Page 69 - Forbes - India (January 2020)
P. 69
Interview
‘Data And Algorithms Help Us
Invest Beyond Geographies’
Anand Rajaraman of Rocketship on what pulled a quarter of their bets to India
and his take on sky-high valuations
By Sayan ChakraBorty
Aditi tAilAng
69
nand Rajaraman has bought by Amazon for $200 million was bought by Walmart for about
been there, done that, in 1998, a stellar exit in those days. $300 million. Together, they have
first as an entrepreneur Ever since, a pursuit to make invested in several startups, notably
and later an investor sense of tomes of data—Rajaraman Facebook and Lyft in the US and
A in startups. He tasted also teaches machine learning at his Urban Ladder and Snapdeal in India.
the highly-coveted but mostly elusive alma mater, Stanford University—and Their latest venture, a $40 million
entrepreneurial success, a profitable Harinarayan have been constant early-stage fund Rocketship, has
exit, pretty early in his career. Within fixtures in Rajaraman’s professional made about a quarter of its 32 bets
two years of its launch, Junglee, a outings. The duo started Cambrian in India, including Fynd, PaySense,
comparison and price discovery Ventures, an early-stage fund backed Mad Street Den, Moglix and Locus.
startup he co-founded with Venky by Jeff Bezos, in 2000. In 2005, they A similar proportion of its corpus has
Harinarayan, Ashish Gupta, Rakesh launched Kosmix, an ecommerce- been deployed here. In the midst of
Mathur and Dallan Quass, was focussed social media startup, that raising a second fund for Rocketship
january 31, 2020 • foRbes IndIA
