Early-stage investor Nisarg Shah-led venture capital (VC) firm Kettleborough VC, has launched its maiden fund at $5 million.
The Solo General Partner (GP) Fund has received capital commitments from limited partners (LPs) comprising business owners and startup founders.
The fund - led by 29-year-old Shah – will invest in early-stage technology-centric startups. "An organic capital management with a founder-friendly approach was the idea behind a solo GP fund," Shah told VCCircle in an interaction.
Witha vision of funding 8-10 companies at seed stage over the next 12 months, with a cheque size of $150,000-300,000, Shah says he wants to "avoid unnecessary hierarchy and processes," so as to keep things simpler for startups.
“These things matter a lot at early-stage”.
Kettlebourough has already invested in five companies through this fund so far. These include Zippmat, Zocket and Bytelearn. The fund is closing two more transactions with Info Edge and Kae in the coming month. Additionally, it will also participate significantly in the follow-on rounds of its portfolio companies.
“We build up an independent conviction on founders and the space they want to operate in at ideation or even before that, bring along relevant partners and help the companies see it through,” said Shah.
Shah has previously invested in over 20 startups like Phablecare, Otipy, Homecapital, Onebanc, and Bigspoon, among others, helping them with their initial, zero to one journey. He has partial and full exits in some companies including Finly, Otipy, Hiresure.
The current fund was founded in 2021. Among the pre-fund portfolio, two seed funded companies have a $100 million+ valuation and another two are on track to cross it in the next few quarters, Kettleborough said.
“We have been working with this profile of founders for years now and understand very well on how to co-ideate and be complementary alongside them. Our value-additions range from insights on revenue models to getting upstream investors to enabling business partnerships for the companies,” he added.
He also heads the Startup Committee at Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Associations of India (Credai).
