In a growing trend of entrepreneurs turning into venture capitalists, fintech veteransPine Labs CEO Amrish Rau and neobank Jupiters co-founder Jitendra Gupta have joined angel investor Sweta Rau to launch White Venture Capital with a corpus of $40 million. While Gupta and Amrish Rau, who earlier cofounded Citrus Pay that was acquired by Naspers in 2016, will serve as limited partners and advisors in White Venture, Sweta Rau will be its sole portfolio manager. The three have pumped $15 million of their own in the fund. White Ventures LPs also include Sequoia Capital India, one of its largest sponsors. Japan’s Credit Saison, TVF Capital, Hummingbird Ventures, and Cred founder Kunal Shah are among other names that have backed the fund.
While White Venture is a fintech-focused fund, Sweta Rau mentioned it has stored 30% of the fund open for investments in non-fintech startups too. “For any company or founder we like and feel they are building good companies and we can add value, we will back them,” she instructed ET.
It will write cheques of wherever between $250,000 and $1 million and double down on its finest performing bets with follow-on cheques totaling investments to the tune of $3-5 million, she mentioned.
“We have been angel investing for five years and realized that founders need help on basic questions like, should they go with one idea over the other, or about the timing of fundraise also,” Sweta Rau mentioned. “We thought we can be a part of their journey by institutionalizing what we were doing… This will also enable us to write bigger cheques (compared to personal investments) and be with them for a longer period of time.”
FinTech veterans launch white venture firm
