Tanglin to venture out with startup superstars in tow

BENGALURU: Flipkart cofounder Binny Bansal, Udaan cofounder Sujeet Kumar, Flipkart Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy and Facebook’s Asia Pacific head Dan Neary are among the key investors in Tanglin Venture Partners, a fund founded by former Tiger Global executives Ravi Venkatesh and Edwina Yeo, four people familiar with the development told ET.

With a corpus of $50 million, Tanglin is among a new set of venture funds backed by domestic internet entrepreneurs, a trend that has picked up significantly in the past two years.

The fund, which started operations late last year, will focus on backing early-stage technology startups in India and Southeast Asia. With an average first cheque of $3 million, it will look to invest across 10-12 startups.


“India and Southeast Asia have similar macro outlook and are fastgrowing economies with a population which is rapidly adopting a digital lifestyle. We believe that there’s a massive opportunity for technology to create value through organising unorganised and fragmented sectors, making distribution more efficient by going direct-to-consumer,” Venkatesh told ET.

Venkatesh, Tanglin’s managing partner, declined to disclose names of investors in the fund. “We are targeting a $50-million fund and have raised a significant majority of that from more than 15 marque limited partners or LPs including technology entrepreneurs, institutions and industry leaders,” Venkatesh told ET.

LPs are sponsors of a fund with no direct involvement. Bansal, Kumar, Neary and Krishnamurthy did not comment on their participation in the fund as of press time Monday.

Named after a residential neighbourhood in Singapore, the fund is seeded by Venkatesh and Yeo, who until recently worked in the operating team of Tiger Global, one of the most fervent backers of the India consumer internet story.

FOUNDERS INVESTING IN FUNDS
While backing a fund is one of the riskiest asset classes, venture funds backed by domestic internet entrepreneurs have seen a sharp increase.

Entrepreneurs say investing in funds gives them an indirect exposure to emerging businesses without spending time evaluating companies yet keeping their skin in the game. “If you believe in the macro thesis, a 5% financial portfolio exposure to funds makes sense,” said an entrepreneur who is an investor in two early-stage venture funds.

Entrepreneurs who have invested in venture funds include Binny Bansal, Makemytrip's Deep Kalra, Naukri.com's Sanjeev Bikchandani, TaxiForSure cofounder Aprameya Radhakishna, and a clutch of former Flipkart executives.

Fund managers say that until recently, entrepreneurs did not have many options in terms of venture exposure since most funds had the backing of large institutional limited partners. However, things are changing and there is a growing realisation that entrepreneurs and industry professionals add significant value to early-stage focused funds.

Entrepreneurs give funds an added leverage of deal flow, and market intelligence, which is critical for early stage investing. Some early stage funds backed by entrepreneurs include Chiratae Ventures, Blume Ventures, pi Ventures, Stellaris Venture Partners and Kae Capital.