The Contrarian Investors

- Varsha Meghani & Aveek Datta

It’s fair for entrepreneurs to follow the money, right?” Anand Lunia asks, leaning back on his swivel chair, hands behind his head. It’s a sunny March morning and we’re seated in the conference room of his Mumbai office. “It’s very fair,” he answers his own question, without pausing. “It’s also very fair for the media to follow the money. But, at the same time, there is far more money in not following the money,” he says, leaning forward to stress on the “not”. “To be contrarian, that is what we’re trying to do.”

As founding partner of India Quotient, an early-stage fund established in 2012, the lanky, bespectacled Lunia has created a niche out of being different. To begin with, the 43-year-old points out that India Quotient has the smallest cheques to offer and so has to choose its investments well. It’s not a “spray and pray” approach, he says.

Yet, often, entrepreneurs prefer to go with them. ShareChat’s Farid Ahsan is one of them. When his cofounders and he were ready to raise seed funding in early 2015 for their vernacular language-focussed social networking app, they had two offers: One from India Quotient and another from SAIF Partners. The former offered them Rs 50 lakh whereas SAIF, a leading venture capital firm, was willing to pump in about Rs 3.25 crore. “We went with India Quotient,” smiles Ahsan. The “emotional connect” clinched the deal, he says.