1/ Today we are excited to announce the launch of Pathfinders,
@Sequoia_India
's platform to connect portfolio companies who have ambitions to compete in global markets with the very best operators to give these companies a leg up
Grateful to the
@Sequoia_India
team for taking a chance on a Valley-returned PM with no investing experience and letting me learn and grow. And to our founders who have trusted me to partner in their ambitions. I couldn’t be more excited for what’s to come!
16m users, 28 cities and just getting started! Congrats
@apnahq
on going from idea to unicorn so quickly! We
@Sequoia_India
have had the privilege to be their first partners from the idea stage.
Here are some learnings on what helped them scale (1/5)
Congrats
@bharatpeindia
on the milestone! A nice reminder that it doesn't matter how crowded your market is or how well funded your competition is- customer obsession, innovation & relentless execution are enough. Proud partners from Day 1!
@Sequoia_India
This is such a special milestone. Very proud of the
@bharatpeindia
team and Board for navigating several challenges to reaffirm our shared belief from the seed that BharatPe can be a large, profitable business benefitting millions of small merchants in India
@peakxvpartners
(1/4)
We
@Sequoia_India
are deeply committed to India and SE Asia. Very grateful for the trust from our LPs and for the opportunity to continue partnering with exceptional founders who are changing our region and world
1/ Today, we are announcing that Sequoia India & Sequoia Southeast Asia have collectively raised $2.85B across a new set of funds, including India venture, growth funds and an $850M SEA fund - our first dedicated fund for the region.
Spectacular session by
@RajanAnandan
on sales at
#saasboomi
. One nugget for early teams: Revenue growth is not only a sales problem. Sales is at the tip of the spear. The first step to acceleration is to understand where in the org the constraint lies.
@Sequoia_India
"Big things come in smallcases": Nice feature on
@smallcaseHQ
by
@aveekdatta03
in
@FortuneIndia
on the team's very promising journey in building a low-cost, transparent, digital first equity investment instrument with tons of user love!
@Sequoia_India
Thrilled to partner with the
@smallcaseHQ
team as they build innovative, cost effective, easy to understand ways for India to invest in equities empowering investors, brokers and advisors. Onwards! 🚀
@Sequoia_India
Congratulations to team
@bharatpeindia
@ashneergrover
and welcome to the 🚀Coatue! Couldn't be more excited for what BharatPe is building to financially empower small merchants in India
@Sequoia_India
The coming decade will be transformational for the Indian startup ecosystem: more world class companies, profits and exits. Grateful for the trust from our LPs to continue partnering with daring founders shaping our region
We are deeply grateful to Sequoia’s LPs, who have committed $1.35B to two new Sequoia India venture and growth funds. The region’s
#startup
ecosystem is at a fork in the road. We believe there is an opportunity to make different choices for the future.
The journey of building an enduring fintech company involves successfully developing both fin services and tech muscles. Few have invested in the former as meticulously as
@bharatpeindia
. Excited to welcome Rajnish Kumar to the board & learn from his immense experience at
#SBI
!
Congrats to team
@apnahq
on their Series B!
Providing access to meaningful employment to all Indians is one of our biggest challenges. Very proud of what the team has achieved in 16 months of launch scaling to 10m users facilitating 15m job interviews a month!
@Sequoia_India
Apna, an app startup that helps India’s blue-collar workers find jobs, has raised $70 million from Tiger Global and Insight Partners at a valuation of $570 million
Thrilled to have led the Series A and now Series B in
@helloturtlemint
. Been a great ride these past 2.5 years seeing the company scale 50x+ as Dhirendra and
@aprabhud
rapidly change how insurance is sold in India. Onwards!
@gvravishankar
@Sequoia_India
Nice to see
@SarvamAI
launch its first open source model. Over the last few days, many folks have asked about the opportunity for Indic language LLMs. This blog and model give a peek into what is needed to enable large scale deployment of AI in India
Massive opportunity in all areas of financial services - great presentation on the dual axes of innovation and scale for India fintech by
@dvbydt
at
#FintechFronters
today
@Sequoia_India
Mumbai is the OG city of entrepreneurship in India and it’s amazing to see all the energy at
#MTW2024
to bring back more of this spirit of entrepreneurship to the city. As a Bombay boy, this effort is close to my heart
@mumbai_tech_
@peakxvpartners
Excited to partner with
@SarvamAI
from Day 1 co-leading the seed.
@vivek_raghavan
's experience building for population scale at Aadhaar combined with
@pratykumar
's expertise founding AI4bharat makes them a special team to bring the power of AI to millions
Calling AI founders and builders! Join us in Bangalore on Jan 5 for a conversation and mixer with
@snsf
who leads ChatGPT and the developer platform at
@OpenAI
. Register here:
@aaditya
@peakxvpartners
Skillmatics, an Indian toys & games start-up started exporting with Amazon Global Selling in 2019. They've already crossed 3 million units in global sales & are now launching across large retail stores in the US.
Read about their incredible journey here:
@SmallcaseHQ
is growing exponentially.
It is going to suck a lot of investors out of Mutual funds and PMS especially from those where performance and high costs have not been justified
This is the new way of investing!
Great fun talking about my older craft, product, and driving acquisition, retention and monetization. Thanks for inviting me,
@cnha
!
#UnPluggd
@Sequoia_India
The magic that happens when capability, phenomenal execution and a large emerging market come together. Congratulations to
@bharatpeindia
team! Thrilled to have had a ringside view since Day 1.
