E73: Sunil Goyal (Founder & Managing Director, YourNest)

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Sunil Goyal is the Founder and Managing Director of YourNest, a deep tech and enterprise focused fund in India. Before becoming a full-time, early-stage investor and fund manager, he had gained comprehensive experience of leading complex projects in the areas of M&A, business turnarounds and strategic partnerships. He has spent over two decades working at CXO levels at Bharti group and Dabur.

As one of the country’s early angel investors, Sunil has led seed-stage investments and guided companies to successful exits: his investments which reaped healthy returns include ZipDial (9.6x acquired by Twitter), VuClip (4.4x acquired by PCCW) and Mobiquest (1.8x acquired by PayTM). A former member of The Indian Angel Network and Mumbai Angels, Sunil discovered an acumen for spotting high-potential startups and eventually chose to set up YourNest Venture Capital.

In this episode we will cover:

  1. How does Sunil define deep tech (3:05)

  2. Why did Sunil take a bet on deep tech and enterprise when very people did back in 2011? (6:10)

  3. Why was early stage investing a big boys game in India back in 2011 (13:52)

  4. How do you track progress in deep tech and continue to support a company’s growth (21:40)

  5. Tracking progress in deep tech against the competition (25:54)

  6. Best time to fundraise for a deep tech startup in India (29:21)

  7. The importance of bringing on the right set of investors for a deep tech startup (34:28)

  8. Advice to young first time deep tech founders (38:19)

  9. The role an early-stage VC plays in building portfolios to reach later-stage (42:50)

  10. How do we enable more investors to enter the deep tech investing world (45:08)

  11. The role of the Indian govt in propelling the deep tech ecosystem (48:57)

Akash