Piyush Kharbanda | Entrepreneur India | Vertex Ventures Wants to Back Founders Building Good Companies Rather Than Chasing Valuation

Piyush KHARBANDA | 30 May 2023

*This column was first published by *Entrepreneur India

Our General Partner Piyush Kharbanda recently shares with Entrepreneur India that we are looking to support founders building solid companies rather than chasing valuation.

In his conversation, he shares about the four areas of investment that he finds appealing:

The first being consumer businesses. "We believe that the consumer market is very active. We've made a lot of investments in the consumer space. These can be marketplaces, brands, or companies that specialise in a certain industry, like BeepKart, which is addressing both the supply process and the customer experience when purchasing a used bike," according to Kharbanda.

The second sector he has been actively looking at is local B2B commerce companies. "Despite the fact that we have a fantastic company named Karkhana, we haven't done much in this space. Karkhana is developing a form of cloud-based manufacturing company that works with big manufacturers and connects them to smaller manufacturers, factories, etc. And building a tech layer in the middle to take care of a lot of complex processes," he continues.

The third sector, Healthcare, has also been a major area of focus for Vertex. "We have avoided primary healthcare, but we genuinely enjoy tertiary healthcare. We have invested in vertical specific programs, like Proactive for Her, in the area of women's wellness, covering specialities such as gynaecology and dermatology. They address topics that most hospitals cannot address in a very empathetic way. We also have a stake in Ayu Health, which offers excellent patient care and is establishing a brand for itself in the Tier 2 hospital network. As a result, they collaborate with already-established hospitals and improve their patients' experiences, focusing on core challenges like pricing, quality of care, and insurance process management," says Kharbanda.

The fourth industry FinTech, is a sector Vertex particularly enjoys. "There have been some great companies in fintech in the last 18 months, and I think some of the good companies have been very, very expensive in terms of valuations that have really run far ahead of performance. It's generally true in the market, but especially true in fintech, and in fact, fintech is one market, very interestingly, where the gap between a great company and a not-so-great company is very, very large. So the really good companies are really exceptional, and expensive. And then there isn't anything in the middle," he shares.