Having seen first-hand how fragile businesses could become without discipline, I felt a responsibility to put my learning into practice. The idea wasn’t just to create a fund, but to build a proper institution; one that placed governance, transparency and rigorous board engagement at the very core.
The idea was to build an institution. Now we have ₹1,400 crore of capital. We are backed by KKR partners, by my family, by the [Harindarpal Singh] Banga family, HNIs [high-networth individuals] and Sidbi [Small Industries Development Bank of India]. So, we have a good, institutionalised pool of capital and 22 investors.
We want to be able to work with the founders who need and appreciate the help we’re able to give them. This is a very initial phase of value-added PEs and VCs being born in India. This local industry is still in the first phase. GPs [general partners] like Avana Capital, Fireside Ventures, Blume and Fundamentum have come up over the last decade.
