Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder of Paytm (1), has doubled his investment in the Root Ventures’ debut fund. It is an alternative asset management startup. Japan Vyas, the co-founder of the Root Ventures, while commenting about the latest development, stated that the decision of Vijay Shekhar Sharma to increase his commitments despite the pandemic would help the firm with its fundraising efforts. However, Vyas did not make any comments about the amount committed by Sharma.
Moreover, the investment firm is in advanced discussions with several domestic and international funds and wealth advisory entities for its funding round, stated Vyas. Earlier in August, Roots Ventures had secured 100 crore INR in a debut fund.
Japan Vyas, a co-founder and ex-managing partner of Sixth Sense Ventures, and Ravinder Vashist, his former IDFC colleague, founded Roots Ventures. The firm’s debut fund marked its first closure at 45 Crore INR as soon as it received regulatory approval.
The Investments of Paytm Founder in Root Ventures and Others
Root Ventures has several other critical investors besides Sharma, Paytm Founder. It includes Seedfund’s Pravin Gandhi, Sandeep Kohli, CEO of Yum International for the Indian subcontinent, and Apar Industries’ Kushal and Chintan Desai. Most of its Limited Partners (LPs) are domestic.
Roots Ventures made its debut investment in EM & EM Personal Care Pvt Ltd, an owner of Captain Zack, a pet grooming brand, and Coccoon, a personal care brand, in January 2019. Since its investment, the first has made ten investments in companies such as Just Herbs, an ayurvedic beauty brand, Smytten, premium products discovery platform, TeaMonk, a premium tea brand, Remitr, a payment startup, and Kaarya Naturals, a healthy food company.
Paytm founder has made several bets on a few venture capital funds besides directly making personal investments in startups. The most recent funding was on Arkam Ventures, a VC firm of Helion Venture Partners and Kalaari Capital. He had also launched an environmental protection fund, Massive Fund, worth a 150 million USD in June 2018.
