Rajul Garg's guest appearances

Rajul Garg

1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast

Lifeselfmastery's podcast I Startups I Venture Capital

The Neon Show

The VCpreneur: Startups | Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Fundraising

Mohit Gulati

Utsav Somani

Anup Jain

Brij Bhasin

Vishesh Rajaram

Sasha Mirchandani

Leo Capital

Amit Gupta

Shruti Gandhi

Adith Podhar

Array Ventures

Shalini Prakash

Siddhartha Ahluwalia

Mark Kahn

Bhaskar Majumdar

OwlTail

In this episode, Rajul Garg, Founder &amp; Managing Partner @Leo Capital, joins our host Digjay, to talk about his experience of being an entrepreneur, an angel investor &amp; now a venture capitalist. He also talks about collaboration &amp; competition among VCs, importance of building a personal brand in venture capital, Founder-VC fit and why he thinks fundraising should be a core skillset for a founder today. Leo Capital is an early stage VC fund that makes tech investments into India, SEA and US companies. Some of their portfolio companies include the likes of Sheroes, BeatO, Edureka, Flixstock. Rajul was the founder of Pine Labs, the largest PoS payment company in India and GlobalLogic, a leader in outsourced product development – both of which are multi-billion dollar businesses today. Before starting Leo Capital, Rajul consulted with top tier venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital and Aavishkaar and was a sought after angel investor. He also founded Sunstone, an innovative technology-led business school. Rajul is an alum of IIT Delhi. You can reach out to him here on Linkedin / Twitter. ---- If you liked our episode, you can subscribe to our podcast on any of the major podcasting platforms like Spotify, Apple iTunes and Google Podcasts. Please leave us a review on Apple iTunes to help others discover this podcast. You can visit thevcpreneur.com and follow us on Twitter @thevcpreneur_ &amp; Instagram @thevcpreneur for more episodes and interesting insights on the startup ecosystem. You can also follow our host Digjay on Linkedin &amp; Twitter ---- Show notes – 1. (01:20) Rajul’s path leading upto venture capital – from being a 3x entrepreneur, to becoming an angel investor and now a VC 2. (03:05) Challenges faced when starting Leo Capital and raising external funds 3. (04:25) About Leo Capital – Thesis, Fund size &amp; sector focus; What differentiates Leo Capital vs other VC funds 4. (07:30) Choosing the right investor for your startup; Founder-VC fit 5. (11:55) Why fundraising is an important skillset for founders today? 6. (19:30) Dynamics among different VCs in the ecosystem – competition &amp; collaboration 7. (21:52) Importance of building an individual brand equity as a VC 8. (23:40) Rajul’s learnings as an entrepreneur building Pine Labs &amp; GlobalLogic 9. (27:00) How much equity should founders ideally retain at Seed stage? 10. (31:30) Rapid fire and closing remarks

In this episode, <a href="https://in.linkedin.com/in/rajulgarg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rajul Garg</a>, Founder &amp; Managing Partner @<a href="https://leo.capital/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Leo Capital</a>, joins our host <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/digjay-patel-cfa-685b9396/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Digjay</a>, to talk about his experience of being an entrepreneur, an angel investor &amp; now a venture capitalist. He also talks about collaboration &amp; competition among VCs, importance of building a personal brand in venture capital, Founder-VC fit and why he thinks fundraising should be a core skillset for a founder today. Leo Capital is an early stage VC fund that makes tech investments into India, SEA and US companies. Some of their portfolio companies include the likes of Sheroes, BeatO, Edureka, Flixstock. Rajul was the founder of Pine Labs, the largest PoS payment company in India and GlobalLogic, a leader in outsourced product development – both of which are multi-billion dollar businesses today. Before starting Leo Capital, Rajul consulted with top tier venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital and Aavishkaar and was a sought after angel investor. He also founded Sunstone, an innovative technology-led business school. Rajul is an alum of IIT Delhi. You can reach out to him here on <a href="https://in.linkedin.com/in/rajulgarg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Linkedin</a> / <a href="https://twitter.com/rajul_g" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Twitter</a>. ---- If you liked our episode, you can subscribe to our podcast on any of the major podcasting platforms like <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/3FVZHqU3kV8WeSGti1DdJd" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/the-vcpreneur/id1523227219" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Apple iTunes</a> and <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8yMjYwMDRiMC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Google Podcasts</a>. Please leave us a review on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/the-vcpreneur/id1523227219" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Apple iTunes</a> to help others discover this podcast. You can visit <a href="https://thevcpreneur.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">thevcpreneur.com</a> and follow us on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/thevcpreneur_" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@thevcpreneur</a>_ &amp; Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/thevcpreneur/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@thevcpreneur</a> for more episodes and interesting insights on the startup ecosystem. You can also follow our host Digjay on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/digjay-patel-cfa-685b9396/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Linkedin</a> &amp; <a href="https://twitter.com/digjaypatel?lang=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Twitter</a> ---- Show notes – 1. (01:20) Rajul’s path leading upto venture capital – from being a 3x entrepreneur, to becoming an angel investor and now a VC 2. (03:05) Challenges faced when starting Leo Capital and raising external funds 3. (04:25) About Leo Capital – Thesis, Fund size &amp; sector focus; What differentiates Leo Capital vs other VC funds 4. (07:30) Choosing the right investor for your startup; Founder-VC fit 5. (11:55) Why fundraising is an important skillset for founders today? 6. (19:30) Dynamics among different VCs in the ecosystem – competition &amp; collaboration 7. (21:52) Importance of building an individual brand equity as a VC 8. (23:40) Rajul’s learnings as an entrepreneur building Pine Labs &amp; GlobalLogic 9. (27:00) How much equity should founders ideally retain at Seed stage? 10. (31:30) Rapid fire and closing remarks

