Why Flipkart's Sachin Bansal is putting his weight behind Rahul Yadav's latest venture

Before they kicked off their chat at IIT Bombay on January 30, Flipkart's Sachin Bansal and Housing.com founder Rahul Yadav were greeted by an auditorium packed with students and professionals. The Bansals (in their personal capacity) have invested in Yadav's new venture, Intelligent Interfaces. While it's still unclear what specific problems Yadav's startup will focus on, Bansal seems to believe it will have a broad impact on business and society. Here are eight big takeaways from the talk.

Sachin Bansal

(Image: BCCL)
On domain knowledge

"Steve Jobs built the biggest tech company but he never even wrote a line of code. You will need to know your stuff eventually. You will have to work hard and have the knowledge."

On entrepreneurship

"The first thing I look at is, 'Is the entrepreneur going after really big problems, to the extent that it feels scary when they talk about it?' You wonder if the idea is possible. I have seen that a lot of times, people go after small problems and that's a sign that they are not confident."

On investors

"Sometimes, the only way out is to get money from someone who doesn't understand what you are doing. Those things don't work out. I give my voting rights to the founders. In case of Rahul's venture, he has my voting right shares."

On fundraising

"The rule of thumb is that when you raise funds, don't just raise them for six to eight months. It should be for at least 18 months, by which time, you should think of raising new funds. Plan like that but if you are unable to raise funds, you try to make your business stable."

Rahul Yadav


(Image: BCCL)

On his new venture

"The fundamental things in India are broken. I had an option either to leave the country or fix it. I am trying to fix it. If I am successful — good; if not, I leave."

On domain knowledge

"When we started in real estate, I had no idea about the brokerage charges. We had no idea there was a category called 'Builders'. I am sure all those people living in free hostels and in their parents' houses have no idea too."

On VCs vs tech investors

"VCs are confused. In India, most of the fund managers are not from the tech background, so they don't understand it. Now you will see a generation of investors like Sachin. And that will be the right era."

On equity dilution

"The young generation, if they get a Rs 1 cr cheque, they are content with 20-30 per cent equity. In India, people dilute 90-95 per cent of the company unlike the US, where entrepreneurs still control 30 per cent of the company and you have a say for two or five years."