2. Recap of last 12 months
• Public markets killed some Private market
valuations (thank you Box, Square, Twitter,
Linkedin, Alibaba)
• Series B, C, D valuations affected
• Series A bar much higher (fewer deals)
• Flurry of angel and seed deals
• More copy-cats than innovations raised money
4. Current Environment
• Valuation correction and markdowns in larger companies
• Round-size shrinkage
• $100 Mn rounds in Series A / B stage will be history for a bit
• Pre-Series A & Series B extension rounds
• Strategics more active
• Many Angel / Seed funded businesses will get acq-hired
• Cash-flow and profitability
• Unit-Economics & Sustainable Growth
5. Enter the cockroach
• Lasted the dinosaur extinction millions of years ago
• Can live for six weeks without food
• Not choosy about what they eat
• Move fast and can hide during storms
• Adapt to environment / surroundings
• Lack glamour and do not look for limelight
• Can Fly when needed
6. The ixigo story
• Started in 2006, Bootstrapped, Launched 2007.
• All Indian investors say No despite 100k+ non-paid visitors in 6 months
• Lost a co-founder in late 2007
• Seed round in Feb 2008 from Singapore-based fund
• Series A deal fell through weeks before Lehmann Brothers did
• Survived the downturn with team’s, landlord’s & investors support
• Continued innovating & growing through difficult times
• Raised Series A in 2011, Series B in 2015
• 90% users non-paid, growing user-base 2x YoY and revenue 3x YoY
8. Money buys a company
time but not the ability to execute
growth but not product-market fit
revenue but not viable business model
traction but not real customer love
techies but not innovation
VPs & AVPs but not passion
schwag but not culture
13. Growth Hacking
(mix of art & science, intuition & data)
Creative engineers not Marketers
Story tellers not content writers
FB videos not TV
SEO not SEM
Killer Product & Content = #1 Growth Hack
Word of Mouth = #1 Marketing Channel
14. Learn to use PR & Media
(but don’t waste time reading competiton’s PR –
only track why people use their product)
19. Macro : India still rocks !
• In the next 15 years, India
will see more people come
online than any other
country in the world
• Smartphone penetration is
still at 20%
• Only 40 Mn transacting
users on e-commerce =>
10x upside in next 10 years
20. “The very best companies get built
in a down market”
Facebook, AirBnB, Uber, Tesla