Betting on and Against AI: Inside Playbook Partners’ Barbell Strategy for India

The way we look at our technology landscape and opportunities in India today is broadly divided into two buckets.

Bucket one is what we call the AI bucket, but with a slightly different interpretation, not just foundational models, but ‘applied AI’: AI-driven enterprise software (SaaS 2.0) and AI-enabled services.

Second is ‘physical AI’, hardware-plus-software plays like manufacturing tech and deep tech. Just as software moved to the internet, then mobile, today it's shifting to embedded AI.

On the other side, we have the ‘anti-AI portfolio’ or the IA (India Aspiration) portfolio. This focuses on two industries: the consumption economy (consumer tech) and the financialisation of the economy (fintech). Consumer tech is more front-end, fintech is more back-end, enabling the consumer economy. These businesses are driven by India for India, for the natively digital Indian consumer and won't be significantly affected by AI because they serve day-to-day aspiration and life needs.

Let me give specific examples from our portfolio. In the IA portfolio, we have a cosmetics business, a food business and a third (not yet announced) large online-plus-offline consumer business. Across these, consumption is broadly nothing to do with AI — cosmetics, food, online consumption and entertainment. They're recession-proof, technology-proof, and largely ordered or consumed via phone — that's the only technology element. AI isn't going to really affect that.

On the AI side, I have a CRM SaaS company, a digital transformation services company (no-code services), and a company we just announced — India's latest space tech company, which is physical AI. Each fits exactly within our thesis.

We invest at series C and D, in companies with $25M+ revenue (up to $100M), where product-market fit is well established with real scale. Second, we look at profitable unit economics, most of our companies are EBITDA-positive, meaning we're not buying revenue.

On soft factors: first, the entrepreneur, India is highly entrepreneurial, and that's where alpha is created. Second, fundamental tailwinds in the industry, since it's hard to fight macro headwinds. Third, ecosystem maturity.

Specifically in entrepreneurs, we look for: Ambition, to build a billion-dollar company and go public, not a short-term exit. Our partners have all run billion-dollar enterprises and understand that journey.

Resilience: companies take ~15 years to go public, weathering downturns, cash flow issues, tech shifts, and scaling challenges (e.g., a retailer surviving COVID store closures).

Attention to detail plus financial metrics: strong execution, along with focus on growth margins and ROCE, which becomes critical as a company nears IPO.

A bit of both. India's venture ecosystem has matured enough to offer real exits to entrepreneurs who have taken a company from zero to one, or one to ten, after which company talent or other professionals can take it further—much like Infosys's five founders passing on the CEO baton, or more recent examples such as Flipkart's leadership transition and Kunal's exit from Cred.

This is natural evolution, as seen in the Valley, entrepreneurs build and move on every five-to-ten years. We're noticing it more because the media now actively covers and celebrates these successes.

I think it's good. Many entrepreneurs, like Fractal's Srikanth or MakeMyTrip's Deep, continue running their businesses long-term. Others, like Acko's or Nazara's founders, also continue. It's a healthy mix, very individual, depending on the founder's life stage and where they feel they can add the most value.

This kind of value creation also attracts more entrepreneurs into the ecosystem. Today, IIT/IIM graduates increasingly choose to build companies over jobs and they need eventual value creation to justify giving up stable income, especially since most come from professional and not multi-generational-wealthy families.

No. Institutional investors, including us, don't actively encourage full founder exits, especially in the years around an IPO. We look closely at founder shareholding and skin in the game.

Partial dilution is fine, but the bulk of holdings typically stays in play, and shareholder agreements are structured so founders commit three to five years post-funding before stepping back. There are enough checks and balances when institutional investors are involved.

Yes. We spend a lot of time assessing key-man risk and whether the team below the founder can step up. We like complementary co-founder skill sets and a strong professional team, CFO, CTO, chief strategy officer, head of sales, bringing scalable processes and governance, since what gets a company from zero-to-one won't take it one-to-ten.

We also evaluate professional CEO transitions directly. For example, our portfolio company Subway has a professional CEO (ex-Domino's) who's delivered 30%+ YoY growth. We look for domain experience and a track record of taking businesses public.

I don't think you can achieve much without singular focus, you need to fully live your business, since the best ideas come from the market and mentors, not the boardroom.

Running two businesses full-time at once is very hard. Being an investor in one while a full-time CEO of another is fine, and many accomplished founders do that productively. But no credible institutional investor would back a founder running more than one business full-time, we need their full attention.