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Indian unicorn founders band together to launch Bharat Founders Fund

By Viestories
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Maanav Sagar and Sera Arora of Bharat Founders Fund
Maanav Sagar and Sera Arora of Bharat Founders Fund

Founders and senior executives of several companies including Unicorn have come together to launch Bharat Founders Fund (BFF) which will invest in pre-seed-stage startups.

About 66 founders and senior executives will invest in this through the Bharat Founders Fund, including Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, co-founders of Meesho; Cars24 cofounders Vikram Chopra, Mehul Agrawal, and Gajendra Jangid; Gazal Kalra, co-founder of Rivigo; Vamsi Krishna, co-founder of Vedantu; Smita Deorah and Sumeet Mehta of Lead School; Saurabh Garg, co-founder of NoBroker.

Bharat Founders Fund (BFF) which has made 20 investments so far, will typically invest an average of $100,000 to $200,000 in various early-stage startups and companies that are still in the consideration stage.

These funds are 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, We will continue to be sector agnostic”, said, Sera Arora.

Arora also said that BFFs usually will not take board seats in these companies. However, it will hold the right to appoint a director, if required.

Bharat Founders Fund’s current portfolio includes learning platform YellowClass, jobs platform Skillbee, lending startup Basic, and more startups like D2C brand BlissClub.

“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.

“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. People who are 36-48 months ahead were always super helpful because they’ve just been through the same challenges”, said, Vidit Aatrey, co-founder of Meesho.

Founders investing in BFF will release a startup playbook in which they share strategies to help budding entrepreneurs meet the challenges they face, according to The Economic Times.