LEGENDS
Darshan Bhatt remembers being on the other side of the investment conversation.
He was building a business in India and seeking backing for an online video platform. Meetings with prospective investors gave him plenty of opportunities to explain the numbers. What he sometimes struggled to find was someone who understood the business behind them.
His concern was practical: how useful could an investor’s questions be without experience of the sector or of running a company?
That experience stayed with him as he moved towards investing himself. In a conversation with Legends, he described an approach built around a responsibility that begins well before a cheque is signed and continues long afterwards.
From raising capital to deciding where it goes
Before investing, Darshan worked across telecoms, media and entertainment, with roles at Vodafone, The Times of India, Reliance and Walt Disney. He later worked on music festivals with Percept before starting Above Media in India.
Seeking investment for his own venture brought him into sustained contact with venture capital firms and investment bankers. Those discussions prompted him to think about the kind of backing he would have wanted as a founder: capital accompanied by relevant operating experience.
He subsequently helped establish DVM Capital, initially focused on businesses in the attention economy, including media, entertainment, sport and digital content.
The venture also exposed a challenge within the investment team itself. As Darshan describes it, the partners were comfortable identifying opportunities and deploying capital. Raising it was a different strength.
Meeting his current partners changed that balance. Their fundraising experience complemented his interest in sourcing opportunities and working with businesses. The team subsequently started Ocrys Capital with a broader sector remit.
The experience helped clarify something he now looks for in other teams: people do not need identical abilities to work well together. They need strengths that complement one another and enough alignment to make those differences useful.
The work starts before the investment
Darshan describes Ocrys Capital’s approach as strategic capital: money accompanied by time, relationships and practical involvement.
In the interview, he explained that the team aims to make around four or five investments a year, leaving room to work closely with the businesses it backs.
That involvement affects how an opportunity is assessed. Conversations extend beyond the founder to the people responsible for delivering the plan: who leads revenue, who runs technology, how the core team works together and whether recommendations can be discussed openly.
He described prospective investments where conversations had continued for four or five months. Spending that time together allows both sides to learn something that a presentation cannot establish on its own.
Can they work together when a recommendation is challenged? Can someone explain why a target has been missed? Does agreement reflect a shared view, or simply a desire to move the funding process forward?
For Darshan, compatibility does not require everyone to agree. It requires a working relationship that can accommodate disagreement.
A strong idea may earn his attention. It cannot, by itself, answer those questions.
“Because I believe in you as a person.”
Later in the conversation, discussing co-founders and shared vision, Darshan explains why he wants to work with someone capable of developing many ideas, rather than someone defined by a single promising concept. The plan may change; trust and the ability to work together must hold.
What has the investor contributed?
Darshan applies the same scrutiny to his own role after an investment.
“It’s very easy to ask questions in a board meeting,” he says.
The harder question is what the investor has contributed to the result.
When a business misses a milestone, his preferred response is to work through the problem as colleagues: what needs to change, what support would help and what the team can do differently in the next quarter.
That still leaves room for difficult conversations. His point is that providing capital should come with a willingness to participate in solving the problems being discussed.
It also explains why he spends time understanding the people behind an opportunity. A product may change. A business may need to pivot. The relationship must remain useful through those changes.
The same distinction applies to choosing co-founders. A long friendship or an impressive skill set does not automatically establish a strong working partnership. Functional gaps can sometimes be filled by hiring. Finding people who genuinely share the ambition and will work through uncertainty together is a different task.
Introductions create the opening
Dubai has become an important setting for that relationship-building.
Darshan has spent several years based in the city and values its openness to meeting people. In his experience, conversations with investors, founders and potential partners can be easier to initiate there than in some other financial centres.
He is careful to distinguish that access from a completed deal. A meeting provides an opening; the relationship still needs time and effort.
His own introduction to his current partners illustrates the point. He did not meet them in Dubai, but the connection came through someone he had met there. An initial acquaintance led to people whose complementary strengths changed how he could work.
For Legends members getting to know Darshan, that is a useful starting point. His interest extends beyond what someone is building today to how they think, how they work with others and what they might be able to build together over time.
Before the cheque, he wants to understand the people who will still be having the conversation afterwards.
About the conversation
Darshan Bhatt of Ocrys Capital spoke with Legends about his journey from building a business to investing, his approach to working with founders and the relationships behind his investment decisions.
