What Sanjeev Bikhchandani said about the ‘bound to polarise’ epilogue from Ashneer Grover’s ‘Doglapan’

Sanjeev Bikhchandani, founder of Info Edge, which runs job portal Naukri.com, said in a Twitter thread on Wednesday that “taking a company to scale, profit and an IPO in India takes a decade and a half or more”.

He was reacting to an epilogue from former BharatPe founder Ashneer Grover’s book ‘Doglapan’, which talked about secondary share sales by founders, with a sub-head that read, “Don’t be a martyr to your own cause: Founder liquidity first.”

In the passage that Bikhchandani shared on Twitter, Grover wrote, “I’ve given more cash exits to my angels and ESOP holders than any other founder in India– not one person, however, was thankful enough to publicly stand by me (during his acrimonious exit from BharatPe). People made 80-250x returns, and bought homes and cars. I had to literally beg some angels to sell in earlier rounds– they were that greedy. Also, make sure that all secondary sales can only happen through you– never make the mistake of letting them sell in the open market.”

“We don’t want founders who want to sell secondary early. Truly great companies are the result of a group of people (including founders) devoting a lifetime – Google, Microsoft, Facebook are testimony to this,” said Bikhchandani in a tweet while saying the passage is “bound to polarise”.

“We are long-term investors – our balance sheet capital is evergreen. Our fund has a life of twelve plus two years. We are therefore uncomfortable when founders want to do secondaries prematurely,” he added.

Bikhchandani, who has invested in tech companies like Zomato and Policybazaar, said that if founders encash some value early through a secondary share sale, then their hunger to succeed would be sated and they would not try “hard enough” to maximise value for everyone.

“Taking a company to scale, profit and an IPO in India takes a decade and a half or more. So investors and founders need to be patient and persistent. We first invested in Policybazaar fourteen years back and we are still there. We first invested in Zomato twelve years back and we are still there. We are long term investors – our balance sheet capital is evergreen. Our fund has a life of twelve plus two years. We seek entrepreneurs who want to run the company for the rest of their lives if needed. We don’t want founders who want to sell secondary,” Bikhchandani added.