Groww Cofounders To Launch ₹500 Cr Fund To Back Consumer, Deeptech Startups

Discount brokerage Groww’s cofounders are planning to launch a second fund with a target corpus of ₹400 Cr to ₹500 Cr to back seed and early-stage startups.

A report by ET, citing sources, said the fund will back ventures in the consumer internet and deeptech sectors.

Groww’s cofounders – CEO Lalit Keshre, CFO Ishan Bansal, COO Harsh Jain, and CTO Neeraj Singh – will serve as the fund’s general partners. It will be funded entirely through the cofounders’ personal capital, with no plans to bring in external limited partners.

The fund will operate under the Stargazer AIF, which was first launched by the founders in 2023 to formalise their angel investment strategy. This is now being expanded further, with a small team being set up to handle sourcing, due diligence, and portfolio management under the founders’ supervision, the report added.

The fund is expected to deploy its corpus over the next two to three years and write larger cheques than its predecessor. Stargazer’s inaugural fund had a corpus of ₹65 Cr, with a maximum ticket size of ₹5 Cr.

Through the first fund, the cofounders backed startups like premium ecommerce platform FirstClub, fashion quick commerce startup Zilo, voice AI platform Ringg AI, Ai-native regtech startup OnFinance AI,, healthcare startup Octolife and nanorobotics startup Theranautilus.

While the new vehicle is expected to continue backing consumer internet startups, it will also increase its focus on deeptech startups, particularly those building in AI and other frontier technologies.

Notably, Groww’s cofounders and other promoter entities sold company’s shares worth around ₹270 Cr in May this year. At the time, sources told Inc42 that the cofounders planned to use the capital to invest in startups and pursue personal philanthropic initiatives.

The planned fund comes at a time when successful startup founders are increasingly institutionalising their investment activities through dedicated funds and investment platforms.

Zerodha cofounders Nikhil and Nithin Kamath have backed startups across sectors such as fintech, climatetech and healthtech through Rainmatter. Other founders like CRED’s Kunal Shah, Eternal’s Deepinder Goyal, Flipkart’s Binny Bansal, Myntra’s Mukesh Bansal, Lenskart’s Peyush Bansal and OYO’s Ritesh Agarwal are also active startup investors.

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