General Catalyst's Hemant Taneja On The Big India Story

Thanks for having me. And welcome to Delhi. Excited to be here. Or I say welcome back to Delhi.

Yeah, so we describe ourselves as a global investment and transformation company. At our core, what we do is early stage venture capital. So you probably saw earlier this year we acquired Venture Highway, which is a seed stage firm in India. We did a similar acquisition in Europe as well earlier this year. And so our focus is on working with the world's most ambitious founders as early as possible. And the goal is to work with those founders, create ecosystems, and transform industries. So that's why we describe ourselves as a global investment and transformation company.

We've been investing for many years. We're big believers in the opportunity in India. I think in this new fund that we recently announced, our Fund 12, we'll probably invest about 10% of the capital here. And right out of the gates, it seems like the opportunity side is extremely compelling. So we're excited about what we're going to be backing in the next few years.

Our focus first and foremost is on what is the opportunity inside of India. So what is the way the healthcare sector is going to develop, defense, energy, industrials, consumer services. And equally exciting is what is the role India is going to play in building software companies that are global in nature, that leverage artificial intelligence. So it's really a mix of both companies being built here for the Indian market as well as companies that are here for global markets.

Yeah, look, it's really interesting dynamics. So India is a fast growing economy. You're seeing a polarity in the world today with the technology ecosystem of the West and the Chinese technology ecosystem. I think it's pretty clear that as India emerges as a technological power, its values and its systems are more aligned with the West. So I do think there's going to be a really interesting collaboration between us and India, as well as India and Europe, in the kinds of opportunities that get created. And India is a huge technological power. I think it's going to be one of the advanced markets when it comes to software and artificial intelligence.

So overall, our belief is captured in a theme that we call Global Resilience. So what we think is every country in this next phase is thinking through how they are resilient in critical industries. Critical industries to us are healthcare, fintech, energy, industrials, defense. And what's happening is that businesses that get built in each of these markets are trying to make sure it takes care of the opportunity that is local first and foremost. Now, the local opportunity is different in Europe. There's a huge export market, so they're thinking a lot about how do they actually preserve their existing industry in automotive and industrials. In India, it's a growth market, and we think it's got a tremendous opportunity, as we saw in the fintech sector, to leapfrog a lot of what these societal systems are going to look like. So what is the healthcare system going to look like here? How do you think about the next generation energy mix? Areas like that. And so I think there's a huge amount of innovation that's going to end up happening in India that will then become a blueprint for the rest of the world, as we've seen with Aadhaar and UPI and the other systems here.

Yeah, look, I think the kind of high growth China went through over the last 20 years, India is going to have a similar opportunity. This time around, the difference is China is top-down, and India I often call it the sleeping giant of entrepreneurship. I feel like it's waking up because there's been so many interesting examples of companies that have gone public and become enduring businesses. I think that just activates the next generation of entrepreneurs. And so I think there's going to be much more grassroots in terms of the way innovation gets created. It's much more entrepreneurial. And when you think about the opportunity in India, all the way from infrastructure to communications to software, everything is a growth opportunity as far as we can see today.

Look, I think the reglobalization of supply chain is real. There's a lot of manufacturing opportunity from China that is coming India's way. And what I think would be really powerful, and I think this is where you're going, is if there's a collaboration model between the US and India in terms of how a supply chain gets created and innovation. There's a cycle of innovation across the two nations. I think that would be really compelling because democratic values, there's a huge Indian diaspora that runs a lot of the technology companies in the US, so cultural alignment is there as well. And so I do actually, one of the reasons we're here is because we're very focused on catalyzing this corridor and having our investment strategy be driven by some of that as well.

It's incredibly exciting. I think, as we have seen through the investing we have done ourselves and the portfolio that our Venture Highway team, which now is our India operation, has created, there are a lot of category-defining companies getting created. It's companies like CRED, Zepto, Spinny, and others that we're involved in. So it's very exciting. I think the entrepreneurs are building businesses with a lot of ambition, increasingly a lot of rigor, and first principles thinking. What works in India and the kinds of business models that'll take hold here aren't necessarily well worked in the West. And so that is the exciting part for us, to actually be open-minded to the kinds of business models and technologies that are going to take hold here.

Look, for me, when I'm looking at a business, I first and foremost look at the people and I look at their motivations, what's driving them, what's the core insight they're working with. We always want to see that technology is a leverage point, it creates economic leverage in the business, but it's not led by a particular technology that makes a business exciting. It's the people that make the business exciting.