EP27: Venture & Angel investing, and Navigating through times of Uncertainty {Alok of Indifi}

EP27: {Alok Mittal, Co-founder & CEO of Indifi} Entrepreneur turned Investor turned Entrepreneur Alok is on this episode of the Stars & Startups Podcast. Alok Mittal is an IIT Delhi graduate who you can say has become a fixture in the Indian startup ecosystem. Alok is currently the cofounder and CEO of Indifi, a debt financing platform for Indian SMEs. He’s also a prolific Angel investor and the founding Board member at the Indian Angel Network (IAN) that he helped set up in 2005 after his first startup JobsAhead was acquired by Monster.com in 2004. Alok lead the Indian operations of VC firm Caanan Partners between 2006 - 2015. The assets of which were sold to JP Morgan. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — → Don’t forget to subscribe to the Newsletter via stars.substack.com so that you can receive future podcast releases delivered to your inbox! → Full episode of the podcast is available on my YouTube Channel — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — On the episode we chat about the JobsAhead journey, making it to venture investing, some of his learnings along the way and learning how to be an angel investor. Also, we discuss the pandemic and how Indifi is dealing with the situation and how startups should approach the momentary setbacks. Memorable quotes from the episode: “Consumers vote with their clicks” “The disruptive effect of GST is yet to come!” GSTN would be transformative. "Account Aggregators would change the game in the next many months"  Indifi is hiring for non sales/business roles, enablers & strategic partnership roles at the moment. Do check out their careers page. Alok is also super approachable in case you need a supportive investor!  Stay Safe - V {host is on Twitter @varunvummidi } Timeline: 01:00 - Jobs Portals were the original Internet gold rush in India 03:50 - Jobs was what people wanted, relevant for Indians 05:17 - User generated content was restricted to job boards 06:30 - Moving on from a job to start an Internet business 09:00 - Joining Aricent & becoming an entrepreneur 11:25 - Raising Angel funding 13:42 - Selling to Monster 15:55 - Becoming an investor 19:30 - Investments at Caanan Partners 21:00 - Selling Caanan to an AMC 24:35 - Naaptol moving into TV Commerce 28:55 - Angel Investing 30:23 -  60 investments in 15 years 31:10 - Dealflow to make 4-6 investments a year 34:27 - Entrepreneurs he's enjoyed working with 36:44 - Advice to entrepreneurs in times of COVID 40:04 - COVIDs impact on Indifi 42:45 - Prepping the business to succeed through the pandemic 45:42 - Outlook on lending 47:10 - Resetting at Indifi 48:54 - Impact of GST in the lending business 50:05 - Taking advantage of the GSTN