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Business News/ Companies / News/  Venture capital firms hire experts to handle, strengthen start-up investments
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Venture capital firms hire experts to handle, strengthen start-up investments

VC firms are recruiting for themselves people with expertise in operations, marketing, hiring and other functions

Recent notable hires of this type include SAIF’s appointment of Alok Goel, a former senior executive at bus ticketing website redBus and mobile recharge service FreeCharge. Photo: Premium
Recent notable hires of this type include SAIF’s appointment of Alok Goel, a former senior executive at bus ticketing website redBus and mobile recharge service FreeCharge. Photo:

New Delhi: Venture capital (VC) firms such as Sequoia Capital India Advisors, SAIF Partners, Kalaari Capital, Helion Ventures and Accel Partners are strengthening the teams of early-stage start-ups in which they have invested by recruiting for themselves people with expertise in operations, marketing, hiring and other functions.

Some of them have been hiring such so-called operating partners for nearly a decade now, although their roles were largely restricted to heading the human resources and finance functions. Now, they are also hiring people with expertise in technology, operations and marketing.

Recent notable hires of this type include SAIF’s appointment of Alok Goel, a former senior executive at bus ticketing website redBus and mobile recharge service FreeCharge; and Sequoia’s hiring of Nipun Mehra, who worked at e-commerce marketplaces Flipkart and Amazon.com, as part of the investment team and Atit Mehta, who was a senior executive at packaged consumer goods firm Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL).

SAIF is also in talks to hire a product manager from Silicon Valley to advise the firm’s portfolio companies in product development.

“We are looking to hire a senior executive with technical expertise in user Interface and user interaction design to help companies operating in the mobile and online commerce space," said Mukul Singhal, principal at SAIF Partners. “In India growth in start-ups is generally compressed and expectations from them are higher. Though entrepreneurs are highly skilled these days, the teams could still lack certain skill sets. You need to help them shorten the learning curve."

Helion, too, is looking to add more operating partners in domains beyond technology and finance, said Ashish Gupta, senior managing director.

“Companies are scaling more quickly and there is less time to converge on the correct solution. Operating partners help bring knowledge that allows getting to the correct solution," Gupta said.

Sequoia Capital, one of the most aggressive investors in early-stage companies in the country, has created a team of domain experts who are collectively called “Portfolio Services Team". This team is available to the fund’s portfolio companies “on demand", the venture capital firm said in an email.

The team includes Mehta, the former HUL executive; Anirudh Mullick, who heads recruitment at Sequoia; and Raman Garg, vice-president, portfolio finance.

“We want our (portfolio company) founders to look back and say partnering with Sequoia was one of the best business decisions they ever made," said Mohit Bhatnagar, managing director, Sequoia Capital India. “So whether its organizing hackathons, bringing in 10x impact new hires, thinking through a brand strategy… team Sequoia are doing their bit to help our portfolio companies win."

Early stage start-ups usually struggle to attract good partners and employees.

“One of the biggest challenges that young founders face after raising funding is building a stellar team across functions such as marketing, product, operations, finance, etc," said Tarun Davda, director at venture capital firm Matrix Partners.

“Discovering, evaluating and attracting top talent is becoming increasingly difficult. As early-stage investors, we view ourselves as a founder service firm and believe that the best value we can provide to our portfolio companies is to assist them in building their core team by tapping into our network."

Revant Bhate, co-founder at food delivery start-up Faasos Food Services Pvt. Ltd, agrees.

“Getting the top lawyers, bankers or hiring senior executives is difficult for companies with no revenue or unproven business models. But when it is the investor making the introductions or sitting on the negotiation table with the company, it becomes simpler," he said.

According to Bhate, Sequoia helped Faasos sign-up one of the top three media agencies in the country and set up a strong finance and diligence team.

Several other Sequoia-funded start-ups that Mint spoke with said the VC firm has helped them in their brand campaigns, negotiate better prices with media buyers, and spend ad money more wisely.

Sequoia and Matrix have also built co-working spaces to help start-ups even outside of their portfolio.

Even some older start-ups tap their investors for advice and at times, for filling urgent openings.

“When we started out and did not have enough cash to hire senior executives, it was SAIF’s team that used to help us with business reviews, legal advice and even hiring," said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder, Paytm, a mobile marketplace and a payments company. “I admit it quite openly that Vivek Mathur of SAIF Partners is our acting CFO (chief financial officer)."

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Published: 31 Jul 2015, 12:19 AM IST
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