Fab story Ashish. At the peak of Snapdeal valuations when it was talked alongside FK and Amazon I used to wonder how come I never saw any SD delivery guy or their cartons in any offices/homes I visited or in my hsg soc (Bombay). Whereas Amazon/FK or even Paytm's boxes, which was a new entrant at the time, were pretty common in our society's daily waste pickup. It doesn't take much to compute or atleast have a strong educated suspicion that there is massive cooking of books going on. Yet they went on to raise Series A, B,C,D...God knows the Queen's alphabet where it ended. The most surprising thing in such episodes is, how come that which is apparent to any layman is not sniffed by storied VCs who keep doling out 20 mil here and 50 mil USD there like throwing peanuts. Don't they do background checks, dealer enquiries, customer blind checks... any kind of due diligence? Is it just all based off of the pitch deck in a boardroom? Now that would be a story I'd love to read. Going back to VCs of some of these cooked enterprises and trying to piece out their decision making process.
I mention this only because it hurts to see convicted criminals getting a second opportunity sucking up $, ET/TOI/#DigitalIndia/#StartupIndia award manels, print coverage and airwaves (has he given a TEDx yet?). Whereas in real world, it's damn difficult to even get in front of investors. I should know I'm in the midst of raising a piddly < 0.5 cr *INR* ($70K) for a solid agri-tech opportunity (upto 80% proven water savings over traditional methods, 100% avoidance of insecticides/pesticides). I want to meet some investors like this man. I'm not even joking. Can't hurt to be a tad bashful, can it?
Suhail Kazi
Entrepreneur, Entrepreneur
