If you want to know how Private Equity investors can help in your entrepreneurial journey you must listen to the podcast with Sandeep Aneja, Founder and Managing Partner, Kaizen Private Equity. Kaizen is the only home grown fund which has scaled across geographies.

Kaizen is investor in companies like KLAY, Toppr, Varthana Finance, Insofe.

Sandeep shares his thoughts on
1. Why he choose to start a fund focussed only on education
2. He was a very successful Investor with Outlook Ventures in USA which was early investor in Yahoo
3. How he missed investing in LinkedIn in 2004-2005
4. How he is riding on the back finance as a vehicle to drive quality education for everyone in India irrespective of their economic strata.
5. What differentiates the companies which are able to scale 50-100x and which are not able to scale ?
6. Do PE Investors take control of the company once they partner with the company ?
7. Working with Founders on exit strategy from Day 1 and Introducing the companies to potential buyers so companies can see the exit route 10 years down the line.
8. How he sees Exit as a natural path of companies growth, and it should be viewed as process to change investor set.
9. Why Having an open conversation about financial disengagement from each other is very critical though the event happens 7 years down the line from when they partner with companies.
10. How he felt lost when he started Kaizen and didn’t budge his values for the sake of money.
11. 4 advises to all entrepreneurs from Sandeep:
a. To identify the problem you are solving very clearly. The problem should be clearly identified at a deeper level. eg. Problem of online education is a symptom or solution. The problem is personalised education.
b. Continuing to identify the problem as the world changes as you change
c. Communicating the identified problem with a differentiated perspective to the investors.
d. Being ready to hire and being capable of hiring people who could scare you.
“OMG this person could take my job”. Hire the person to help you grow. Once you get such people in they stick with you through thick and thin.

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