simple evidence, congruent logic and common sense.
My favorite aspect of the book is how they reframe the role of economics by building conclusions bottoms up, relying heavily on evidence from Randomized Control Trials (RCTs), a process they have unparalleled mastery on.
By the end of this book, I found myself revisiting not only some underlying assumptions in my world view, but also how I design the process of discovering new opportunities!
Meet the Team
 Rajesh Raju is the Managing Director at Kalaari. He returned from the US in 2006, drawn by the immense India opportunity that was just emerging and has been a part of the startup ecosystem ever since.
Rajesh likes playing the long game in VC and believes that to succeed entrepreneurs should always put the growth and well-being of the company ahead of themselves. A great entrepreneurial spirit, strong leadership, and the ability to constantly sell to both customers and other stakeholders, are the skills that he looks out for.
He serves on the boards of many companies and some of his investments include ElasticRun, Simplilearn, Shopalyst, MedPlus and MoneyOnClick. He has an MBA (Hons) from the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago. Rajesh is passionate about making a difference for the underserved through his charitable work; he is also an ardent golfer. Connect with him
 Avinash Ramanathan is a Fellow at Kalaari. A voracious reader with an eclectic set of interests such as neuropsychology, ancient and medieval history, incentives, asymmetry; you will also often find him rereading Charlie Munger’s biography - Poor Charlie’s Almanack. He is also a novice biohacker, trying out various DIY experiments on his sleep, diet and exercise.
Prior to Kalaari, Avinash was a data scientist at Mu Sigma and graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering from SSN College of Engineering, Chennai. Outside of work, he is always up for a game of tennis.
At Kalaari, Avinash looks at Enterprise Software/SaaS and Healthcare verticals and is also interested in deep tech. He loves to work with our entrepreneurs in tuning their product strategy, finding next set of growth investors and help them go to the next level. Connect with him
 Chirag Gandhi is a Fellow at Kalaari. He is a staunch supporter of Real Madrid, data, compounding, and behaviorism, in that order. He graduated from IIT Bombay and went on to work at Credit Suisse as a Private Equity Risk Analyst. Driven by a desire to work for the community, Chirag has twice worked with offices of Members of Parliament. His love for sharing ideas with others motivated him to take the stage at TEDxIIITBangalore, and Digital Global Leadership Summit.
At Kalaari, Chirag looks at opportunities in Financial Services and New-age Commerce models. He is excited by how these sectors supercharge our economies and improve lives in every strata of the society. He is always up to lend a hand to founders on their financial & growth strategy, branding, and developing market intelligence for creating strong differentiation.
When not at work, you can find him in a Cultfit dance fitness class, Starbucks, or playing Bullet Chess. Connect with him
|
|
|
|
|
|
