Fintech fund White Venture Capital launches programme to help executives start up
The Economic Times, 10 November 2022
White Venture Capital, a fintech focused fund floated by industry veterans Amrish Rau and Jitendra Gupta along with angel investor Sweta Rau, has launched a new programme, ‘Call to Adventure’, to help industry executives and aspiring entrepreneurs launch startups.
As a part of the programme, White Venture Capital will help these industry executives and aspiring entrepreneurs connect with other founder networks, provide mentorship and hand-holding to kick start their entrepreneurial journeys, and make an equity investment worth $500,000 in the startups.
The venture backer will be choosing 4-6 ideas as part of the first batch, Sweta Rau, founder and general partner of White Venture Capital, told ET. The fund has dedicated a corpus of up to $3 million for investments, as a part of the programme.
“Even in our portfolio companies (as angel investors), which have driven maximum returns for us, we saw industry executives initially being very hesitant to startup and needing a sounding board to validate their ideas. Today, these 4-5 investments have become very successful,” Sweta Rau told ET. “Hence, we thought of starting this programme, and formalising it, which will give entrepreneurs the right confidence to start. Also, during a downturn, we see the best entrepreneurial talent come out.”
“As part of the programme, our first cheque will take care of initial expenses for these executives starting up. We will primarily be focused on the fintech ecosystem as a part of ‘Call to Adventure’, but will also look at other areas of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and consumer technology,” she added. “Once they have built their products, we will be happy to introduce them to other investors who also are our LPs (limited partners) or make follow-on investments.”
Strong track record
As angel investors, Gupta, Amrish and Sweta Rau have funded over 100 companies, including fintechs such as Cred, M2P Fintech, Open, DotPe, Khatabook and gaming firm Mobile Premier League, which have delivered strong returns for them.
The trio announced the launch of White Venture Capital in January, with a corpus of $40 million to back early-stage fintech startups in India and Southeast Asia, while helping them with the necessary mentorship.
Since its launch, White Venture Capital has already made 12 investments and deployed roughly $4.9 million behind these bets. Two of these investments are startups in the Southeast Asian region.
White Venture Capital has reserved almost 20-30% of the corpus for non-fintech investments across SaaS and consumer tech opportunities.
The fund is looking to make at least 8-9 investments in 2023, and will continue to write cheques in the range of $500,000 to $1 million.
White Venture Capital’s backers
The husband-wife duo of Amrish and Sweta Rau, along with Gupta, have pumped $15 million of their own capital into the fund. Other backers of White Venture Capital include Sequoia Capital India, Japan’s Credit Saison, TVF Capital, Beenext, and Cred founder Kunal Shah, among others.
“When you have that burning desire to build a startup, all that you require is someone to show the path,” said Amrish Rau, who is also the chief executive of Pine Labs, in a LinkedIn post about the new programme.
Gupta and Amrish Rau had earlier cofounded Citrus Pay, which was acquired by Naspers in 2016.
