Making Investments in AI: Samsung’s Hina Dixit

**Shervin Khodabandeh** (0:02)
How does one technology leader approach AI investments? Find out her five criteria on today's episode.

**Hina Dixit** (0:11)
I'm Hina Dixit from Samsung Next, and you're listening to Me, Myself and AI.

**Sam Ransbotham** (0:18)
Welcome to Me, Myself and AI, a podcast on artificial intelligence and business. Each episode, we introduce you to someone innovating with AI.
I'm Sam Ransbotham, Professor of Analytics at Boston College. I'm also the AI and Business Strategy guest editor at MIT Sloan Management Review.

**Shervin Khodabandeh** (0:36)
And I'm Shervin Khodabandeh, senior partner with BCG and one of the leaders of our AI business. Together, MIT SMR and BCG have been researching and publishing on AI since 2017, interviewing hundreds of practitioners and surveying thousands of companies on what it takes to build and to deploy and scale AI capabilities and really transform the way organizations operate.

**Sam Ransbotham** (1:02)
On today's episode, we have Hina Dixit, an investor at Samsung Next. Hina, thanks for joining us, welcome.

**Hina Dixit** (1:09)
Thank you so much. It's a pleasure being here with you.

**Sam Ransbotham** (1:13)
Most of our listeners are likely familiar with Samsung, giant South Korean multinational, lots of consumer electronics, but people may be less familiar with Samsung Next. So let's start there.
Can you describe what Samsung Next is and what your role is?

**Hina Dixit** (1:31)
Yeah, absolutely. Samsung Next is the private equity or venture capital arm of Samsung. We tend to be stage agnostic, but at the same time, we have six focus areas where we invest. AI is one of them. We also invest in FinTech, blockchain and infrastructure, MediaTech as well, along with Heltech.
Along with these six focus areas, we tend to make more and more learned investments about the ever-changing dynamic world as well. So if you or anyone has a cool idea, please feel free to reach out.

**Sam Ransbotham** (2:04)
I should have prepared more and had a few pitches ready so that I could have put you on the spot here while we were recording and get you on record there. So what exactly do you do though?

**Hina Dixit** (2:14)
If there is any deal which is associated with AI, I tend to lead that deal and also work on the investment strategy for Samsung Next. When you head out to these startup demos, to these pitch and expos, you will see like thousands of startups. Now, how do you ensure that you're focused on the right areas, which matter to Samsung? It should also propel innovation further, not just like furthering the innovation, it should be also usable.
So that's why having a paradigm will help you make those sound decisions where you can actually prioritize certain areas ahead of time than compared to other investors and understand which of the current technologies will be booming say a few years from now. And accordingly, you tend to segment and understand that, okay, these are my top priority areas.
At the same time, I'm very, very passionate about mentoring entrepreneurs, mentoring fellow people in tech. I come from a tech background, so I can always understand the hiccups people face when they are moving from individual contributor roles or like your management roles in these big techs and moving forward to a startup entrepreneurial journey. I love connecting with them and helping them out.

**Shervin Khodabandeh** (3:27)
That's really wonderful, Hina. So I wanna talk about both things you said, both the mentoring, but also I wanna go back to how you pick an investment, right? I mean, obviously where you're sitting, you are looking at thousands of opportunities probably, right? And so you mentioned there is some guiding principles in terms of how you prioritize where to focus and what fits strategically with Samsung.
But tell us more about how you pick an investment once you've already gone through that filter, that okay, it's the right thing for the company, we wanna do it. Now you're actually evaluating an AI company. Tell us how you pick, what are the factors you consider?

**Hina Dixit** (4:13)
I tend to focus on very important factors for me. Personally, every investor out there has a very different way of investing. Some people are very intuition driven and I have seen such investors make really great decisions. Some people are very theory driven and some people tend to like take it as they go. I am a mix of all of them. I tend to make these sound learner decision where I'm very comfortable and I know the space very well.
One thing that is always very important for me is the team.
Is there like a right product team fit here? Are these individuals capable of building these great products that they are promising? I think that is an essential parameter for me. And then moving on to the problem itself. Is this pain point really like valid in few years? The pain point has to be there. The next thing is the technical innovation.