The Desi VC with Akash Bhat

Abhishek Goyal is the Co-founder, Vice Chairman, and Executive Director of Tracxn , a leading research firm that provides market intelligence data on private companies. Since its founding in 2012, Tracxn has secured funding from top investors like 3one4 Capital, Elevation Capital, Prime Venture Partners, and angel investors including Sachin and Binny Bansal, and has grown to become a highly profit...

Sanam Rawal is the Founder and Partner at Metamorph (previously known as Passion Connect) , a Blume Ventures-incubated human resource advisory platform that helps startups grow with talent acquisition, talent branding, acquisitions, research, learning and development and more. With offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, and Pune, Metamorph has assisted in the hiring of more than 800 candidates, incl...

Jen Abel is the accomplished Co-Founder of JJELLYFISH , a Boston-based firm renowned for its pioneering approach in assisting B2B startups to achieve early-stage sales proficiency and success in the United States, as well as the UK and Australia markets. With over six years of experience in the industry, JJELLYFISH has empowered over 200 B2B/enterprise startups to validate their sales process and...

Rahul Chowdhury is the Managing Partner at N+1 Capital , India’s first revenue based debt fund. He brings 18+ years of intensive entrepreneurial and operating experience. He is a two-time founder, having founded and sold DenuoSource, a Chicago-based data analytics firm, in 2011. He later founded Reboot, India's first refurbished IT asset lifecycle management firm. How does revenue-based-financ...

Tarun Sharma is Managing Partner at MegaDelta Capital Advisors , a sub-advisor to Millenna Capital, a Mauritius based investment fund as well as an investment manager of MegaDelta Capital Fund I, a SEBI registered Category II Alternate Investment Fund. The fund has invested in companies such as GOQii, Nova, IDfy, Naaptol, Firstcry, MoneyTap etc. and others. MegaDelta typically invest $15-25M acros...

Kanika Mayar is a Partner at Vertex Ventures SEA & India (VVSEAI) , a fund part of the global Vertex Ventures network of funds, with portfolio companies such as Licious, FirstCry, Nium, Binance, Grab, Yatra, and Happy Fresh. In addition to Southeast Asia and India, the Vertex Global Network is comprised of affiliates in Silicon Valley, China and Israel. Kanika joined Vertex Ventures in 2020 an...

Aprameya Radhakrishna is a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Koo , an Indian microblogging and social networking app also known as the Indian Twitter. The company has raised a little over $50M from marquee investors such as Accel, Kalaari Capital , Blume Ventures , 3one4 Capital , Tiger Global among many others. He founded his first venture, TaxiForSure with Raghunandan, which was...

Shyam Menon is the founding partner of Bharat Innovation Fund (BII) , an India-based early-stage venture capital fund that invests in IP-driven deep tech, healthcare, agritech, fintech, mobility, logistics, enterprise and renewables startups. The fund has invested in Fire Compass, CreditVidya, Shifu, Detect Technologies, among many others. He has worked in the technology industry for over 25 years...

Tushar Vashisht is the Co-founder and CEO of HealthifyMe , a digital health and wellness company that provides smart meal plans personalized by expert nutritionists and customized workout plans with certified fitness coaches. The company has raised just over $100M from Khosla Ventures, Chiratae Ventures , Athera Venture Partners , Blume Ventures among several others. Vashisht began his career on W...

Upasana Taku is the Co-founder, COO and Chairperson of MobiKwik , a financial services company that provides a fintech platform designed for online payments (incl. BNPL), life insurance, and loans. The company has raised $178M from marquee investors such as Sequoia, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Blacksoil, AmEx Ventures, Orios Venture Partners, Cisco Investments among many others. Upasana built...

Bipin Shah is the Partner at Titan Capital , an early-stage sector agnostic micro VC fund based in India. The fund has an incredible portfolio of over 250 startups in India and the US across consumer internet, D2C, SaaS, AI, Web3, and other sectors, including investments in Ola, UrbanCompany, Mamaearth, Oziva, Dealshare, Razorpay, Ofbusiness, Yellow Messenger, Beardo, and Giva, among many others....

Yash Jain is the Founder and General Partner at Sparrow Capital , an early-stage micro VC fund that invests upto $500K in SaaS, B2B, Fintech, and Consumer Internet sectors in India with investments in companies such as Mailmodo, Qoohoo, Bimaplan, GoKwik, Superfone among others. Prior to Sparrow, Yash had two stints with large VC funds in India – Kalaari Capital and Arkam Ventures, and also worked...

