EP27: Venture & Angel investing, and Navigating through times of Uncertainty {Alok of Indifi}

Stars & Startups

EP27: {Alok Mittal, Co-founder & CEO of Indifi}

Entrepreneur turned Investor turned Entrepreneur Alok is on this episode of the Stars & Startups Podcast. Alok Mittal is an IIT Delhi graduate who you can say has become a fixture in the Indian startup ecosystem. Alok is currently the cofounder and CEO of Indifi, a debt financing platform for Indian SMEs. He’s also a prolific Angel investor and the founding Board member at the Indian Angel Network (IAN) that he helped set up in 2005 after his first startup JobsAhead was acquired by Monster.com in 2004.

Alok lead the Indian operations of VC firm Caanan Partners between 2006 - 2015. The assets of which were sold to JP Morgan.

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On the episode we chat about the JobsAhead journey, making it to venture investing, some of his learnings along the way and learning how to be an angel investor. Also, we discuss the pandemic and how Indifi is dealing with the situation and how startups should approach the momentary setbacks.

Memorable quotes from the episode:

“Consumers vote with their clicks”

“The disruptive effect of GST is yet to come!” GSTN would be transformative.

"Account Aggregators would change the game in the next many months"

Indifi is hiring for non sales/business roles, enablers & strategic partnership roles at the moment. Do check out their careers page.

Alok is also super approachable in case you need a supportive investor!

Stay Safe

- V {host is on Twitter @varunvummidi }

Timeline:

01:00 - Jobs Portals were the original Internet gold rush in India

03:50 - Jobs was what people wanted, relevant for Indians

05:17 - User generated content was restricted to job boards

06:30 - Moving on from a job to start an Internet business

09:00 - Joining Aricent & becoming an entrepreneur

11:25 - Raising Angel funding

13:42 - Selling to Monster

15:55 - Becoming an investor

19:30 - Investments at Caanan Partners

21:00 - Selling Caanan to an AMC

24:35 - Naaptol moving into TV Commerce

28:55 - Angel Investing

30:23 - 60 investments in 15 years

31:10 - Dealflow to make 4-6 investments a year

34:27 - Entrepreneurs he's enjoyed working with

36:44 - Advice to entrepreneurs in times of COVID

40:04 - COVIDs impact on Indifi

42:45 - Prepping the business to succeed through the pandemic

45:42 - Outlook on lending

47:10 - Resetting at Indifi

48:54 - Impact of GST in the lending business

50:05 - Taking advantage of the GSTN