From Founder to Venture Partner
I consider myself a Founder at heart. But here I am, in my new avatar as Venture Partner at Axilor. A transition I never thought I will make.
Two years ago, I moved out of the startup that I started with a lot of passion and belief. I thought I’ll do it for the rest of my life. So with the exit, came a sense of loss of purpose and direction. Calling it an end of career was a choice that I seriously considered. It was clear that I can never go back to the life of a corporate job. I never worked for money before, and I wasn’t going to start now.
Starting out again was also not a straight forward answer. My asks from life were different. I had to feel so strongly about an idea that I should be able to commit next many years of my life to it. I learnt at the most rapid pace ever while doing a startup and I wanted to continue learning at that pace. And last but not the least, I wanted to continue to work on something that would have a positive impact on the world around me. And I saw nothing that gave me all of these: excitement, learning and purpose.
So when VG from Axilor asked me if I will join Axilor as an EIR and help them detail out a model of supporting deep science, high impact startups that their board had laid out the vision for. It sounded like a good way of immersing myself in interesting, impactful ideas. Prachi and I set out to do our research and over the next 3 months, we spoke to 50 researchers, entrepreneurs and academics , studied more than fifteen hundred patents filed by academic institutes and startups, and looked at hundred of deep-tech ideas from our country. Except a few and far between successes, the research largely remained confined to labs. The chasm between India’s research talent and venture funding was wide. The expectations from both sides were incompatible. If we wanted to fund ideas at proof-of-science stage, it was clear that the traditional venture funding model had to be rethought.
Internally, we sharpened the focus on the areas we want to make impact in, strengths and partnerships we can bring in to create unfair advantage for such startups, and economic models that allows us to support such ventures reach investable stage of growth. The idea of Axilor Lab shaped up. We got the support of the Board shortly after and when I was given an opportunity to join Axilor full-time to head Axilor Lab, the answer was clear. It had all three elements I was looking for. I had devoted nearly all my career to creating opportunities out of new-to-world ideas and enjoyed doing that above all else. Impact on human life and wellness was central to the ideas supported by Axilor Lab. And I saw this as an opportunity where not only I will be responsible for creating business from new ideas, I will also have to learn to do it at scale.
We are curating these startups at Axilor Lab together with the innovators we support. We own responsibilities and results together with them. I see myself as someone who is fortunate enough to be in a place to pursue and build many ideas at the same time. It is unconventional, but so has been my career choices always.
