Taking the Legacy of Venture Capital Forward : #4 Things the Pai Brothers Kept in Mind 3one4 Capital is currently engaged in the early stage of the spectrum, with a bias towards companies exploiting technology to create, grow, or dominate large markets in India.
By Sneha Banerjee •
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India has seen a number of traditional and powerful business empires run by families over several generations. One generation passes the baton to the next generation to overtake the reign of an existing business model and mould it with newer ideas, keeping core business ethics and values intact.
Siddarth Pai and Pranav Pai decided to follow the footsteps of their father Mohandas Pai – Chairman of Aarin Capital and one of the thought leaders of the startup ecosystem. Like their father, Siddarth and Pranav decided to join the venture capital brigade and back early stage startups with their thought leadership.
Their fund, 3one4 Capital is currently engaged in the early stage of the spectrum, with a bias towards companies exploiting technology to create, grow, or dominate large markets in India.
Here's what the duo kept in mind before carrying the legacy of venture capital forward with 3one4 –
Know who you want to work with
You need to figure out who you want to work with. If you want to work in the venture capital space and you want to work with more than just one person, the first thing you do is find out who you want to work with and whether you are comfortable working with that person in the long term. Thankfully, we know each other really well, simply because we grew up together! We also like each other a lot!
We knew we want to work with each other and we could blindly trust each other.
Build complementary skills
Each of us has our own set of expertise. We both can trust each other with our respective domain expertise. Such kind of complementary expertise helps them cross every hurdle successfully.
Proper delegation of task
Delegation of tasks amongst team members was a task they had to learn very early on in the fund. Initially everyone wanted to jump into everything due to the sheer enthusiasm of learning and knowing everything. Whereas today the fund works very efficiently – we know exactly who does what, our calendars are meticulously planned and every email goes to the right department.
Do away with those biases
The moment one steps out of an education system he gets instilled with certain notions that a person older to you knows more than you. That becomes an issue when you go up against older entrepreneurs, especially against older investors. Having been brought up in a family wherein they can question and in turn can get questioned for anything has helped them do away with the biases of age and traditional seniority and hierarchy.
The Pai brothers maintain a flat management structure within the organization and keep things transparent.
3one4 Capital also invests a portion of its capital in US-focused companies that have feed forward effects into the themes being pursued by in India.
