VC Scenario in India
The Indian VC ecosystem is relatively young compared to the mature ecosystems in the US and Western Europe. Venture capital in India was born in the late 90s, early 2000s during the dot com era, but has only really gotten meaningfully large on a global scale in the last ten years. With regards to transition, Vishesh Rajaram think there are large thematic shifts that occur every five years or so ­ sometimes driven by key hardware / software tends (IOS, Android being one, smartphones being the other). Speciale Invest, invests at the early stage, and by definition have to pre-empt these trends; VC's is to look beyond the hype and flavour of the season, to invest in start-ups that we believe can successfully execute upon tech driven innovation. The company's learnings have centred around helping startups spot errors sooner and course correct faster, we don't fear failure but focus on proactively reinventing ourselves as a product of our environment.

However, capital markets are multi-faceted and come in different shapes and forms. There are a variety of financial institutions serving different capital needs across the risk spectrum. Innovation by definition

requires disruptive thinking, and the entrepreneurial mindset that goes into founding a start-up requires capital that is both bold and patient, which is the role that we as VCs play in the ecosystem. Specifically at Speciale invest, the team is focused on ideas that are 0 to 1 and disruptive in nature ­ investing across automotive tech, rocket science, satellite communication, intelligent robots.

Awaiting Opportunities
From the perspective of the start-up ecosystem, the last 10 years can be summed up by the emergence of three big trends: Mobile, Cloud and Social. Most of the big start-up success stories were created at the intersection of one or more of these trends. Vishesh thinks we are now at a very interesting point in history, as these three trends have matured, and the ecosystem is ripe for the next big wave of innovation. Emerging technologies like AI, Blockchain, AR and VR have some really interesting use cases, and can do for the next 10-20 years what mobile; cloud and social have done for the last decade. Increasingly, as the start-up ecosystem is maturing, founders are also focusing on some of the world's most challenging problems, in sectors like healthcare, logistics, financial inclusion, education etc. Vishesh is deeply optimistic about the future, it's certainly interesting times to be part of the venture capital ecosystem.

Vishesh Rajaram, Managing Partner, Speciale Invest
An avid capitalist, Vishesh has over 13 years of experience of investing across enterprise software and industrial hardware between India, Israel and US. He co-founded Speciale Invest along with his ISB dorm-mate Arjun Rao.

Vishesh has the penchant for being institutional investors in new age sectors, deep tech SAAS (AI + Conversation + Voice + Video Strings.AI, FrontDesk.AI), space tech (first investor from India to back a launch vehicle co - Agnikul, optical satellite comm. for ground flight - Astrogate & a satellite missions co. - Kawa Space), disrupting micro mobility (first investor in Vogo one of top 2 bike sharing cos in India ), transportation thru EV (first investor in Ultraviolette, best in class EV vehicle + battery swap infrastructure)