When Sanjay Nayar, the former KKR India head, announced starting his own early stage venture fund Sorin Investments in 2022, it quickly became the buzz of town. This was in 2022, when the Indian startup ecosystem was already experiencing the bite of the funding winter. Nayar was not discouraged by the market mood.
But it was an unusual move to go from a private equity fund to early stage VC. At that time, Nayar reportedly said startups were incorrectly assuming that VCs were just waiting on the sidelines with dry powder and watching for the right opportunity. It turned out to be more than just temporary caution.
“This aberrant funding came as India’s startup ecosystem was at an inflection point,” Nayar said. His view was that in spite of the slowdown, there existed a gap in the market, which his new venture capital fund would try to bridge.
But Sorin also emerged in the era of micro VCs — in that sense, the INR 1,350 Cr corpus stands out among a sea of smaller funds looking to back innovative niches.
However, Nayar’s vision was always to go beyond capital. Mentorship, deep insights, and a global network are key pillars for Sorin Investments
.
The maiden INR 1,350 Cr fund which was closed last year is something that few early stage funds have at their disposal. Sorin has made seven investments through the fund, with around 35%-40% of the capital already deployed.
When it comes to Series A and B rounds, where Sorin is looking to build its niche, startups are craving capital infusion, particularly those looking to scale up retail and D2C brands, as well as AI startups. Sorin is keenly eyeing this opportunity. So far, it has invested in enterprise AI assistant Beacon, fashion brand The Pant Project, procurement marketplace Venwiz, fintech startup Freed among others.
“We don’t just fund; we build relationships and drive the growth of these businesses,” Mandar Dandekar, partner and founding member of Sorin Investments, told Inc42 in an interview.
Sorin’s vision is to support startups not only with funding but also with hands-on mentorship and give founders a global perspective to help them build at scale and thrive in an increasingly competitive landscape. But given the large corpus of its first fund, naturally Sorin is taking bigger bets than traditional VCs or micro VCs.
“We’re planning to build out the bulk of our portfolio in 2025 and 2026. A majority of our primary capital will be deployed over these two years, with reserves set aside for follow-on investments,” the Sorin Investments partner added.
Dandekar also delved into Sorin’s USP and competitive edge in a crowded early-stage market and how it leverages its corpus bandwidth to identify and back long-term structural tailwinds.
Here are the edited excerpts from the interview:
Inc42: With Sorin Investment’s maiden fund now closed at INR 1,350 Cr, what differentiated your fund thesis in a crowded early-stage VC market and convinced marquee LPs like Henry Kravis and the Munjal family to back you?
Mandar Dandekar: The first thing, of course, is the complementary skill sets within our team—but also the depth and diversity of investing experience across the senior team: Sanjay, Angad, Subir, and myself. That depth gave LPs a lot of comfort.
Secondly, when we went to market in early 2022, our thesis was a bit broader than typical VC funds.
We wanted to invest not just in new-age, tech-enabled businesses, which is the bread and butter for most VCs, but also in services and consumer brands. That differentiated approach is something more VCs are adopting now, but it was our original thesis from the start.
Another key factor was our network in India and globally. During the fundraise, we emphasised how our experience could help portfolio companies acquire clients, hire key team members, and build faster. And we’ve demonstrated this in real time with our existing portfolio. That value-add deeply resonated with LPs.
So overall, it was a combination of our diversified experience, thoughtful strategy, and ability to truly support founders that helped us stand out..
Inc42: The portfolio looks quite diverse. What’s the common thread tying these companies together, and how do they reflect your core investment pillars?
Mandar Dandekar: We are primarily a Series A and B fund. Our first cheque typically ranges from INR 15 Cr (about $2 Mn) to INR 55 Cr or INR 60 Cr (around $7 Mn), depending on the stage. For Series A, we usually invest INR 15 Cr – INR 35 Cr and for Series B, it goes from INR 35 Cr to INR 60 Cr.
We also aim for double-digit ownership because we work very closely with our portfolio companies and want to be active partners in their growth journey.
We are sector-agnostic, but the common thread across them all is the founders. We are very much a founder-first fund. At the stage we invest in, it’s the founder’s vision, clarity, and execution capability that we’re backing.
We look for founders who deeply understand the problem they’re solving, who have unique insights and scalable models to address it. Second is market size as we want to know if they are going after a truly large market or disrupting a massive incumbent one.
Third is product-market fit. How good is the product or tech? Is it easy to adopt? Many great products fail because of friction in adoption—we want that friction to be low.
Finally, we look at whether the founder has the ability to rally top-tier talent, early customers, and future investors around their vision. That storytelling and leadership quality is critical.
Inc42: A lot of funds talk about a ‘founder-centric’ approach; what does it look like for Sorin?
Mandar Dandekar: So what we do is, we obviously take our board roles seriously. Founders use us as a sounding board when they’re thinking about a new initiative, like entering a new geography or starting a new vertical. That kind of debate and discussion happens.
But to be clear, we are not operationally involved. That’s the founders’ domain, and that’s why we are founders-first. We back founders who know what they’re building, who know the industry, who know their business. We are just enablers. We think of our business as a derivative business—our job is to help great founders build large, sustainable companies.
We also help them a lot in terms of hiring. For example, in one of our portfolio companies, we helped hire most of their CXO-level talent. In another portfolio company, we got them 10–15% of their client introductions, and most of those got converted. A lot of our portfolio startups might think about entering new geographies.
So whether it’s brainstorming, thinking through a new initiative, hiring, or connecting them to the next stage of investors. Our network is very strong, both domestic and international, across strategic and financial investors, and we help our portfolio companies tap into that.
