'We will invest in all consumer based companies,' says Rahul Chowdhri

Earlier this year YourStory had brought out a report on the top investors of 2015 who had funded startups in India. Second on that list was Helion Venture Partners with 20 deals. With investments in companies like BigBasket, Simplilearn, Mysmartprice, Livspace, Shopclues, ID Fresh and YLG to name a few, Helion has an interesting bouquet.

In our VC tete-a-tete this Monday, we speak to Rahul Chowdhri, Partner at Helion Venture Partners. Rahul has been with the Helion investment team since 2007 and he primarily focuses on investments related to the fields of eCommerce, digital media and education.

In a freewheeling chat Rahul shared some interesting insights with us regarding the challenges that e-commerce is likely to face in the near future. Language on e-commerce sites will be a huge challenge in the days to come primarily because of the next set of consumers who maybe from tier 3 or tier 4 towns and cities. A lot of the consumers will also be on mobile and it becomes imperative for e-commerce sites to have apps that are better integrated and customised. According to Rahul, there will also be a shift of dynamics from the supply side.

“The Indian consumer will become more and more discerning.” With higher incomes come more choices. And peoples’ demands will have to be matched.

We also asked Rahul Chowdhri about investing outside the comfort zone, to which he replied, “We realised in the last year or two that tech or consumer tech and enterprise tech alone has so much depth that as a team we have very limited time to say that we can do everything in a right manner. Right now we are saying, ‘enough to do in tech’ and that’s where we are spending our energies.”

Listen in for more.

Camera: R Raja

Video Editor: Anand