Milap Jadeja is the Managing Partner of Openbook VC . He is a senior management and strategy professional with over 20 years of experience in building multiple businesses in sectors such as Pharmaceuticals, Agriculture and Non-ferrous castings. Milap brings with him a proven track record in investment leadership being An established angel investor with over 50+ angel investments in startups includ...

Shalini Chhabra is the Managing Partner at 3i (Impact India Investments) Partners , a Silicon Valley-based Impact Fund with the objective of supporting enterprises looking to solve some of the most pressing challenges faced by India's lower-income millions. She is a seasoned Banker with over two decades of experience in Credit Risk Management. She has managed diverse portfolios including Large Cor...

Mohit Gulati is the Managing Partner & CIO at The Investment Trust of India (ITI) Growth Opportunities Fund, one of the largest financial services conglomerate offering a range of products and services from Lending, Equities and Derivatives trading, Equity Research, Commodities Trading, Portfolio Management Services, Distribution of Mutual Funds, IPO & Insurance products and Investment Ban...

Abhishek Nag is a Partner at Lightspeed India where he primarily focuses on investing in consumer internet companies, media & entertainment, the creator economy, and gaming. He brings extensive experience driving strategic partnerships, business development, and corporate development for internet companies in the domains of growth, content and payments, among other areas. Previously he held op...

Rahul Chowdhri is the Managing Partner at Stellaris Venture Partners , an early-stage tech-focused venture capital firm based in Bangalore with investments in companies such as Mamaearth, MFine, Whatfix, Vogo, among many others.  Rahul is an industry veteran, having been in Indian venture for over 15 years. He started his investing career at Helion where he was a Partner and led investments i...

Chirag Gupta is the Managing Partner at 8X Ventures , a deeptech fund investing in India. Prior to 8X, he has held leadership positions at 500 Global, Careem (MENA's first unicorn acquired by Uber at $3.1bn), McKinsey, PwC/Strategy& and Korn Ferry. During these experiences, he helped 10+ corporations build their unique startup “explore” strategy, helped multiple startups grow to unicorn status...

Gautam Patel is the Founder and Managing Partner of Z3Partners , a growth-stage fund based in Mumbai. Prior to founding Z3Partners, Gautam has been the co-founder of Zodius Technology Fund and Zodius Technology Opportunities Fund, successful early-growth stage Private Equity funds with a track record of investing in industry leaders such as BigBasket, Pepperfry, OfBusiness, Zivame, Medgenome and A...

Gaurav Hinduja is the Co-founder and Managing Director of axio (previously known as Capital Float) . It brings together pay later, credit and personal finance management under one seamless brand experience. On a mission to make credit worthy for all, axio leverages technology to deliver innovative financial products to millions of individuals across the country, including vast sections of traditio...

Srikanth Iyer is the Co-founder & CEO of HomeLane , India's largest startup in the home decor space, backed by Sequoia, Accel, Stride Ventures, IIFL Asset Management among others investors. Srikanth is a serial entrepreneur and industry leader, having started his entrepreneurial journey as the co-founder of Edurite Technologies , which eventually was acquired by Pearson India , where he spent...

Chanakya Hridaya is the co-founder of BlackBuck . Founded in 2015, BlackBuck has been a pioneer in bringing the offline operations of trucking online, be it matching a shipper with a trucker or reshaping the infrastructure around trucking to facilitate payments, insurance, and financial services. Today, BlackBuck is India’s largest trucking network, and our robust ‘Freight’ and ‘Fleet Management’...

Ketan Patel is the Chief Executive Officer of Mswipe . Founded in 2011, Mswipe has gone on to become the leading digital payments and financial solutions company supporting the growing merchant community across India. Ketan joined Mswipe in 2021 after 18 years at Kotak where he oversaw management, business development, operations and the use of emerging technologies to disrupt the finance ind...

Mukesh Kalra is the CEO of ET Money , one of India's fastest growing investment and wealth management platform with a total of over $3B worth of investments under management. Mukesh has over 15 years of experience in building businesses and products from scratch in the consumer internet and mobile advertising space. Prior to heading ET Money, he was one of the core members at InMobi and helpe...

Ankit Kedia is the Founding Partner of Capital-A. He is a second generation entrepreneur who has held senior leadership positions at Manjushree Technopack Ltd. (MTL), India's largest rigid plastic packaging company. With a penchant for institutional marketing and a credit of designing the Key Account Management program, Ankit has been instrumental in the 5x growth of revenues and EBIDTA at Manjush...