BSB, a joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and SoftBank Corp., focused on the mobile Internet space, has invested $7 million in hike, a free messaging app startup. hike, which crossed the 5 million users mark in four months after its launch in December 2012, offers seamless integration between Instant Messaging and SMS. About 60% of hike’s user base comes from India and the rest global led by Middle East and Europe.
In a recent interview to Venture Intelligence, Shailendra Singh discussed some of the firm’s newer investments in the early stage segment including in the online payments space, the progress at a few existing portfolio companies and the active role the firm is playing in helping its portfolio companies scale and succeed in India and globally. Prior to joining the firm in 2006, Singh was a strategy consultant at Bain & Company in New York and before that, an entrepreneur in the digital media industry. Venture Intelligence: How does Sequoia go about identifying potential early stage investments in India? Is there anything different you are doing today than, say, a couple of years back? Shailendra Singh: There is a lot more focus on technology investing and early stage investing. In general, as you might remember a few years ago, we were doing primarily growth investing but in the past 18-odd months, we have had a very strong focus on early stage and that’s continuing. In terms...