Kettleborough VC, the solo General Partner (GP) firm founded by early-stage investor Nisarg Shah, has announced the launch of its second fund with a target corpus of ₹80 crore. The firm has already achieved the first close at ₹35 crore, with commitments from a network of family offices and entrepreneurs across India and the United States.
Founded in 2021, Kettleborough VC is known for its conviction-led approach to investing at the inception stage—specifically focusing on founders with over a decade of industry experience. The firm eschews broad-based seed investing in favor of what it terms the “last straw moment”, where experience, insight, and networks align to catalyze a founder’s next big venture.
“We are extremely disciplined about backing execution journeys only,” said Nisarg Shah. “Fund I has shown a clear product-market fit for this thesis—tracking nearly 2x in just about three years from final close—and we are now doubling down with Fund II.”
Fund II will write initial seed cheques between $300,000 and $500,000 (₹2.5 crore to ₹4.2 crore), with meaningful follow-on investments earmarked for high-performing portfolio companies. The sector-agnostic fund will continue to favor “Dhandha-first” businesses in domains like financial services (NBFCs, insurance, fintech infra), full-stack commerce (B2B platforms and consumer brands), and vertical SaaS, particularly those leveraging agentic AI.
Kettleborough’s Fund I backed 12 startups including Zippmat, InPrime, Finhaat, Elivaas, Sumosave, and Gravity—nine of which received their first institutional cheques from the firm. Several of these companies have gone on to secure follow-on rounds from leading VCs like Omnivore, Lightspeed, 3one4 Capital, and Bessemer Venture Partners.
As Fund I approaches full deployment and eyes its first exits, Shah—who has personally invested in over 30 startups with 10 exits—continues to champion a high-conviction, low-velocity investment strategy. With Fund II, Kettleborough aims to back around 10 companies that align with its tightly defined thesis, placing an emphasis on execution-ready founders building high-trust, scalable businesses from day one.
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