First Cheque

“First fund itself was putting 10 lakh rupees in every company, but because of the angel list syndicate, we were doing anywhere from 25 lakh to 50 lakh. 50 lakh was the average check size in the first fund.”

“About five companies are shut down already, and it's possible that I mean, we fully expect a lot more will, because at pre-seed, we are taking the highest class of risk.”

“We decided, okay, let's, let's, you know, try and set up a fund which basically backs founder angels and then let those founder angels pick companies for the fund, and the fund will basically just invest with them wherever they do. So that is how India, that i…”

“If a venture partner knows the founder, then we'll still do the deal, even if it's a competing company, because as I said, we are investing at pre-seed, right? So the market and team is what is important to us, not the current product.”

“First check as a fund will still do 30, 40 deals a year.”

“Effectively all hundred deals have been done with a VP, but I would say about 70% were sourced by them. 30% would have come from our network.”

“So I would say Jeeva. Jeeva is doing really, really well. It's a DTC silver jewelry brand. Fashions are doing really, really well. It's a BtoB marketplace for the fashion supply chain. Then FleetX is doing really well. It's a SaaS company which enables fleet o…”

“Yes, I think, I would say we see three to five, 500 deals a month, roughly. 300 to 500 deals a month is what we see, so it's in the same ballpark as what you said.”

“Ah, but even then, what we see is that, like, a VC round, VC seed round is typically happening at, say, A one and a half to three million dollar raise was happening at a 10 to fifteen million, sometimes twenty million valuation. But people who only have this p…”

“If the deal has come through a venture partner, and if the venture partner knows the founder, right, and is watching for the founder, then we will almost blindly invest. Then it doesn't even, like, as long as it's a VC fundable space, we'll go ahead and invest…”

“If you look at the first score, the first 32 deals we did out of those 20 21 have raised follow on rounds now. If you look at our second cohort, which is the next sort of 3035 deals we did out of those 12 13 I've raised follow on rounds and out of the last coh…”

“The average size right now we are doing is about a 100,000 dollars. So about for 75 lakhs is what we are deploying per company.”

“Because most pre-seed investments, the team pivots after a while, they'll, you know, find adjacent ideas. They'll, they'll, they won't even be doing what you thought they'll be doing when you invest.”

“We've backed almost a hundred companies now through the first fund.”

“Like at least half of them are pre-product. And almost all are pre-revenue.”

“Category A is first time founders. Younger folks, you know, free product deals where the risk is significantly higher. Those deals we don't do beyond two, three million evaluation. Three is also a bit on the higher side. Usually it's around two million.”