The key trend that has been prevalent in the last five years is the explosive growth in the number of smart devices. Earlier, most people have access to the combination of computer, camera and telephone, as a result of which, the present ways of communication has undergone a sea of change. The trend has led to the emergence of many exciting entrepreneurial opportunities. These opportunities are reinventing industries such as transportation, healthcare, education, financial services, and others, which did not see a lot of change previously. From an investment perspective, Nikhil believes in investing early, typically at the Series A stage. The investment focus has been on technology companies serving consumers and enterprises. The focus is mostly on consumer-oriented companies.

The Answer to What Comes Next
Entrepreneurs always think about "What comes next?" or what's the next key trend/platform shift after mobile? Often, for people in the venture/startup community, the recent trends such as wearable technologies, virtual reality, Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, electric vehicles, self-driving vehicles, robots, flying robots (drones) and satellites surface as the answer. Amidst of these trends, Nikhil makes it a point, to see the reaction to the Apple Watch once it is out in the wild. But, there's still tremendous opportunity in mobile, the early stages of discovering the full potential of smart phones still exists. These trends are critical for start-ups as well.

The Present-day Challenges
In recent times, there is a huge amount of money being invested by venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. In addition, the funds raised by companies are also on the rise. Such trends are highly indicative of the fact that these are the best times to begin new ventures and raise funds. Interestingly, the current companies show a tendency to grow faster and faster, and, the bar for entrepreneurs to create something compelling is being raised. For example, in the consumer world, a few years ago, it would have been revolutionary if a mobile app reaches up to 100,000 daily active users quickly, or a marketplace business scales to $100,000 in monthly gross merchandise volume quickly.

While comparing the present and past, several entrepreneurs who have successfully built products that are on par with the aforementioned scale of users is impressive. This implies that the bar to get excited about investing in these opportunities has turned higher. Towards the future, this trend would continue as consumers adopt technology faster than ever before. (As told to Shahina Islam)