Sanjeev Aggarwal & Apurv Bansal, PGP Pro

Shadow A CEO gave me an opportunity to have a hands down experience with day to day working of India’s biggest venture capital firm, Helion Ventures Pvt Ltd. I eagerly enrolled into this program through ISB with an aim to make the most of it and imbibe the best practices of a top notch investment and capital fund management firm. Mr Sanjeev Aggarwal, the Co-Founder and Senior Managing Director of Helion has a very profound experience and astute sense of know how about his work, the kind that pushes anyone around him to continually grow and make positive contributions to a team and an organization.

My day at Helion started at 10 am with an ice breaking conversation with Mr Aggarwal where he understood where I came from and what was my intention to enroll in this programme. To make the most of my time in 6 hours, he had ensured that my itinerary of the day included fruitful and brain storming sessions. The first 90 minutes of my day were very exciting as I got to be a part of a round of meetings called “Pitching to MD”, where startups pitched their products for investments in front of the MD and the panel would counter question them on their business strategy, marketing plans and target achievement growth. The room was filled with enthusiasm and the panel was brilliantly objectifying the ideas with constructive criticism. I was also given a chance to question the teams and was highly impressed by the amount of professionalism everyone brought on board. After that, there was an internal meeting of Helion for about 10 minutes, in which I sat outside and recharged myself for another  mentoring session, where Mr Aggarwal purposefully kept the meeting to discuss the pitch made by the team and took the decision whether to invest or not. This helped me in understanding how investors evaluate the start ups in the economy. The most important take away I had from this session was that Helion doesn’t only believe in being the jaguars of the venture capital fund industry, but also has a very important  pillar of building entrepreneurs – the client approaches them more for support than just getting a prescription, and the complexities get resolved by simplifying the processes.

Mr Aggarwal is running the show like a magician at Helion and doesn’t believe in spending any minute of his day unproductively. We had a working lunch and I interacted with the team of Helion which worked round the clock to ensure that I have a memorable experience. Post lunch, Mr Aggarwal had his own personal meeting with an old client who needed his guidance which was not on my itinerary but he insisted me to join in. He introduced me with high praises and I was flattered by the respect I received from my mentor. The meeting was adorned by deep conversations about the road maps ahead for the client’s product and how to optimize the time and fund he had in his hands. I loved every second spent in HAPL office in Gurugram and have come back with a fresher perspective and the market trends I need to be on a lookout for. I specially thank ISB and the idea put behind this program which puts a student in an organized “lab” for a day to understand his strengths and produce best results, which is the true essence of education as a whole.