Inc42: These days there’s a lot of talk about geopolitics and global trade. Do macroeconomic tailwinds play a role in your investment prioritisation?
Mandar Dandekar: We are long-term investors. We invest with a six to eight-year horizon. These headwinds, they come and go.
What we do is look at whether the headwinds are temporary or long-term. If they’re temporary, that’s fine, we’re in it for the long haul. But we also try to identify long-term structural tailwinds and think about what we should focus on from a sector or thesis point of view.
For example, in sectors like fintech, AI, and consumer brands, those are some we have already invested in, we see long-term tailwinds.
Some are influenced by India’s GDP growth over time; others are influenced by geopolitical developments. For example, from a geopolitical perspective, we believe that manufacturing will have a stronger role in India now than ever before. So that’s a space we’re spending more time in.
- Manufacturing: In this sector, all of our investments are tech-led. Tech can offer non-linear growth and strong operating leverage. Even in manufacturing, things like tariffs are now a hot topic, so we look at how those can influence cross-border import/export workflows and how tech-enabled solutions can improve those workflows.
- Defense & Aerospace: From recent geopolitical shifts, defense and aerospace is one sector where we see nations globally increasing their spending. We are exploring early-stage tech-enabled opportunities in that space.
- Consumer Brands:Then, just from a structural standpoint, India’s GDP per capita is growing and will likely continue to grow. That’s driving consumption. So, for consumer brands, there’s a clear premiumisation wave happening. That’s opening up white spaces across categories.
- AI: And of course, you can’t ignore AI. It’s playing an increasingly active role across sectors. We’re seeing it in healthcare, where AI is driving better diagnostics; in marketing, where it improves conversions; and in analytics platforms, which are becoming self-learning.
In AI services as well—India’s services sector is 4x the size of its software sector, and AI is now making services more efficient. There are definitely opportunities emerging there.
So yes, we look at all these factors, macro, structural, geopolitical and use that to guide how we spend our time and where we double down.
Inc42: With a portfolio spanning diverse sectors, what is your strategy for sharpening your domain expertise in new areas and emerging trends?
Mandar Dandekar: That’s really our job, to spend time learning. That’s what the investment team focuses on every day: building both depth and breadth in our understanding of different sectors and the nuances of various business models. We’ve divided our team by sector, so each person is responsible for going deeper and wider within their focus area.
Once a company becomes part of our portfolio, we connect them with people in our network, and these are folks who’ve already built successful businesses before, so they can offer valuable guidance.
For example, for one of our fintech companies, we brought in someone who helped build one of India’s largest private sector banks. This person has over 30–35 years of experience and is now advising that startup.
That kind of insight really helps shorten the learning and experimentation cycle for the founders. Instead of spending time and resources trying things that might not work, they get grounded, real-world advice.
What we have found is that early-stage founders truly value this kind of experience and guidance, and we’re able to offer it in a very targeted and effective way.
Inc42: We are seeing a rise in micro VCs with sharp sectoral focus and rising fund sizes at the Series A stage. How do you stay competitive against players who have very concentrated bets in one area?
Mandar Dandekar: Micro VCs, by virtue of their smaller fund sizes, can afford to focus on just one or two sectors. I’d call it sector focus more than deep sector expertise.
In our case, with the fund size we manage, we see opportunities across multiple sectors. That’s why we’ve chosen to focus on five or six core areas.
Also, sectors in India often go through cycles — 2015 to 2017 was big for food tech, and demonetisation led to a fintech boom. Then, Covid triggered a D2C wave. So being spread across sectors actually helps us manage risk and tap into different cycles. We spend time understanding each sector deeply and leverage our network and internal expertise to stay competitive in each of them.
Inc42: How are you thinking about exit timelines and what are the expectations from new-age LPs from funds such as Sorin Investments?
Mandar Dandekar: We are still relatively early in our journey. Sorin’s oldest investment is just two years old, so we have time.
But yes, our LPs understand this asset class and its time horizons. At the same time, we want to be prudent and balance their expectations around exits with the need to support our companies through their growth journeys.
We believe it’s a six to eight year journey, helping our companies scale and reach a stage where exits via M&A, secondary sales, or IPOs become viable. Series A companies will naturally need more time; Series B companies might be closer.
That’s also why we’ve consciously included some services and brand-led businesses in the portfolio. Their growth trajectories tend to be more predictable, which helps balance out the portfolio. But at the core, every company we back has a strong tech and product component—we’re playing for alpha through technology.
Inc42: Sorin also has backing from state-run funds like SIDBI; what’s it like working with the government as a limited partner?
Mandar Dandekar: They’ve actually been very helpful and easy to work with. I think they genuinely want to support startups. The companies we invest in fit within the frameworks they want their capital deployed into. And again, they’re aligned with the idea of building large outcomes and companies in India. So, there’s alignment between what they want to achieve, what we pitch to them, and what we continue to do.
Inc42: What is your timeline for raising the second fund?
Mandar Dandekar: We definitely want to build a long-term franchise. Sorin is not just about one fund. While our current focus is on deploying capital and backing great founders for Fund I, we do plan to raise a second fund.
We raised this fund only last year, so the immediate priority is to build out the portfolio thoughtfully. That said, internally, we will probably start Fund II conversations sometime next year, with a view to raise it in early 2027.
Even as we raise the next fund, companies from the maiden fund will still need ongoing support, so our focus will be split between helping our portfolio companies grow, secure good exits, and return capital to LPs. So Fund II focus will be on sourcing, evaluation, and fresh deployment as Fund I matures and moves towards exits.
[Edited by Nikhil Subramaniam]