He masterminded 2 of India’s largest startup acquisitions. Now he’s thinking bigger

You won’t be accused of exaggerating if you call Alok Goel a kingmaker. Two of India’s biggest startup acquisition stories – Freecharge and RedBus – were scripted while Goel was at the helm.

As a hands-on chief operating officer, he transformed ticketing site RedBus with a mobile strategy, which led to its rapid growth and acquisition by Naspers-backed Ibibo for US$110 million in 2013. Goel then became CEO of FreeCharge, which rewards users with discount coupons for using the site to top up their mobile phones.

Like RedBus, FreeCharge was limited to desktops when Goel took charge in September 2013. He rejigged the strategy, built a new team, and took it to mobile. His earlier experience heading mobile products for Google in India helped him with that.

In less than two years, he made FreeCharge grow over 30 times in value. So when ecommerce titan Snapdeal acquired FreeCharge for an estimated US$400 million in cash and stock in April this year, Goel had done it again – hockey stick growth shooting up to India’s largest startup M&A.

It was time for him to move on again. But now he wanted to play a larger role in India’s emerging startup ecosystem.

“With RedBus and FreeCharge, my kick of doing a startup was done,” Goel tells Tech in Asia. “I felt it is now time to help other entrepreneurs grow businesses. I have been spending time with entrepreneurs in the last couple of years, and I can see that at various points of time, they need a lot of help and generally, that help is not available.”

This is where Goel’s operations background becomes vital in his new role as a venture capitalist, with SAIF Partners today announcing his appointment as its managing director.

The missing link

Goel has seen first-hand what an entrepreneur goes through in India, which helps him to empathize immediately with other entrepreneurs. Goel feels this is the missing link in the VC scene in India, with most VCs lacking the experience to help Indian entrepreneurs solve their day-to-day problems or give feedback on the strategic choices they have to make.

“A startup has to grow at a superfast pace in order to justify all the valuation. For that, it needs two things: one is money, which a venture capitalist typically provides. But it also needs a lot of strategic guidance. It needs thought process validation – whether it’s the right thing to do for the business or not. This is the kind of strategic critiquing which a lot of VCs are missing out,” says Goel.

He says the biggest factor in an entrepreneur’s success is the ability to build a great team. Whether it’s a mobile strategy or anything else, even the smartest vision will come to nought unless there’s an equally smart team to execute it. This was his number one learning at both RedBus and FreeCharge – “I was able to create a kickass team from scratch.”

Speed of execution

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