Exclusive: Rohan Malhotra, Partner, Investopad Supports India- specific Businesses that are not copied from other Markets

Investopad is a new-age venture fund which is committed towards providing entrepreneurs everything they need; from product growth, to networking support and even talent development.

They call themselves “a central plug-in to the early-stage technology ecosystem for founders, investors and technology companies”, Rohan told Business Insider that their platform-model helps them build earlier and deeper relationships with the companies before investing.

The partners allow entrepreneurs who they allow have the right skill-set and potential to use their facilities in Delhi, Gurugram and Bengaluru and Rohan says that they only open co-working centers in places which make strategic sense for recruitment and other services that aid the start-ups they are working with. Out of their nine investments, six of them have been sourced though Investopad's studios while the remainder three, though located else have used Investopad's resources or extended network.

The New-Age Model

Owing to many reasons such as Conventional VCs are growing disconnected from strong founder-networks at the early stages and Second-time founders seeking capital from their peers rather than institutional investors, Rohan thinks that early stage investment funds make a lot of sense, “Current investors in the Indian ecosystem don’t operate as more than simple financial allocators which means that a services-centric approach dedicates resources to different areas where value can be created for start-ups.
Next-gen VCs in foreign markets such as Y Combinator have shown that founder communities and in-house services are key to differentiation, access, and success and Investopad is going in that direction.
Networking for Success

Malhotra suggests that networking is everything for the startup ecosystem and he credits his network for the success of Investopad and his 9 investments, 7 of which have gone ahead and raised further rounds.

Calling themselves sector agnostic within technology and generally focus on product companies with enablement, cross-border SaaS or fintech themes, Rohan says that they pounce on opportunity when they see it,”I think the currently VC model of a ten-year long investment is flawed as India companies grow much slowly compared to other developed markets. My brother is good at seeing long term potential of a company and I’m good at ascertaining talent and after much deliberation we choose where to invest our money,” says Rohan, who said that Investopad is looking to announce a bigger corpus of funds with other investors, shortly.
“Early-stage investment are a people-investment business and building relationships from an idea-stage by co-locating potential entrepreneurs, observing their evolving mindset, thinking process and execution capabilities is our forte and we will continue to build on that,” Rohan says confidently introducing his companies.

Investopad has invested in nine companies such as HyperTrack, WitWorks, Meesho, MyPoolin, Wealthy and Snaplion. Alongside investors like Sanjay Kapoor from Airtel fame, Rahul Khanna from Trifecta Capital and Kashyap Deorah, Serial Entrepreneur on their investing team, Investopad is making smart bets on the Indian ecosystem by leveraging the social network and how.