Amit Srivastava, a former investor at Ray Dalio's Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, has teamed up with LetsVenture’s Shanti Mohan, former Info Edge executive Vivek Khare, and Silicon Valley-based Gagan Saksena to launch SamVed, an early-stage venture capital fund aiming for a $50 million corpus.
The fund will focus on supporting startups across sectors like financial services, healthcare, agritech, ecommerce, upskilling, and more, all aimed at serving India Two—the middle-income demographic.
The firm plans to invest between $80,000 and $120,000 in early-stage startups, and between $250,000 and $1 million in pre-Series A rounds.
SamVed, which has already invested in three startups, aims to achieve the first close of its inaugural fund at $20 million by March. The fund has backed ventures developing solutions for unorganized food vendors, a company creating smart vending machines for tier-II and tier-III cities, and a software platform for textile businesses.
“As a group, we have been co-investing for several years, and our goal has been that we want to think about economic opportunities in India Two, which is the middle-income aspiring cohort,” Srivastava, who is the firm’s managing partner. Mohan, Khare and Saksena are general partners at the firm.
He noted that this represents a middle class of 400 million people and an "aspirational population" of 750 million.
SamVed’s launch coincides with a period when venture capital investors are raising substantial funds to support Indian startups. These include Accel’s $650 million fund, Stellaris Venture Partners, which closed a $300 million early-stage investment vehicle, as well as firms like IvyCap Ventures and Sorin Investments, which have also closed their funds in the past year.
Notably, despite the increasing trend of domestic investors supporting Indian startups, SamVed is headquartered in the US.
“More domestic capital should be coming in… but at the same time there is desire for global capital to come into India. India is a very good diversifier for global investors… and the fund is providing access to that capital pool to India’s economic opportunity,”
Srivastava added that the fund’s limited partners, or sponsors, would include US-based family offices, senior corporate executives with technical and financial expertise, and founders who have successfully exited their startups.
“India’s growth trajectory presents unparalleled opportunities for startups to drive meaningful change and create scalable businesses,” Srivastava said. “We aim to go beyond traditional investing to shape the next decade of innovation, delivering both economic and social impact.”
Mohan, founder of the angel investment platform LetsVenture, explained that the fund is structured to be driven by operators, including an in-house CTO (Saksena), who will collaborate closely with portfolio companies on their technology functions.
“The intent here is to execute by looking at what’s the latest in tech that’s happening in the US, and bring it to startups here… something that will help them scale up rapidly and build technology,” Mohan said.
