Budding Entrepreneur's New BFF; Something BIG Is Cooking For Sure!

As India aspires to become the largest startup ecosystem in the world, a group of entrepreneurs has come together to create the Bharat Founders Fund (BFF) to help new startups navigate the early-stage challenges of their companies. It comes as a ray of hope for budding entrepreneurs looking to kickstart their business as BFF will be strategically investing between $1,00,000 to $2,00,000 in pre-seed-stage companies. 

Moreover, as a startup founder, you can reap the double benefit of getting funding as well as mentorship from the doyens in the business. As per reports, as many as 65 founders have to jointly invest in the Bharat Founders Fund making it an excellent stage for new entrepreneurs to flourish.

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What is Bharat Founders Fund?

Bharat Founders Fund is an early-stage venture group of the most successful Indian entrepreneurs globally, comprising Founders who are willing to back and support the future founders building for Bharat.

The fund is being managed by Investopad partners Maanav Sagar and Sera Arora.

“Today, founders and senior operators in a startup have created wealth through either successful exits or employee options (ESOPs) and are actively looking to give back and invest in startups. Bringing these founders together as venture partners will allow Bharat Founders Fund to connect its portfolio companies with senior startup operators which have the experience of taking an idea (or business) from zero to one,” said Sera Arora, one of the Investopad partners in an interaction with ET. “We will continue to be sector agnostic,” he added.

Among the founders who are investing through Bharat Founders Fund, are Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, co-founders of Meesho; Gazal Kalra, co-founder of Rivigo; Cars24 co-founders Vikram Chopra, Mehul Agrawal, and Gajendra Jangid; Smita Deorah and Sumeet Mehta of Lead School; Vamsi Krishna, co-founder of Vedantu; Saurabh Garg, co-founder of NoBroker; Tristha Ramamurthy, Founder, Ekya Schools; Akshay Saxena, Co-founder, Avanti and many more.

More about the Fund

Bharat Founders Fund has already made 20 investments so far, and will typically invest $100,000 to $200,000 on average in various early-stage startups and organizations. The fund, which at present has a corpus of $20 million, is looking to make 100 early-stage investments this year itself. 

“BFF will typically not take a board seat in these companies. However, it will hold the right to appoint a director, if needed,” Arora clarified.

BFF’s current portfolio includes learning platform Yellow Class, jobs platform Skillbee, lending startup Basic, and direct-to-consumer brand BlissClub, among others, according to ET.

“We would like to invest and enter a company as early as possible. The idea is to help these companies get access to the best mentorship and interact with a wide portfolio of our venture partners who have built successful startups,” said Maanav Sagar, one of the Investopad partners. 

Investment, guidance, and Playbooks! 

Any startup, despite being founded on the best idea, optimum market space, or potential customer base can tank due to lack of vision, misreading of the market, or hasty decisions. 

BFF won’t only be providing investment amounts, but it will be there to provide them guidance and vision to become better entrepreneurs and use their resources to the best of their capabilities.

BFF will also be releasing startup playbooks in which they will share tips and tricks to help young startup founders to navigate through challenges.

“There are many entrepreneurs who supported us when we were building Meesho, and now I’m excited to be able to contribute time to give back,” said Vidit Aatrey, cofounder of Meesho. “People who are 36-48 months ahead were always super helpful because they’ve just been through the same challenges."

With a vision to not only provide guidance but to turn investors for budding projects, BFF is definitely a boon to the Indian economy.

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