Former Alibaba, Myntra, Patym executives come together for launching a new start-up fund

Key Highlights

Ex E-commerce executives, Sanjay Ramankrishan, Bhushan Patil and Raveen Sastry have joined hands to back a new early-to-growth stage fund, Multiply ventures.

The founders of Multiply ventures have worked for giants such as Alibaba, Paytm and Myntra

The fund primarily will focus on investing with domestic consumption sector. Edtech, Retail and Fintech would be the areas that they will be focusing on.

Ex E-commerce executives, Sanjay Ramankrishan, Bhushan Patil and Raveen Sastry have joined hands to back a new early-to-growth stage fund, Multiply ventures.  This fund has a target corpus of $50 million, with $10 million already been raised via investors. The founders of Multiply ventures have worked for giants such as Alibaba, Paytm and Myntra and have a treasure trove of experience between them. Their expertise will guide the start-up fund in investing in booming businesses across the country.

Sastry, Patil and Ramankrishan have worked with start-ups across India and China for over 2 decades. Sastry has co-founded Myntra whereas, Ramankrishan has worked for e-commerce mammoths such as Myntra and Flipkart. Apart from them, Patil has worked for Paytm and Alibaba.

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Ramankrishan and Sastry have individually each backed up to 30 start-ups till date. These start-ups include banking platform Open, Healthtech firm Mfine, AI start-up Mad Street Den and Agritech venture Gramophone. Patil has quit Paytm last month and has extensive experience in the Chinese market which will be valuable to the start-up fund. They are now looking to back around 30 firms with the means of their new fund in the upcoming 3 years.

In a joint statement issued by them, the founders of the fund stated, they have a unique experience with related to start up ecosystems having worked for big brands like Myntra, Paytm and Flipkart. They have also come to a conclusion based on their time spent in building companies, raising investments from venture capitalists and as angel investors that India needs a funding approach that works for it.

The fund primarily will focus on investing with domestic consumption sector. Edtech, Retail and Fintech would be the areas that they will be focusing on. In a statement Patil said, Edtech sector is booming in India with the growth rate of 55%, while Retail and Fintech markets are still in early stages of progress and offer great business opportunities.  He also claims that the work experience shared by the three founders have helped them know not only the sectors but only consumers in depth.

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Multiply ventures has received a commitment of $10 million so far. The initial backers of the fund include Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder of Paytm, Mukhesh Bhansal who is the co-founder of Myntra and David A Steinberg, CEO of Zeta Interactive. Also, a few Alibaba executives have invested with the fund as well.

The fund is already in the process of screening potential start-ups for their first investments. They are also scouting for more investors in the Indian and Chinese market.

The firm is one of the many early-stage funds that have been started by ex-start-up executives and employees who have worked for big companies. Some examples of this are the BAce Capital which was launched by ex Alibaba executives, Kshitij Karundia, Mulyono Xu and Benny Chen. These executives have closely worked with Indian and Southeast Asian investments for Alibaba. Edwina Yeo and Ravi Venkatesh who have formerly worked for Tiger Global launched Tanglin Ventures as well. 

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