Early-stage venture capital fund led by Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, has made the first close of about $32 million (~ ₹ 222 crore) from Azim Premji Foundation, as an institutional investor, and bunch of current and former executives of Flipkart/Myntra, reported Economic Times.
It is said that over a third of the capital raised is coming from half a dozen current and former executives of Flipkart group.
Ruchi Sanghvi, former senior executive at Facebook and Dropbox, along with Aditya Agarwal have also invested in the fund, said the report.
Myntra and Curefit co-founder Mukesh Bansal, MakeMyTrip India CEO Rajesh Magow, PhonePe’s Sameer Nigam and Rahul Chari, Myntra CEO Ananth Narayanan and former Flipkart executive Mekin Maheshwari has joined 021 Capital as limited partners.
Launched in 2017 by Shailesh Tulshan, the personal investment adviser to the Flipkart’s Binny Bansal & Sachin Bansal, 021 Capital (Zero to One) is named after Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel’s book that prods entrepreneurs to focus on radical innovations than on incremental improvements.
While Bansal has backed other venture capital funds including pi Ventures, Blume Ventures and India Quotient in the past, he is closely aligned with 021 given his association with Tulshan. A former wealth manager with Client Associates and HDFC Bank, Tulshan has been advising Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal on their personal investments through his multifamily office Tsai Shen Capital.
021 Capital, which invests up to $2 million each in startups across sectors like biotech, agriculture and internet, has made two investment till date. In February last year, Bengaluru based Pandorum Technologies, which is famous for developing India’s first artificial 3D printed liver tissue, had raised $3.6 million in a series A round from 021 Capital along with Indian Angel Network Fund, 500 Startups and KITVEN fund.
In May last year, YCook, an organic, ready-to-cook processed foods startup based out of Hoskote, Karnataka, raised $5 million from 021 Capital.
Binny Bansal is the largest investor in 021 Capital, which is targeting a final close of $50 million by the end of the year. The fundraising comes at a time when Bansal is ramping up his investment activities after his exit from Flipkart.
Bansal stepped down from Flipkart, now owned by Walmart, as its group CEO and chairman in November last year after a probe was conducted to investigate him on charges of “personal misconduct”. Walmart said those charges weren’t found to be true.
Source: IndianWeb2
