A unicorn is a privately held startup which is valued at $1 billion or more.
Among the close to 65 founders who are investing through Bharat Founders Fund are Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, cofounders of Meesho; Gazal Kalra, cofounder of Rivigo; Cars24 cofounders Vikram Chopra, Mehul Agrawal and Gajendra Jangid; Smita Deorah and Sumeet Mehta of Lead School; Vamsi Krishna, cofounder of Vedantu; and Saurabh Garg, cofounder of NoBroker.
BFF, which has already made 20 investments till date, will typically invest $100,000 to $200,000 on an average in various early-stage startups and companies which are still at the idea stage.
The fund, which at present has a corpus of $20 million, will be rolling in nature and look to make 100 early-stage investments this year alone.
The fund is being managed by Investopad partners Maanav Sagar and Sera Arora.
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“Today, founders and senior operators in a startup have created wealth through either successful exits or employee options (ESOPs) and are actively looking to give back and invest in startups. Bringing these founders together as venture partners will allow Bharat Founders Fund to connect its portfolio companies with senior startup operators which have the experience of taking an idea (or business) from zero to one,” said Arora in an interaction with ET. “We will continue to be sector agnostic.”
Arora said BFF will typically not take a board seat in these companies. However, it will hold the right to appoint a director, if needed.
BFF’s current portfolio includes learning platform Yellow Class, jobs platform Skillbee, lending startup Basic, and direct-to-consumer brand BlissClub, among others.
“We would like to invest and enter a company as early as possible. The idea is to help these companies get access to the best mentorship and interact with a wide portfolio of our venture partners who have built successful startups,” said Sagar.
Along with investment and guidance, founders who are venture partners at BFF will release startup playbooks in which they will share tactics to help emerging entrepreneurs navigate through challenges.
“There are many entrepreneurs who supported us when we were building Meesho, and now I’m excited to be able to contribute time to give back,” said Vidit Aatrey, cofounder of Meesho. “People who are 36-48 months ahead were always super helpful, because they’ve just been through the same challenges.”
