Entrepreneur First (EF), which helps individuals build companies from scratch, said it expects to increase its pace of investments as it appointed a new India head.
The firm has named former Swiggy-executive Rahul Samat as Partner and India Head to lead the business and operations in the country. He joins after six years at Swiggy, where he created and grew the foodtech’s private brands business.
The UK-based early stage firm will now commit $75,000 in each startup from $55,000 it invested previously. EF, which invests in pre-idea and pre-team stage companies, will also double its average annual investments in the country from 15 to 30 every year, Samat told VCCircle in an interaction.
In addition to access to capital, EF will also provide access to a global network of over 60 industry experts and advisors.
“India possesses one of the world’s great talent pools, with some of the world’s best technical education, and a technology sector estimated to be worth $1 trillion by 2030,” said Samat. “To realize the potential of India’s talent pool in the coming years, early-stage investment has to transform into early-stage support.”
Since its inception in India in 2019, EF has invested in 45 startups in the country including the likes of LightSpeedAI Labs, Healium digital healthcare, BrainSightAI among others.
EF runs programmes across Europe, Asia and North America that enable entrepreneurs to meet like-minded co-founders, develop startup ideas, build businesses from scratch and secure funding from leading investors. It is backed by tech founders including Patrick and John Collison of Stripe, Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, Tom Blomfield of GoCardless and Monzo, Sara Clemens of Pandora and Twitch, Nat Friedman of GitHub and Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress.
“I’m excited that Entrepreneur First is doubling down on India. The Indian startup ecosystem has already seen real success, but the best is yet to come,” Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, said in a statement.
“By investing further in the region, EF is going to play a key role in supercharging its growth. The next generation of Indian talent has the potential to build the iconic companies of tomorrow,” he added.
