LetsVenture, an early-stage investment platform, has announced a new initiative called LV Fuel where founders, who are a part of their portfolio of startups and have raised funding, want to give back to the ecosystem with capital and non-capital resources.
LV Fuel is an investment syndicate composed exclusively of founders from LetsVenture’s portfolio companies. A statement from LetsVenture said this platform will enable founders to give back to the ecosystem through capital, experience and skills, and empower new founders — from idea to scale-up stages.
Given the massive inflow of capital into the Indian startup ecosystem this year, LV Fuel seeks to differentiate itself with non-capital, value-added support and operator-led experience for new startups.
LetsVenture, initiator of LV Fuel has over 375 startups in its portfolio, with a combined value of over $3 billion
1/ We have worked with 100's of founders & we realised as capital became commoditized, mentorship + support from fellow founders became a challenge for new founders. The giving back economy is booming, but founders wanted more.
Presenting https://t.co/MnJ1STvRJX pic.twitter.com/w104EKzf66
— LetsVenture (@letsventurein) October 21, 2021
LetsVenture has over 375 startups in its portfolio, with a combined value of over $3 billion, and counts companies such as Trell, Khatabook, Classplus, Dukaan, Airmeet, Infeedo, Agnikul Cosmos, Bimaplan, Bobble AI, Aureus Analytics, MyUpchar, Biddano, and Absolute Foods in this list.
LV Fuel initiative is meant to enable founders who have raised over $300 million in capital via LetsVenture and have gone on to have built businesses across sectors.
LV Fuel aims to invest in at least 20 startups initially, and is targetting to onboard 200+ founder-investors in the next two years. The syndicate will look to allocate at least 20 percent of the investments towards women entrepreneurs and founders from Tier-II and III cities in order to provide an opportunity to the wider base of entrepreneurs in the country.
As an investment syndicate, LV Fuel (along with LetsVenture) will make investments ranging from $30,000 to $2 million in startups. The investment platform is both sector and stage agnostic.
On the launch of LV Fuel, Shanti Mohan, Co-founder and CEO, LetsVenture, said, “There were two main drivers for launching LV Fuel. First was a maturing ecosystem where we have a large number of founders who have built scalable businesses and would be the best mentors to new founders. Second is the large number of founders who are now signing up as investors on LetsVenture. Our goal to make private market investing easy and accessible remains key to all our initiatives.”
LV Fuel also offers flexibility to founder-investors to invest in as many startups as they like. As of now, LV Fuel has no cap on the overall number of startups it will invest in.
As a start, LV Fuel is being launched with a cohort of 40-plus founders from the LetsVenture portfolio. The collective capital raised by these founders for their early-stage startups from diverse sectors stands at $50 million, with 50 percent of the founders already having raised growth capital.
