Techcircle Startup Walkabout Pit Stop II Sequoia Capital, Vasant Kunj

After an invigorating session at Lightspeed, we moved to the office of venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. As the participating startups settled down to take lessons from one of the biggest early stage fund managers in the country, we were greeted by Mohit Bhatnagar, managing director at Sequoia.

He took us through a presentation covering the past, present and future of technology in the country. The presentation talked about how India and Indonesia will emerge as key players in throwing up a huge number of internet companies. He also mentioned that a lot of foreign players will be interested to acquire Indian tech companies going forward. He further discussed about addressing the challenge of 'monetisation of products', which will take time.

During the presentation, he also shared Sequoia's investing strategy, adding that the VC fund loves to do seed level funding and bets big on the teams of companies. He further mentioned that Sequoia likes reinvesting in their portfolio companies as they see themselves as long term partners, even co-founders in some cases.

The presentation was followed by a brief Q&A session where questions ranging from how to manage portfolio companies, hiring people for them, and helping them succeed in terms of scale and branding is thrown at him.

The session takes an interesting turn when Bhatnagar asks the entrepreneurs and startups to present their ideas to him in a one-on-one interaction, during which he listens to their ideas, differentiating factor, their funding requirements and how they plan to use the money. The session goes even a step further when a few participants discuss their detailed plans with the team of Sequoia in a closed door interaction.

This leaves the participants elated, and many of them thank us for providing them with this golden opportunity.

Post Sequoia, we moved to our next location that was the office of e-commerce major Snapdeal.com. Keep track of this space for more on that.

You can also check out our Twitter handle @techcirclein for updated pictures of the TC Walkabout.