Matrix Partners India has about ₹3,000 crore under management and invests in companies primarily targeting the Indian market.

Thirty-six-year-old Tarun Davda comes from a family of entrepreneurs. His father started his own manufacturing business at a young age to support the family. His two elder sisters run their own ventures. Tarun worked for an IT company before turning an entrepreneur and then an investor. His experience in founding two ventures helps him understand and speak the same language as an entrepreneur. He understands that for an entrepreneur, not everything is rosy all the time.

Education: A degree in Production Engineering from VJTI, Mumbai, and an MBA from Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.

Experience: Worked in Infosys in India and the US. After that, Tarun established BigRock.com, a leading provider of domain name registration and other web services. Then was India Country Manager and Business Head at StepOut.com, a venture backed start-up that became a leading online dating site.

Typical working day: The day stretches from 9.30 am to 7-7.30 pm, and includes meeting new entrepreneurs, catching up on a few portfolio companies. Meets at least 10 entrepreneurs a day. Travels on work to either Gurgaon or Bengaluru, two days in a week.

Hobbies: Reading about technology is something I enjoy. And, understanding what new companies are being created. It is related to my work, but I enjoy doing it. Week-ends are spent with my 8-year-old son, playing new games, teaching him swimming and table tennis.

Gadgets: I am a big Apple fan. Any new Apple device that comes out, I try to use it as quickly as possible.

I like to try out anything that is cool and new. I now have an iPhone 6 and fitbit to track my activities every day. The next gadget I want to buy is a drone, a Phantom 3 Drone, when I am in the mood to spend some money. It is on my list of things to buy, but I am just trying to hold back the temptation.

Advice to entrepreneurs: My advice to entrepreneurs is to build a business they truly believe in, whether they have truly felt pain as a consumer themselves, because entrepreneurship is a long and hard journey. It is not a question of a one-year job or a two-year job that you can quit easily. It involves hiring a team, selling them the proposition, raising funds, building a product and all these things take time. Eventually, there is getting the customers, revenues and profitability.

If you don’t truly believe in the problem that you are solving, if you are not passionate about that, that passion generally comes when you have felt the problem on your own.

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