E74: Ankur Bansal (Executive Director, BlackSoil Capital)

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Ankur Bansal is the Co-founder and Executive Director at BlackSoil Capital, a venture debt firm based in India.

He leads the execution efforts across our large corporate clients in strategic discussions, idea origination, M&A execution, investment thesis, and negotiations. Ankur is a CFA and a CA with a large network of venture capitalists, private equity investors, institutional investors, and investment bankers and has extensive investment banking experience with major banks such as JP Morgan, Citi, and JM Morgan Stanley.

In this episode we will cover:

1. Thoughts on current landscape within India (1:00)

2. Valuations, down rounds and how startups survive this tide? (6:17)

3. How long will the economic downturn last (11:25)

4. Why Ankur prefers startups that are “dhanda” type business (22:50)

5. Does timing really matter for a venture debt investor (29:40)

6. Are debt investors in India collaborative or competitive by nature? (32:14)

7. Could a founder have more than one debt investor on the cap table? (33:24)

8. Value add that debt investors bring to the table (36:53)

9. How did the Partners at BlackSoil decide the fund structure (44:19)

10. Which sectors are debt investors excited about (51:21)

11. Tidbit about the fund name - BlackSoil (1:04:01)