@ashneergrover
@Sequoia_India
Learned so many new things in this 45 minute chat about the state and velocity of the India + SEA internet economy in addition to leadership lessons from the trenches. Can't wait to have
@RajanAnandan
on our team
@Sequoia_India
It’s very important to keep tracking your user personae. In the early stages it might seem trivial. But you’ll soon realize that you’re filling the gaps in your understanding every time you do this exercise. It drives more clarity.
@HarshjitSethi
India SaaS is on🔥and we’re bringing the community together to discuss all things product! Announcing the next edition of
#SaaSBOOMiBuild
!
If you’re a SaaS founder or product/eng leader we’d love to see you there!
REGISTER:
"No matter how a business outlines its action plan, it’s best to identify the metric that would matter most in each phase, as well as a counter metric that will help ensure sustainable success."
@HarshjitSethi
talks about the importance of metrics in building businesses.
apna's latest round is a significant milestone early in its journey. But the team is just getting started on their ambitious plans! We've shared the journey so far from our lens -- why we invested and what early founders can learn from them here:
FinTech Players enabling Digital Payments at grassroots level: BharatPe has launched payment solution 4 merchants thru interoperable UPI QR codes. No equipment needed. All on app! Mosambee has launched multi utility POS machine “SamosaPOS” for ₹99 for small merchants. Amazing!
Our goal
@Sequoia_India
is to be the first institutional investor in your company partnering with you from idea to IPO. It's never too early to talk to us.
Excited to chart our new path with lots of gratitude to
@sequoia
for the many years of partnership, and to our founders and LPs who enable us to do what we love doing. Couldn't be more optimistic about what's ahead for our team and ecosystem!
#ItsDay1
.
@Nirmit_Parikh
and the
@apnahq
team are solving one of the biggest challenges in India today, reimagining opportunity access and upskilling for 250m+ Indians. Excited to be partners with them from day 1.
@Sequoia_India
#1
: Independent thinking meets consumer insights: Pre-PMF we see founders either focus too much on user feedback or on their own intuition.
@Nirmit_Parikh
quickly struck a balance between these two, rapidly iterating in the first few months to find PMF (2/5)
#SaaSBOOMiBuild
is back from tomorrow and we have an amazing lineup of founders & practitioners covering enterprise SaaS, building winning teams & product led growth.
To all founders working tirelessly to make us a
#ProductNation
, we'd love to see you!
#3
Storytelling inspires action: In a company's early days, skeptics will tell you why it won't work and in apna's case there were MANY! Nirmit's ability to authentically tell the story of apna and paint a vision has turned skeptics into believers every step of the way (4/5)
#2
Clarity powers speed of execution: When there is clarity and confidence in the early design choices (product, business, hiring), it empowers the org to execute with speed and rhythm. The design choices of apna have stayed consistent allowing them to move incredibly fast (3/5)
We are thrilled to welcome renowned testing industry veteran
@sandeepjohri
, as he joins the board of LambdaTest.🤩
He will play a pivotal role in LambdaTest's next phase of growth and expansion by being our mentor& guide.
Welcome onboard! 🚀
Read more-
Great conversations on attracting, retaining and reskilling talent this evening organized by
@BelongCo
- key priority for all organizations from startups to MNCs
@vijaysw
While many doubted the future of the company, it takes a special team with courage and conviction to ignore the noise and focus on relentless execution. Kudos to Rajnish ji, Nalin,
@NakraniShashvat
,
@sumeetsingh29
, Aparna, Pankaj, Sandeep and the entire team (2/4)
We first backed
@Nirmit_Parikh
pre-launch at the seed stage convinced that grey- and blue-collar recruiting in India was a large but very broken market and needed a new approach to level the playing field. We are excited to continue deepening our partnership.
Perhaps most satisfying of is the impact the company is having on millions of small merchants across India to enable their businesses having facilitated loans of over 12,400cr
#HaiYakeenBharatPe
(4/4)
4/ Our Pathfinders include
@kahlon
(CPO at UiPath),
@theamitaks
(President at Palo Alto Networks),
@myprasanna
(Co-founder of Rippling), Oliver Jay (former CRO at Asana),
@pratyus
(serial founder, Snr Dir Eng at Okta) &
@sandeepjohri
(former CEO at Tricentis) amongst many others
In the past 2 years, BharatPe has scaled revenues to triple digit million, achieved EBITDA profitability, secured key licenses from RBI, added strong talent to the team and board including distinguished individuals such as Mr Dutta & Mr Kanungo, ex Dpy Governor of the RBI (3/4)
When asked about AI applications in the enterprise we are excited about,
@enterpret_ai
is one of the first that comes to mind. Why? Because they are reimagining a category (experience mgmt) first principles using AI. Congrats on the award!
@peakxvpartners
@varunconfirms
@arnavshr
2/ Pathfinders's genesis was the many conversations with our companies that centred around: A/ I need help hiring in a new geo like the US, B/ I need help getting lighthouse customers in these geos and C/ I need help with design choices in areas like sales, marketing and product
5/ A year+ in beta, we feel we have found "PMF" onboarding 25 Pathfinders who have partnered with 6 of our companies. We are now scaling up the program, opening it to all portfolio companies and onboarding more pathfinders. Lots more to come -- we are just getting started!
3/ Pathfinders leverages the global network of Sequoia built over the last 5 decades to connect companies with these exceptional individuals who are amongst the very best in what they do and are keen to help the next generation of companies