New Delhi: Delhi based early-stage venture capital fund, Kisho Capital, announces the launch of a rolling fund – which will focus on start-ups looking to capitalise on a tech-focused India growth story – the world’s second largest internet market.
The fund plans to support about 20 start-ups annually by investing upto 1 crore in each under its programme. Kisho Capital’s fund model is oriented towards start-ups in the Seed/Pre-series A rounds which are technologically advanced with initial traction, especially those that use AI & ML for personalisation & automation.
The uniqueness lies in the investors onboarded who come from highly successful start-up founders & few of India’s Biggest Corporate Houses. This gives the funded start-ups a very high level of strategic advantage in terms of the advice, mentoring and real world connections that is almost impossible for an early stage start- up to access.
Founded by seasoned entrepreneurs and investors, Akshay Chhugani and Ankush Nijhawan, Kisho Capital’s goal is to deliver top quality investment advice to all their investors with the best in class due-diligent and access to some of the best mentors expertise in the Indian start-up ecosystem. Kisho Capital seeks opportunities in scalable technology sectors for a better tomorrow such as home automation, health tech, social community, B2B SaaS, and Fintech companies.
“The whole idea for Kisho Capital was conceptualized as a rolling fund with investors from few of India’s biggest corporate houses and start-ups who come together both financially and strategically to build the future of Indian start-ups. Our primary focus is to back early stage founders who are not only passionate about solving core user issues but also understand the business and scalability side of things”, says Ankush.
The rolling fund gives Kisho the flexibility to raise a fraction of the total fund and start investing straight away with quarterly/annual commitments from the investors. The investment philosophy is very simple as the focus is on the core team and how complex daily problems are being solved using technology. Kisho is sector agonistic and encourages start-ups from varied fields from banking to insurance to logistics to Health-tech or a D2C Brand, ensuring there is a big enough market size of the sector that an entrepreneur is trying to solve for.
“The opportunity for early stage investing is still in its nascent stages in India given the huge youth population and the brilliant mindsets of the entrepreneurs combined with the never ending on ground issues that exist. A lot of venture funding is still concentrated in the metro cities namely Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru and Mumbai, however, we have witnessed some very successful start-ups coming out of Tier 2 cities and beyond”, says Akshay Chuggani.
Both Akshay and Ankush are seasoned entrepreneurs, and have been part of the Indian start-up ecosystem since the late 2000’s while seeing the online tech industry evolve in India. Apart from angel investments, Ankush is Managing Director, Nijhawan Group/ Co-Founder, Travel Boutique Online, a multi-billion dollar enterprise and one of the largest Online travel agencies.
Akshay, on the other hand, successfully exited and sold his travel start-up to ixigo a few years back. Over the last 3 years, the founders have backed more than 20 start-ups and made successful exits from Dineout, Fleetx, My GreenBox, Qdesq, amongst others, and have seen them grow and scale early stage ventures across industries. Kisho Capital is in a way a fund by Founders, for Founders, of Founders.
Their current mentor board includes Sandeep Dwivedi, COO at InterGlobe Technology Quotient; Sahil Jain, Co-Founder at Dineout; Azhar Iqubal, Co-Founder at inShorts; Pushkar Singh, Founder at LetsTransport; Vikas Bagaria, Founder at PeeSafe; and the Advisor board of Mr Gaurav Bhatanagar, Ishpreet Gandhi and Tripti Singhal.
