E51: Anvesh Ramineni (Managing Director, MassMutual Ventures)

The Desi VC: Indian Venture Capital | Angel Investors | Startups | VC

Anvesh is a Managing Director at MassMutual Ventures (MMV) and co-heads MMV’s investment efforts in Asia. Prior to MMV, Anvesh was a Director and Head of Investments at Openspace Ventures, where he was part of the founding team. He started his career at Citi in the TMT Investment Banking team, during which he spent around 8 years in Hong Kong and Mumbai on M&A and financial advisory work with clients in the APAC region. Anvesh holds a BE in electronics and communications engineering from Anna University and an MBA from T.A. Pai Management Institute.

Anvesh currently serves as a Director on the Boards of Biofourmis, Lynk, See-Mode, Milieu Insight and Qapita.

In this episode, we will cover:

1. Has the second wave of Covid in India impacted MMV’s investment thesis? (2:00)

2. Learnings from interactions with portfolio founders during covid (3:50)

3. The rise of the enterprise tech ecosystem in Asia (8:00)

4. Leaving investment banking for venture capital, what did the landscape look like back then vs where it is now (14:37)

5. What is it like looking into different South East Asian marketing from a VC lens? (17:49)

6. How do VCs help frame regulatory structures in frontier markets? (24:01)

7. What does the LP appetite for Asia today look like? (28:54)

8. Where and how does the the fund fit into MassMutual’s macro ambitions? (32:10)

9. What could the future thesis for MMV look like? (37:18)

10. How does MMV look at the healthcare landscape across SEA? (44:04)

11. Which is a better bet – a startup in a developing or establish market? (50:05)

12 Role of regulatory framework in fostering customer loyalty (53:09)

13. Evaluating similar business models across multiple geographies (56:45)

14. What startups don’t understand about SEA markets (58:39)