For UpGrad’s Mayank Kumar, public capital is better than a private chase

livemint.com:

Mint for a new podcast series called Founder Diaries, where we take you through the entrepreneurial journeys of some of India’s most high-profile founders, and a peek into what it takes to build successful enterprises. Edited excerpts: I was the first entrepreneur from my family. Business was not seen as a very good thing to do.

I remember even investing in stock markets was not seen as a good thing to do. So for me starting up was like breaking a lot of shackles and starting something ground-up. I call itbhed-chaal (herd mentality).

When you are in school because you like maths people say do engineering. I did engineering because of that. Post-engineering, everybody said consulting is a good thing, you will learn a lot.

So I joined Tata Group after IIT. Again, as a completebhed-chaal. Then they said, okay, after 2-3 years you should do an MBA.

I did an MBA at the Indian School of Business, again completely driven bybhed-chaal.Post that, consulting happened. Then, around 2013-2014, there was a fair bit of craze going on around private equity and venture capital, because it was an emerging area. There were not too many unicorns or large companies, but VC investments were becoming big.

So I said if that’s the theme of the day then I might as well become a VC. Also read |LEAD’s Sumeet Mehta has a lesson for founders: Ditch that Plan B No, it’s not. I am just simplifying things.

I grew up in a very small town. So for me, awareness was a big challenge. I did not know enough about the various options that you have as a student.