EP#18 Rajul Garg – Building a personal brand in venture capital, collaboration & competition among VCs & why fundraising is an important skillset for a founder

In this podcast, Rajul talks about what led him to build Pine Labs and Global Logic and his investment thesis behind Leo Capital.

In this podcast, Rajul talks about what led him to build Pine Labs and Global Logic and his investment thesis behind Leo Capital.

How does Leo Capital evaluate startups for funding with Rajul Garg

Rajul Garg is the Founder and Managing Partner of Leo Capital, a Pre-Series-A Venture Capital Fund. Rajul has been the founder of two Billion Dollar companies Global Logic and Pine Labs. Rajul is counted among the top 10 early stage investors from India. Some of notable quotes by Rajul from the podcast:1. On purpose in life ?"My view of life is to be more in the present. I like to think here in this moment how I can be most productive. So my main focus now is how we make this conversation most productive for the listeners. So in my ideal state I would like to blank myself from everything else and be fully here in this moment. I feel if I can achieve that in every moment, in every hour that would come closest to my purpose."2. I do think when you look at any success including the companies I founded there definitely an element of topicality in the time they happened. Lot of different things come together to make a big company. There were so many points in the journey where the two companies could have totally shut down. Lot of ducks have to line up to make a company successful.3. "The quality of people you assemble in the company is really really important."4. Every big success is death by thousand cuts, it not one big thing but a combination of small things.5. Out of the three things - Market, team and traction, Market is something you can’t just fight with at all. Team you can still work with, you can hire more people, chip and chop, thought it's still difficult. Market is very very hard to fight. If you find yourself in a market which is small, hard to penetrate or super competitive or timing wise wrong, that is the number one reason why things don't work out. Number 1 predictor of success for investment has been timing.Getting the timing right of why this make sense to do it today is a very difficult part from an investment perspective and you often get it wrong as an investor.6. The magical thing which leads to scale of 50-100x? "I think it’s Product Market Fit. Product Market fit is one of those non-deterministic problems. It’s like asking - How do I fall in love or How can I be happy. It is not a problem that you can solve with money. It goes back to the timing thing, Is the market ready for the product today ?"7. "For me what I seen over the years I tend to let the process take over instead of thinking too much about the outcomes. I get into action mode and do things which need to be done instead of thinking what will happen tomorrow."8. On strengths and weaknesses “Because I am so aspired to be in the moment I am a good tactical thinker. Given 3 options I quickly able to latch on to what to do now and move forward, sort of bury the past, keep going. I am able to quickly correct mistakes and navigate my way through complex problems step by step. At the same time I don’t think of myself as a big strategic thinker like how will the market evolve in 5 years or 10 years.”9. The only way you can really judge an investor is look at their portfolio. Everything else is just talk. I can talk endlessly but you have to look where I have put my money in. That defines me more than anything else.10.Philosophy I life by:"You can’t make your happiness conditional to everything else. You can’t generally say if I do this then I will be happy. Specially for entrepreneurs if you say if I raise the next funding then I will feel happy. I feel there is an intrinsic fallacy in this. Chances are if you are not happy today you will not be happy tomorrow either. So I think happiness is something which comes from within and has to run like a fabric parallel to every thing else. Find a way to be calm, joyous and happy today because its not contingent on your business success or any other success, find that place today work on everything else alongside."

Rajul Garg, Managing Partner, Leo Capital

Rajul Garg, Head of Investments at Leo Capital, discusses the Indian startup eco-system and his fund’s investment focus.

Rajul Garg, Head of Investments at Leo Capital, discusses the Indian startup eco-system and his fund’s investment focus.