'It is Okay for Founders to Go Slow'

Founders often take shortcuts for fast growth and higher valuation, sometimes by mistake and sometimes driven by greed and pressure, Sanjeev Bikhchandani, co-founder and executive vice chairman of Info Edge, a pure play internet company, tells Mahima Sinha and Neeraj Thakur.

As an experienced investor, has there been any shift in your thinking over the past few years on the types of founders you choose to invest in?

There have been many learnings we have had at Info Edge in terms of investing. First of all, it is the entrepreneurs and the founding team that make the company succeed, and not the investors, as they are present 24x7 unlike the investors and, at the end of the day, it is their idea, their execution. Therefore, it is important for investors to recognise such founders who are going to succeed anyway and support their work.

However, it is clear to us, after 14 years of investing in Zomato and 16 in Policy Bazaar, that the companies would have succeeded anyway, with or without us. We first invested in Zomato in 2010 and the kind of returns we have got in the past four to five years are huge. It has set an example.

Therefore, the team and business selection are critical. Over the years, we have understood that it is not that investors do not make any difference, but the bigger part is played by the founders. There have been several founders who just could not succeed, no matter what you do for them 
as investors. 

How do you ensure that a portfolio company will do good? What is the investor’s course of action when the companies do not perform well?

Being an investor, especially like ours, which comes at the early stage, sometimes even at the pre-revenue stage, it is hard to identify a red flag in the company’s operations. Of course, we assess the founder’s background when we take a leap of faith by believing in the founder’s business idea.