We are uncomfortable when founders want to do secondaries prematurely: Sanjeev Bikhchandani reacts to an epilogue from Ashneer Grover's book

Bikhchandani said that if founders encash some value early through a secondary share sale, then their hunger to succeed would be sated and they would not try "hard enough" to maximise value for everyone.

Bikhchandani's comments were in response to a passage from Grover's book, where Grover said how a founder should not shy away from liquidating their stock at every secondary sale opportunity.

"In fact, as a thumb rule, at least 80 percent of the proceeds of any secondary sale should come to the founders. You may allocate the balance 20 percent of secondary cash to ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) holders and angel investors," Grover's epilogue read.

"Also make sure  that all secondary sales can only happen through you--never make the mistake of letting them sell in the open market," the passage further read.

Bikhcandani also said his company does not invest in startups for IRR (internal rate of return, a metric that gauges return on investment).

"We invest behind entrepreneurs who we believe have a serious shot at creating large profitable and valuable businesses. When that happens we exceed any IRR targets we may have set. Investor IRRs are the happy incidental outcome of founders building great businesses," Bikhchandani said.

He further added that taking a company to scale, profit and an IPO (initial public offering) in India takes a decade and a half or more. He said that InfoEdge first invested in Policybazaar 14 years back and in Zomato about 12 years back, and still continues to back both companies.