Bala Srinivasa’s Post

Shashank Bijapur shares his thoughts on the impact of AI on a the legal sector in the Times of India. Arkam Ventures SpotDraft

Over the past few years Smartstaff has quietly built an amazing full stack digital staffing platform for blue collar migrant factory workers. There are over 30M migrant blue collar factory workers who traverse the length and breadth of the country to find good jobs, better skills and higher standards of living. Factories in turn are trying to meet soaring demand while trying to solve issues around attrition, work quality and skill sets. Today there are over 10K workers and dozens of enterprises who use the Smartstaff platform and mobile app each day. The company has built a business that is twice as efficient as its competitors in terms of gross margins while scaling much faster. Arpit Dave shares his insights from the Smartstaff journey. How they leveraged smartphone adoption, the India stack and a deep understanding of their users to build a sticky solution for one of the largest Middle India markets. https://lnkd.in/gsXtGSr3 Aravind Reddy Gnanesh Chilukuri Rahul Chandra Arkam Ventures

There is a prevailing trend of SaaS roll-ups across the world and across industries as investors grapple with a lack of critical mass. B2B fintech SaaS in India is entering its best era in terms of customer spend. Young, India-focussed start-ups are in a great place with a lot to look forward to. There will absolutely be a handful of market leaders that build $50M+ ARR standalone companies on rapid organic growth. But as more and more fin-tech SaaS companies emerge, servicing a limited number of large customers, it’s hard to see how most of them can scale independently with an India only focus. There is a compelling case for value creation via acquisitions and a smart roll-up strategy. This is what Perfios has demonstrated, and other investor-funded combinations are likely not far behind. Here is my article in Forbes India on the India B2B fintech SaaS market cross roads and strategy choices for founders and start-ups. Would love to get your views on this topic. Arkam Ventures #fintech #saas #b2b #banking #PE #founders #investors

From nothing in 2018 to INR 21K CR ($2.5B) in disbursement and a profitable company in 2023. KreditBee is a great example outcomes at the intersection of innovative founders and massive Middle India markets. Arkam Ventures Madhusudan E Vivek Veda https://lnkd.in/gyq8UECX #fintech #lending #middleindia #startups #innovation

Arkam Ventures portfolio stories bring out the essence of our limitless entrepreneurs, challenging problems they have chosen to tackle, and their unique approach to disrupting large markets. Here is a conversation with Siddharth Dialani of BharathAgri on building a large and profitable e-commerce business in India's massive Agri sector. Rahul Chandra #agri #innovation #technology #startups https://lnkd.in/ddF7_ecV

Nice to see healthy and customer first competition !

The EV market seems to have run into some growing pains in China and customer friction in the US.  While India is a very different market, it’s well worth paying attention to market evolution in other countries as there are still parallels to how consumers behave. The article in Semafor lays out the issue. The problem is not that Chinese consumers don’t want EVs.  The rate of charging stations set up is way behind EV sales growth.  Early adopters of EVs in China were more affluent, curious, and well-researched on the topic. As a result, more than 70% of China’s public charging posts are in fewer than a third of the country’s provincial-level regions, such as affluent Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu.  However, as the market ballooned and buyers shifted from trailblazers to more everyday users, there is less patience with teething problems in the EV industry. Charging also takes too long because only 20% of the charging pillars along motorways are fast-charging units, according to China Auto News. This results in long lines of cars waiting at service stations. It’s a very similar situation in the US, where the high price point early adopter market is giving way to mass market requirements.  Here, one of the biggest issues is pricing, where mid-market ICE vehicles still have significantly better ownership economics (excluding subsidies).  Add-on concerns around charging infra and range make it a challenging market for large automakers to shift to full-scale production.  Ford and GM are among the many automakers dialing back factory expansion plans until these issues are sorted out.    Are we headed toward such a situation in India?  Is charging infrastructure coming along at an acceptable pace? In the short term, I would say India is still in the early phase where these are not yet show stoppers.  India is a very different market, with two-wheelers significantly outpacing EV car sales. And last mile delivery being the tip of the spear. There is a whole new generation of Indian buyers for whom a two wheeler EV may be the first vehicle they purchase unlike as a replacement product as in the West.  Automakers are also primed to unveil a raft of new EV car models over the next 24 months.    As per McKinsey research from 2023, 70% of tier 1 Indian car consumers said that they’re willing to consider an electric car for their vehicle. In the same research, 75% of Indian consumers say that India is not yet well set up regarding charge points. Whether a two-wheeler or a four-wheeler, it's going to be interesting to see how Indian consumers make trade-offs on price, range, and charging convenience. Their choices over the next 24 months will dictate the rate and nature of EV adoption. https://lnkd.in/grW2w47z Arkam Ventures #ev #startups #sustainability #india #lastmile #charging #battery

Gen AI platforms need to focus on creating sustainable infrastructure even as they improve product capabilities and worry about sentience. ChatGPT consumes over half a million kilowatts of electricity daily, a massive amount to service about two hundred million requests. It also consumes 500 ml of water (for cooling data centers) for every 5 to 50 prompts it answers. Multiply that by 1.7 billion ChatGPT users, and the picture becomes clearer.  Microsoft’s global water usage apparently increased 30% between 2021 and 2022 as it used more for its AI centers.  This energy and water usage issue is even more crucial for a country like India with ambitions to build its own LLMs and leverage Gen AI capabilities on top of public digital infrastructure.  Coal fired power plants account for around 50% of India’s electricity.  Groundwater shortages in cities like Bangalore and across India leave little to the imagination.  We probably need much more proactive discussions on water and energy impact of Gen AI at scale in India - one that balances the opportunity around Gen AI for a billion Indians with an eye on sustainability. What are your thoughts on this issue? Arkam Ventures #genai #sustainability #water #energy https://lnkd.in/g2wkc7Np.

India is all in on AI but there is a talent gap. Re-skilling for Gen AI at scale across all of India’s IT services companies and the needs of thousands of emerging Gen AI product companies is no small task.  It will require large numbers of people with expertise in areas such as LLMs, deep learning, vector databases, knowledge graphs, and a whole lot more. Its going to take some time to get there and China has set the pace.  A recent NY Times article noted that China produced about one-third of the world’s top AI talent since 2018-19 and has eclipsed the US as the world’s largest AI labor pool.  Since 2018, China has added more than 2,000 undergraduate AI programs, with more than 300 at its most elite universities. The NY Times also suggests that while the United States has pioneered breakthroughs in AI, a significant portion of that work was done by researchers educated in China.  The good news for the US is that most of these researchers do stay back to work in the US after their graduate education (this is changing with geo-political tensions) India should rapidly accelerate university curriculum change and leverage real world business inputs to do the same.  The good news - we're already seeing positive momentum. According to a survey by Business Standard, 60 percent of all workers and 71 percent of Gen Z professionals recognise that acquiring AI skills could improve their career prospects. Two in three tech professionals say they will learn at least one digital skill in 2023; AI and machine learning are among the top skills they want to learn. To top this off, the number of LinkedIn profiles citing skills in artificial intelligence (AI) has grown 14 times in the last seven years in India, putting the country among the top five in the world.  By investing in AI education in universities and professional training programs, India can cultivate a deep talent pool that will power our startups for decades. It is the need of the hour. What are you seeing on this front? Arkam Ventures #GenAI #startups #India #technology #innovation