Venture Catalysts, a multi-stage venture investing firm, has raised INR 150 crore (about $18 million) by selling a mix of new and existing shares.
The new share sale valued the company at around $200 million after the investment, according to cofounder and MD Apoorva Ranjan Sharma. In addition, some old shareholders sold their shares directly to new investors through separate deals at prices they agreed on.
This $200 million valuation applies only to Venture Catalysts as a company, not to the investment funds it manages.
The funding round brought in public market veterans, corporates, and family offices, including Bollywood names, Sharma said. New investors include Ashish Kacholia and group, Authum Investments, Shah Rukh Khan’s family office, Aishwarya Rai, Karthik Sundar Iyer (Twentyfirst Century Management Services), Hardik Patel (Finquest), and LNB Group.
Some of Venture Catalysts’ existing investors also took part in this round. These include Radhakishan Damani (DMart), Kamal Agarwal (Haldiram), Enam Securities, Capri Global, and startup founders like Aman Gupta (boAt), Ritesh Agarwal (OYO), Nirmit Parikh (Apna), and Srinath Ramakkrushnan (Zetwerk).
The new funds will be used to build a stronger leadership team, launch new investment funds, and add AI-based tools to make due diligence and reporting for investors more efficient.
Founded in 2016 as an angel network, Venture Catalysts now operates through angel AIFs for deal-by-deal syndication and also runs a venture capital arm that creates Category II AIFs with fund managers and institutional partners.
Venture Catalysts manages more than $500 million through its funds. Over the past nine years, it has invested about $200 million by pooling money from ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNIs), high-net-worth individuals (HNIs), and family offices.
“Our primary focus has been picking up companies very early on. Through fund structures, we have also entered into growth stages, because that’s the way it can be done in India,” said Sharma. “This fresh capital will deepen active deal flow, seed new fund strategies and enhance the technology backbone that supports our ecosystem—particularly AI-driven solutions that enable investors and founders to collaborate at speed and scale,” said Venture Catalysts cofounder Anuj Golecha.
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