Lumikai is betting big on the upside of being the only dedicated fund for games and interactive media in India. Will the gambit pay off?
Salone Sehgal, Founding General Partner, Lumikai
Image: Madhu Kapparath
The investor began the conversation by looking at the downside. “Oh, so you are building games for women!” exclaimed the venture capitalist (VC) as he welcomed Salone Sehgal to his office. “What is a woman doing in the big boys’ world of gaming?” he said grinning. “Are you the only one doing it?” he continued with his set of questions. His colleagues, too, looked stunned. There was an awkward silence. Sehgal, who happened to be the only woman in the room, was not bemused. “Around 60 percent of casual gamers in the world are women,” she stressed. Sadly, she continued, less than 20 percent of games and companies are built for them. “There is a huge upside in building games for women,” she underlined. “And it’s great to be the odd one out.”
Sehgal, for sure, had a one-of-its-kind track record. The founder of TrulySocial, a mobile gaming company co-founded by her in December 2013 to build an immersive, narrative-based social world for global female audiences, had built a formidable reputation in her stints as M&A banker and PE (private equity) specialist with Barclays, Morgan Stanley and KPMG. Now, Sehgal, who had executed over $10 billion of M&A transactions, was taking her maiden plunge into entrepreneurship. Despite her famed background, she had to do what any rookie entrepreneur would do passionately: Pitch for VC money. “The conversation didn’t go well. We didn’t get the money,” she recounts.
What Sehgal did get in plenty though, were rejections. One of the VCs, interestingly, evinced interest in taking the bet. His strategy of validating the idea, however, was ridiculous. “I’m going to get my wife to try the product,” he remarked. An outraged Sehgal responded in kind. “If I am building a blockchain industry,” she asked, “would you still ask your wife to try or understand yourself?” Understandably, the miffed investor declined to back the venture. Sehgal eventually managed to get the backing of biggies such as Nazara Games and London Venture Partners (LVP). The gritty founder scaled the venture, ran it for three-and-a-half years, and then had to shut it down after a buyout deal went south.
The founder now turned funder. Sehgal joined NVP, an early-stage London-based fund focussed on interactive gaming and entertainment segments. What didn’t change was a constant jibe of reminding why she might be the odd one out. “She looks like a diversity hire,” was a common taunt. By now, Sehgal knew how to block the outside noise. “I’ve had enough detractors. It’s helped me develop a very thick skin,” she says, adding that after working for close to two years she came back to India in 2019.
(This story appears in the 18 November, 2022 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)