Vitul Kwatra, Investor and Business Guru, recently joined NewsX for an insightful chat as part of NewsX India A-List. In the exclusive conversation, Vitul opened up about his journey till now, his criteria for choosing a startup for investment and much more.
Speaking about his background and journey till now, Vitul said, “To give you a perspective, I have been a banker, I have been a telecom guy and I have been providing experience to large organisations both at an organisational level as well as at customer level over the past 25 years. Personally, yes I was born and brought up in Delhi, India. I still love my country and Delhi. Right now, I am in Dubai. It’s a saying, which we usually have, ‘You can take an Indian out of India but you can’t take India out of an Indian’ so that’s what happens with me.”
Having deeply invested in startup culture, when asked Vitul his criteria when it comes to selecting a startup that one can invest in, he revealed, “On the startup industry, as overall, if I talk about India, I think we are moving at a very good pace when it comes to startups. The quality of startups that have come up, leave aside the big ones, which have already happened: Flipkart, Zomato, and the others like Oyo, everybody knows their success stories, but now, the transition has moved on to being a specialist in startups. Those are the startups that are gaining momentum, those are gaining the eyes of the investors, and bringing in much more moolah for that particular startup as well as helping the economy grow. For example, it could be a culture-tech, it could be an ed-tech, it could be a pro-technology, commercial vehicles. They have huge startups, which have happened in commercial startups. Some startups have come up in satvik foods some in the vegan foods. There are different startups that have come. Mushroom specialising in a particular area, which is the space that has been vacuumed till now and we have been the first runners. I hope these startups will do well if they go along the strike and are not only focused on profit-making. I think those are the startups, which I am interested in, which I have nurtured, helped, Invested whatever you might call and they are doing well. They are attracting people from outside, they are attracting people from within India and they are mushrooming.”
Talking about the impact of Covid-19 on the startup culture throughout the world, where does he find this balance right now and are things coming back to normal for people to venture out, Vitul expressed, “The entire Covid scenario has been obviously pretty bad. This was the first time the pandemic had hit the entire world. There have obviously been similar kinds of incidents, which have happened earlier but those were either regional or country-wise, this is the first time the entire globe was actually shut down. Imagine, restarting the entire globe will obviously take its own time. It has already started. You would have seen the markets going up, the demand going up, the entire trade coming back, production coming back that is already started. Give it around 2-3 months, a quarter more and you will be up and running. I hear airlines have started recruiting pilots. Their demand has already gone up, which was the hardest-hit industry.”
He added, “Hospitality, from hotels and from other perspective and within that particular hospitality industry, they have found their own another segment, which was not there earlier, which is the domestic or the staycation. Like, if you are in Delhi you will never go and stay in a hotel but now, people have actually started staying in their own city hotels over the weekend, which was safe and just out of their maintained house. Go out, do some nice breakfast, going to the pools, sit down, relax, come back the next day. Those are the areas that have never been explored by hospitality earlier. These are some of the things, which have actually mushroomed or grown during the pandemic. Economy-wise, if you look at the Indian economy it has come up. It is actually we are making 2.5 million a day. We have, even if yes there is always been a trigger what will happen if 3rd wave comes, I think we have been pretty much prepared ourselves around 3rd wave when it comes to both vaccination as well as pro-active readiness of infrastructure. Last time, we were not so much ready from the infrastructure side, vaccination side that we have covered now as a country. We are said to roar as you say the flight was there already on the runway but now it has already taken off so now you will see it just from 10,000 to 30,000 feet.”
The transition has moved on to being a specialist in startups. Those are the startups that are gaining momentum, eyes of the investors, and bringing in much more moolah for that particular startup as well as helping the economy grow.