Prioritises Sustainable Businesses

Staying focused is Dheeraj Jain’s motto in life. Jain is an investor turned entrepreneur, who initiated the venture capital (VC) and special situation investment firm, Redcliffe Capital. The firm operates on a tar­geted project lifecycle of four to five years, staying long enough with its clients to stabilise turbulences.  Redcliffe Capital has investments in over 45 early-stage companies which directly employ more than 5,000 people.

Jain has expanded Redcliffe across consumer brands, B2B plat­forms, big data, healthcare, urban commute, food and beverages (F&B) and travel, which is a rather remarkable achievement. “We are a strategic inves­tor,” explains Jain, “besides the money, we bring experience in multiple domains - marketing, channel development, over­seas expansion, etc. which most entrepre­neurs take sizable time to figure out.”

Redcliffe benefits from intra-portfolio synergies and cross learnings that sets it apart from competitors. One such USP is the large number of success stories in its bag. If a roller coaster ride is typical of the financial services sector, the trend is perhaps, more enhanced among venture capital funds. Redcliffe’s 20 success sto­ries in India include Burger Singh, Lif­Care, PeeSafe, Drivzy, Deyor Camps, Bre­whouse, Infeedo, Qdesq, Innov8, Crysta and Ship­sy. The list of course, is much longer.

Jain does not focus on impact investing. His priority is to build sustainable businesses with smart talent, great culture and disruptive products that help solve problems for the greater good of society. He is an investment expert who strives to impact not just business, but society too. To cite an instance, Red­cliffe’s lifesciences busi­ness is significantly bringing down the cost of genomics tests to make healthcare affordable for the masses. “Some of the businesses we are building, especially genomics, are changing the paradigm of healthcare globally through new-age re­search and diagnostics at significantly low cost,” says Jain. As a VC fund, Redcliffe Capital is obviously among those that are  futuristic.

It successfully runs scaled-up busi­nesses, many of which lead in their re­spective domains, as genomics does in its lifesciences business. In Personal Hy­giene Redcliffe Capital has a success story in PeeSafe. “Through PeeSafe, we have brought innovations in hygiene that pre­vent users from UTI risk, etc.,” explains Jain. In human resources, Redcliffe has a winner in Infeedo and in Adventure travel, it has a champion in Deyor Camps. The list is long, because for Jain, getting involved in different facets of business is a passion.  

Redcliffe has been proactive in embrac­ing technology like the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which now impact most trades. “While some of our businesses are not heavily in­fluenced by technology, others are built on deep tech like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, IoT, etc.,” says Jain. He qualifies that statement to explain that new technological tools are only implemented af­ter they have been tested rigorously.  

Jain feels honoured in being in the BW 40 under 40 list. “BW 40 under 40 provides me a platform to reach a wider group of entrepreneurs and pro­fessionals, share knowl­edge and insights,” says Jain. Asked when he re­alised that he had made it big, he demurs. “Hon­estly speaking, I’m still learning and I feel that I haven’t made it big yet,” says Redcliffe Capital’s Managing Partner modestly.  
 
Jain likes to motivate people and has a message for young and budding entrepre­neurs, “I would suggest building a great team with amazing culture,” says he. He advises young entrepreneurs to stay fo­cused, develop in-depth knowledge and expertise in the organisation. Entrepre­neurs, he says, need to build a team to enable the enterprise to inch ahead with every passing day.

Prabodh Krishna

BW Reporters The author is correspondent with BW Businessworld