Experience counts
Mid-career and itching to lead a startup? This VC firm wants you. By Yoolim Lee in Singapore
It’s easy to spot the silver hair among Jungle Ventures’ gallery of startup founders. Look closer and you’ll find that many have called the shots at banks and Fortune 500 outfits.
That’s no accident. Jungle Ventures’ strategy involves betting on executive-suite veterans over starry-eyed twentysomethings who dream of changing the world, said Amit Anand, co-founder and managing partner of the Singapore-based firm.
While peers crave youthful upstart vision, Jungle Ventures openly courts corporate bigwigs wondering where to take their careers. Singapore is an Asian base for global banking and technology firms such as Google and Microsoft — and that’s its advantage, Anand said. Professionals more accustomed to navigating the corporate jungle than envisioning the next Facebook can become standout entrepreneurs with a little help, he said. And they know how to make a buck.
“If you are a CEO, CTO, CFO, CMO, or have a lot of insights into something, we want you,” he said. “You have an opportunity to create a lot of wealth for yourself, for us and for everyone in the ecosystem.”
Jungle’s unusual approach seems to have paid off: it’s cashed out of three startups in four years including ZipDial, bought last year by Twitter. Its tactics have won investment from heavy hitters such as the Singaporean state investor Temasek Holdings, International Finance Corp and the wealthy Thakral family.
Anand said the firm was close to raising a new US$100-million fund to add consumer tech and Internet of Things to a portfolio spanning e-commerce, finance and software across Asia.
That Jungle’s stable of entrepreneurs tends to be older is unusual in an industry that tends to favour the fresh-faced over the grizzled. Take Jon Foster, 42, and Raghav Kapoor, 33, longtime colleagues at the investment bank Religare Capital Markets. In 2014, they set up Smartkarma Innovations to create a network for institutional investors to share insights. Customers pay to access analysis and data contributed by more than 75 research firms on topics from North Korea’s economic prospects to Chinese technology and Saudi oil.
“Rather than simply jumping on the latest bandwagon, like so many VCs, they took the time to understand our space and unique offering,” Foster said.
Or Vince Tallent, the 49-year-old CEO of Fastacash. After almost two decades as a CFO at various mobile and telecommunications companies, someone pitched an idea: What if you could WhatsApp your kids their allowance? Thus was born one of the first services to provide cross-border remittances through social and chat applications. Today, Jungle-backed Fastacash is among the highest funded online finance firms in Singapore with $23.5 million raised to-date.
That’s not to say Jungle is youthaverse. Rahul Garg fits the Silicon Valley startup mold, heading various operations for Google in Asia before setting up the business-to-business marketplace Moglix.com in 2015 in his thirties. Garg was drawn to Jungle’s other atypical selling point, its extensive network in India. The industrialist Ratan Tata is a special adviser and many of its partners and mentors hail from the world’s second most populous country — a draw for startups hoping to tap that enormous marketplace.
“The Jungle guys have built a strong momentum by attracting more experienced people who are stepping out of their corporate jobs,” said Garg, who
“The Jungle guys have built a strong momentum by attracting more experienced people who are stepping out of their corporate jobs” RAHUL GARG Founder, Moglix.com
will turn 37 in May and now heads his 90-person firm from New Delhi.
“After we met, we realised that we have 1,000 common connections,” said the graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur.
Anand and co-founder Anurag Srivastava were professionals-turned-entrepreneurs themselves before they met through Sony Entertainment Television co-founder Jayesh Parekh and started Jungle in 2012. Over the next four years, the pair witnessed the Singaporean startup scene transform from young university dropouts into an arena dominated by mid-career professionals with serious banking and internet chops.
They were “leaving their jobs, knowing their industries inside out, wanting to disrupt their own industry. More seasoned, more experienced, going after very large ideas,” Anand said. “That’s something we are going to double down on over the next years, to back more professionals turning into entrepreneurs in disruptive industries, trying to create new industries.”
One of the earliest Jungle-backed entrepreneurs was Suresh Shankar, who founded Crayon Data in 2012 at the age of 48 after stints at IBM and ABN Amro. The firm has raised $12 million from investors including Mitsui & Co to build an engine that helps people decide where to eat and shop based on their data. He’s often picked to moderate panel sessions when Jungle Ventures hosts VIPs.
“I’m the respectable-looking guy,” he laughed, pointing to his grey hair.