Titan Capital or 'Slow Capital'? Kunal Bahl on why investing is a long-term game

Kunal Bahl, Co-founder of Snapdeal and Titan Capital, believes that Indian startups are always under pressure to scale fast, raise money, and follow certain yardsticks of success.

"If I could change the name of Titan Capital, I would make it 'Slow Capital'," he quipped, explaining that the ecosystem is in the habit of moving too fast.

"We need to have a certain pace in what we do. We can't be sluggish... but this desire for extraordinary speed causes companies to fall on their faces often. You have to be thoughtful about where you want to play, how you want to play, and then move fast in that lane," he said during a fireside chat with Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO, YourStory.

At TechSparks Bengaluru 2024, YourStory's flagship startup-tech summit, Bahl advocated for a more suitable terminology as a metric of success for Indian startups. He busted the 'unicorn' myth, saying the term, which is attributed to a company with a $1 billion valuation, was defined by Silicon Valley and doesn't have any relevance in the Indian business landscape.

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He suggested using the term 'Indicorn' for profitable startups with over Rs 100 crore in revenue, and released an Indicorn list featuring 187 companies.

Titan Capital has invested in around 300 companies over the past 13 years, with the VC firm making 15-20 investments annually. The seed stage investment firm, co-founded by Bahl and Snapdeal Co-founder Rohit Bansal, recently closed a Rs 200-crore fund to double down on existing portfolios.

As an angel investor, Bahl has funded over 200 startups so far, according to Tracxn. However, he believes these are only vanity numbers.

"What is important is that quality matters and was the investor able to actually create an impact for the founder, save them from falling into potholes and helping them whenever they needed it. Those things matter. And would have mattered if we had invested only in 30 companies," he said.

However, it takes a long time to build a company in India.

"One of the things we noticed in companies we've invested in is that 80% of the value creation

happens in the final 20% of the time. Let's say, that terminal point is an IPO or an exit M&A, etc... And most of the investors will exit before that final 20% of the time because they don't know where it (the company) is going," he explained.

He said that Titan Capital doesn't have a trading mentality. "We don't say that we will invest today and sell our stake in three years. We stay in companies for 10-15 years, if needed," he added. He also noted that the VC firm exited Ola after 12 years and Urban Company after nine years.

Bahl believes that it's Titan Capital's operator mindset that enables it to stay in a company for long.

"Unless you are willing to get into a partnership with a founder to stay for 15-20 years, you will likely get frustrated along the way, and you will frustrate the founder also. That's why you see some of these relationships tear apart over time," he said.

Bahl reiterated that the VC firm backs companies and founders where they could meaningfully contribute across the arc of company building.

"We have a very high bar—we only invest in companies we truly understand. We don't need to be in all the good companies; we need to make sure the ones we have invested in are good," he said.