Sujeet Kumar, co-founder of Udaan and a former head of operations at Flipkart is among India’s most successful entrepreneurs. Recently, while talking about the Indian startup ecosystem, identified a gap in the Indian market and came up with Udaan. Udaan was founded in 2016 and holds the record of becoming India’s fastest unicorn. Sujeet is a seasoned entrepreneur and investor. And in his recent interview with Bilal and Meghna in the episode of ‘WTF is Bangalore’ he revealed one thing that he wants to Improve In The Startup Ecosystem.
Sujeet Kumar Opens Up About Importance of Mentorship in Indian startup ecosystem
When asked about how the startup world can grow, specifically, Bangalore which has become the startup hub, Sujeet Kumar stated that although the Karnatak capital has grown a lot and is already a world-class ecosystem, one thing that can give it a further edge is formalising the mentorship. Right now the entrepreneurs have figured out most of the challenges that are faced by them specifically funding. Because now they have seed funds, Angel investors, and A series funding, and that helps them with the funding department . But what is lacking is mentorship.
Finding a good mentor is more of like having a stroke of good luck that you find the right person. Most of the people are giving their opinions based on their preferences without having proper knowledge of the subject and not mentoring correctly which is harming The startup environment.
He claims that if this mentorship problem is dealt with then it can strike up and boost the startup ecosystem.
Further, the host mentioned Sujeet’s investments in about 100 to 150 projects and jokingly as about what is the method to pull Sujeet’s money out, on this, Sujeet expressed that one should not invest just for the sake of investment but should have deep knowledge of the field that they are investing in And how impactful they can be and he gives the example of his investment in the Thirdwave and how he got involved with it, how they have scaled and both of them have learned about QSR and how we have learned about an explore explored some other sector then Tech.
Sujeet has a final suggestion, that one should not invest in tons of companies. Instead invest in a handful of them, around 5 to 10. And own more share, give more time to them, learn about the field, And be an important part of that journey. This is something that he has done with his investment technique as well in the past couple of years.
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