LV Fuel will enable LetsVenture founders to give back to the ecosystem via capital, experience & skills and empower new founders from idea to scale up stages.
LetsVenture, India’s leading early stage investment platform , today announced the launch of LV Fuel, an Investment Syndicate composed exclusively of Founders from LetsVenture’s portfolio companies. The 375+ strong portfolio company has a total portfolio value of $3 bn plus and counts Trell, Khatabook, Classplus, Dukaan, Airmeet, Infeedo, Agnikul Cosmos, Bimaplan, Bobble AI, Aureus Analytics, MyUpchar, Biddano, Absolute Foods and more as part of its portfolio.
LV Fuel, comes at the backdrop of founders having raised over $300 mn in capital via LetsVenture and have gone on to have built businesses across sectors which has created wealth & employment opportunities in thousands.
LV Fuel will enable LetsVenture founders to give back to the ecosystem via capital, experience & skills and empower new founders from idea to scale up stages. With capital increasingly becoming commoditized across India’s startup ecosystem, Indian founders are seeking non-capital value added support, and operator-led experience from the ecosystem to scale their businesses in the new normal. With over $1bn+ invested in early stage startups in India in 2021 alone, founders are powering a new wave of economic growth by turning investors and choosing to allocate their wealth and experience in startups.
Leveraging this trend to accelerate the growth of the early stage startup ecosystem, LV Fuel aims to invest in at least 20 startups initially and is targeting to onboard 200+ founder-investors in the next 2 years. The syndicate will look to allocate at least 20% of the investments towards women entrepreneurs and founders from Tier 2 and 3 cities in order to provide an opportunity to the wider base of entrepreneurs in the country.
As an investment syndicate, LV Fuel (along with LetsVenture) will make investments from USD 30K to USD 2 Mn in the startups and is both sector and stage agnostic. LV Fuel also provides the flexibility to the founder-investors to invest in as many startups as they like. As of now, LV Fuel has no cap on the overall number of startups it will invest in.
LV Fuel launches with a cohort of 40+ founders from LetsVenture portfolio. The collective capital raised by these founders for their early stage startups stands at 50mn USD, with 50% of the founders already having raised growth capital ( Series A & beyond). These founders come from diverse backgrounds such as HealthTech, Ed-tech, FinTech, Creator Economy, Gaming, D2C, Agritech, Retail, SaaS to name a few.
Commenting on the launch of LV Fuel, Shanti Mohan, Co-founder & CEO, LetsVenture, said- “There were 2 main drivers for launching LV Fuel. First was a maturing ecosystem where we have a large number of founders who have built scalable businesses and would be the best mentors to new founders. Second is the large number of founders who are now signing up as investors on LetsVenture. Our goal to make private market investing easy and accessible remains key to all our initiatives.
Tie the two drivers together and we have an invaluable community of Founder-Investors. Having a founder be part of the captable is the best capital a new founder can ask for – the empathy, understanding and friendship is extremely invaluable.
Shanti also added “We maintain that seed rounds will change from Friend and Family to Friend, Family and Founders! LV Fuel wants to fuel this by being a partner in a founder’s wealth creation journey – be it capital raise or capital investing”.
These founder-investors will extend their support to startups in multiple aspects including technical advisory, mentoring, business continuity assistance, providing CXO connections across industries for growth & partnerships. LetsVenture will also play a significant role in the process by supporting these startups with a host of benefits from infrastructure credits, opportunity to become a founder-investor in LV Fuel, marketing support when needed, VC connections for follow on rounds and more.
“LV Fuel provides an opportunity for like minded entrepreneurs to help in the journey of other founders as well as pay it forward. LV also lowered the commitment amount which enabled us to participate. I really believe in the Bharat story and LV Fuel has also allowed me to see how other founders are approaching this market and be a part of their journey” says Rajat Garg, CEO, MyUpchar.
“As founders we always get intrigued towards solving a massive problem and turning it into huge value for all related stakeholders but unfortunately we can’t while focussing on our own startup. LV Fuel has given us an opportunity to have a skin in the game with just a nominal investment for all those ideas where we would have probably worked ourselves” says Ankit Prasad, CEO, Co-founder, Bobble AI.
Being India’s largest platform for private market investing, with experienced founders coming from diverse sectors, LV Fuel aims to encourage new founders in achieving faster growth, and institutionalising processes with a founder friendly approach to scale their startups sustainably.
Source: Business World
