November 21, 2008

The future is already here - it is just unevenly distributed. —William Gibson

in|vest: Arvin Babu, Greylock Partners

photo_ababu Name: Arvin Babu

Location: Bangalore

Bio: Arvin Babu joined Greylock in 2007. He is focused on early stage company investments in India.
Prior to joining Greylock, Arvin co-founded two Greylock backed companies: Perfigo and Brience. Arvin was CEO at Perfigo, the leader in network admission control (NAC). Perfigo was acquired by Cisco in 2004. Post-acquisition, Arvin was at Cisco for over two years and led Cisco’s NAC appliance business unit to #1 market share. Previously Arvin served as CTO at Brience, a leading mobile software developer. Prior to Brience, Arvin was CEO at Webvibe, a developer of application middleware. Webvibe was acquired by KPMG Consulting in 1999. Post-acquisition, Arvin was CTO at KPMG Consulting where he led KPMG’s eBusiness technology initiatives.
Arvin holds an MS in Industrial Engineering from Clemson University and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from India.

Have you invested in startups meant for the Indian market before?

No.

What sectors or investment themes look most promising to you in the Indian market?

A startup needs an ecosystem of local market opportunities (customers), partnership opportunities (GTM, M&A, OEM, etc) and great talent pool to thrive. There are some sectors which readily lends itself to consideration in the near term and some in the medium term. Near term sectors include: Solution as a Service, in which leveraging local talent pool and achieving scale non-linearly with cost based on, say, cloud computing; infrastructure solutions that can address low-margin, high-growth last mile communication needs and infrastructure solutions that allow large IT services to scale non-linearly with cost, such as virtualization management, infrastructure management, etc.

What excites you most about your sector of choice in the context of India?

Local market requirements are unique to include: lower margins, high growth/volume and tougher environmental conditions in the case of last mile solutions.  These attributes impose a barrier of entry for global players but give local entrepreneurs an opportunity to achieve scale prior to going global.

What is the most important lesson you have learned from your operational experience as an entrepreneur?

I learned the ability to understand & articulate the value proposition of the solution clearly to customers. Getting the solution out as soon as possible while iterating all the way to perfection reduces the gap between expectations and reality!

Connect: arvin@greylock.com

[To learn more about in|vest, read the overview page and this blog post. If you are an investor with an interest in India and would like to participate in in|vest, please read the participate page as well.]

August 20, 2008 | Filed Under in|vest 

comments

Comments are closed.