About me

Published on 9 May 2023 ⸱ 7 min read ⸱ 315 views

Osborne Saldanha speaking at a portfolio meet

Short introduction

I have 11+ years of investing and operating experience - across stages (idea to growth), sectors (fintech, commerce, logistics, SaaS and more) and regions (India, Southeast Asia and Europe). I am a first bench student of business strategies and find history of businesses intriguing. My special powers are problem solving and building relationships.

Aside from startups and businesses, I have many muses including photography, astronomy (the moon 😍), robotics, hiking/trekking, travel, food and more.

Key professsional highlights

  1. Sourced, evaluated and invested in several early stage startups that grew to a combined valuation of >$1bn+.
  2. Managed a portfolio of 20+ and helped them close millions of dollars in revenue contracts, and hundreds of millions of dollars in funding. Delivered 5+ successful exits.
  3. Publishes Fintech Inside and This Week in Fintech (Asia) that is well read globally by 60K+ leaders in fintech including founders, investors, senior executives and regulators. 
  4. This readership organically grew into a community for whom I host regular offline meetups across India and Southeast Asia. 
  5. Worked at or consulted This Week in Fintech, Emphasis Ventures, Xiaomi and Tuscan Ventures.

Companies I've invested in/worked with/helped out/managed as a portco etc. over the years

(in no particular order and is not exhaustive)

Jar, Slice, M2P, Kreditbee, Monnai, Flash, ZestMoney, Tartan, Pazago, Basis, Bimaplan, Bureau, Card91, Clinikk, Klub, Mysa, Name, Creditail, Shoffr, Sanctum Wealth Management, LoanTap, Vance, ColdStar Logistics, System Two Advsiors and Paragon Partners.

There are several other founders/startups I've helped over the years.

Example problems I've helped founders tackle

Vinod Khosla famously said, "90% of investors don't add value and 70-80% of investors add negative value". Something I've learned over the years is that the best founders don't need "portfolio support". They're resourceful and know how to get what they want. My general approach to portfolio support is being there if and when the founder needs me. I'm not constantly looking over their shoulder or installing myself where I shouldn't be. (I also absolutely detest investors who say "we" or "our" when referring to their portfolio companies' achievements)

This list is not exhaustive but I try to be as helpful as I can for my portfolio companies in areas that matter - capital, team, product and marketing.

  1. Made introductions and helped build fund raising narrative to raise $2-70M+ for each startup.
  2. Made introductions and helped close millions of dollars in revenue contracts.
  3. Worked closely with marketing and brand teams to build product launch strategy.
  4. Made introductions, helped interview and hired senior talent.
  5. Spent months with a founder, helping them cope with negative rumours about the company.
  6. Worked closely with product teams to ideate and improve product strategy.
  7. Provided feedback on prototypes and tested early product renders.
  8. Helped find potential acquirers and closed acquisitions of portfolio companies.
  9. Shared regulatory intelligence to help founders preempt or navigate market shocks.
  10. Conducted proprietary market research and reported back with learnings and insights.

Detailed professional journey

I'm an accidental VC. For as long as I can remember, I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur, I wanted to build a business - one that outlasts me. I was terrible at finance, ok at math but really loved coding. Coding was the most fun part of doing engineering - the thrill of writing code and seeing it come to life and used by people, life changing experience! But I digress.

When I was graduating, I realised if I wanted to start up, I needed to get some basic financial experience. I needed to learn how businesses work, how finance works and how other non-tech aspects work. Thankfully, I was interning at ColdStar Logistics, the portfolio company of Tuscan Ventures, a family office of late Ashok Kapur, one of the founders of YES Bank. They took a chance on me and really let me make mistakes in my process to learn and improve. My foundation in investing was laid by the team - they were tough, demanding and super patient. At Tuscan Ventures, I was fortunate to manage and deploy dedicated capital in several startups.

I cofounded (PCWeb) with a friend but it didn't scale and was tough to sustain, so we shut it down. I learned so much in the process, that it didn't feel like a failure.

Later in 2019, I joined Xiaomi to lead their fintech investing in India, Southeast Asia and Europe. I'd always had exposure to teams from India, US and Europe before, but never from Eastern markets. Xiaomi felt like a great opportunity to experience a different perspective to building, investing and thinking. Working closely with Xiaomi's leadership was an eye opening experience. It was incredible to learn how to make quick decisions with limited data/information and own those decisions. The leadership was truly inspiring and I was grateful for that experience.

My career trajectory took a wild turn for the better when I launched my newsletter. The opportunities that it opened up were completely unexpected and unplanned. I just wanted to keep up with the latest in fintech and find it all in one destination - so I created the newsletter. I launched it publicly in Oct, 2020 as a way to externalise what I was already sending to the senior leadership at the firrm. Thankfully there were some organic supporters which helped the newsletter grow. Covid enforced lockdowns helped me keep up the cadence of publishing every week. Consistency is tough but the rewards are unbelievable.

I'm lucky that today, Fintech Inside is read globally by thousands of decision makers and leaders in financial services. Senior executives and fintech leaders from Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, a16z, CRED, EY, Groww, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, RBI, IDFC First Bank, NPCI, Matrix Partners, Nexus Venture Partners, Softbank, PayU, Razorpay, and more read the newsletter!

I joined Emphasis Ventures (EMVC), an early-stage, fintech-focussed venture fund, in 2021 - just before the more horrific second wave of covid struck India. At EMVC, I did a lot within a short period of time - made new investments, managed majority of the portfolio, did some work on brand building and much more internal work. The most important aspect of this stint was the partnerships I was able to build with the portfolio founders. It's the most gratifying aspect of work for me.

Random interesting facts: I've worked at a family office, a corporate VC and a fund. I've invested in pre-series A/series A with Tuscan Ventures, growth stage (Series B/C) with Xiaomi and very early stage (idea to series A) with EMVC. Across all this experience, my bosses have always been female! Who run the world?

Me as a VC

I find true joy in spending time with founders, be it helping them with a fund raise strategy, or working with their teams to identify better products or strategies, or helping them onboard the best talent or even plain 1:1 talking about their highs and lows. It is the most fulfilling aspect of work for me.

I aspire to be the highest conviction shareholder/board member on a startups' captable, but more importantly, one that's there with founder, even when they feel they've hit rock bottom.

My approach to "adding value" as an investor, is adding value if the founder asks for it. The best founders, usually don't need help, but when they do, I'm right there. If the founder doesn't ask for help, but I see things are not going well, I'm very direct and will be truthful with the founder. That, IMO, is being founder friendly - having enough of a rapport of trust, that the founder knows you're speaking in their best interest.

How I work

(updating)

Founder Feedback

(updating)

I'd love to hear your thoughts, feedback, comments on this piece. I can be reached at [email protected].

Onward.

Note: All blogs posts till 2022 were migrated to this platform (react+next+tailwind). While all efforts were made to migrate wihtout any loss, the migration lost some images and broke a bunch of links in old posts. If you spot anything amiss, please notify me?