Leo Capital: Supporting Innovation Across Tech Sectors Leo Capital has raised around USD 200 million across three early-stage funds, backing over 50 startups in diverse sectors including B2B SaaS, fintech, blockchain, and healthtech.
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Leo Capital, an early-stage tech-centric venture capital firm, was founded in 2018 by Rajul Garg and Shwetank Verma, later joined by Dinesh Singh and Ravi Srivastava. With investments across India, the USA, Singapore, and Europe, Leo Capital leverages its partners' vast expertise to support founders and limited partners (LPs) empathetically.
Rajul Garg's entrepreneurial journey is noteworthy, having founded fintech unicorn Pine Labs. Following this, he co-founded GlobalLogic, another unicorn, which was later acquired by Hitachi for USD 9.6 billion. After exiting GlobalLogic, he ventured into the education sector with Sunstone, demonstrating his versatility and passion for creating impactful businesses.
Talking about the journey, Garg, Founder and Managing Partner at Leo Capital, says, "After the success of Pine Labs, I started investing as an angel investor around 2011, leveraging my liquidity to support early-stage startups through my extensive network."
After seeing substantial growth in his angel investment portfolio, Rajul realised his entrepreneurial drive could add more value through a structured VC firm.
"As an angel investor, my influence was limited by the equity I held, prompting the inception of Leo Capital to have a more significant impact on startups," says Garg.
Since its inception, Leo Capital has raised approximately USD 200 million across three early-stage funds, supporting over 50 startups in sectors like B2B SaaS, blockchain, consumer internet, fintech, logistics, travel-tech, gaming, real estate, insurtech, healthtech, edtech, and social commerce.
"Recently, we have forayed into the climate-tech space with its investment in the carbon emission audit platform, Sprih," Garg adds.
Focusing on seed and pre-Series A rounds, Leo Capital invests in 20–25 businesses per fund, with amounts ranging from USD 1 million to USD 3 million. The firm also offers capital support for subsequent investment rounds of its portfolio startups through its venture capital network, SPVs (Special Purpose Vehicles), and its fund.
"Our collaboration with founders extends beyond capital support. By leveraging our operator expertise, we assist in their scale-up journey through networking and strategic guidance in areas like GTM planning, product management and distribution, hiring, and other business functions," shares Garg.
"Additionally, with our general partners and network spanning key global markets, we are well-positioned to help founders expand their ventures internationally, offering support in identifying suitable markets for their products and providing the necessary GTM strategy for successful expansion," he adds.
LambaTest, Indiagold, Vahak, Bombay Play, Edureka, and BeatO are some of the Notable investments of Leo Capital.
Looking ahead, Rajul expects global venture funding to remain tight as the year progresses and potentially into 2025 as well.
"We see a very robust environment in India for seed investments and expect that to remain so. Series A and growth stage investments continue to be conservative. We have been consistently investing in 10–12 companies a year since we started and shall continue to do so in 2024," Garg concludes.
Facts:
Portfolio Size: 55
Average Ticket Size: USD 1 Mn to USD 3 Mn
Total Exits: 6 (Indyfin, LogiQ, WayForward, Laminar, Edureka, IPL Electric)
Total Assets Under Management: Around USD 200 Mn across 3 funds
