Axilor Ventures

Where Capital Meets Conviction 🚀 India’s venture market isn’t short on capital. It’s short on rooms where capital can speak freely. On 21 August in Bengaluru, MoneyX Dialogues by Inc42 & IDFC FIRST Bank, powered by Rukam Capital, will convene 30 LPs, family offices, HNIs, angels & VCs for a closed-door exchange, no stage, no media, no distractions. We’ll be unpacking: ▶️ Early-stage deployment post reset ▶️ Hybrid and non-dilutive capital structures ▶️ Secondaries, continuation vehicles & liquidity design ▶️ Pricing risk across India’s next consumption wave Some Of The Investors & Leaders Joining Us: ♦️ Anant Vidur Puri, Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners ♦️ ANKUR DUBEY, Principal, Capria Ventures ♦️ Bhavesh K Jatania, Head of Startup Banking at IDFC FIRST Bank ♦️ Gaurav Gulati, Founder & Managing Partner, Aroa Venture Partners ♦️ Gaurav Ranjan, Principal, Prime Venture Partners ♦️ Karthik Prabhakar, Managing Partner, PeerCapital ♦️ Navin Honagudi, Managing Partner, Elev8 Venture Partners ♦️ Prachi Sinha, Principal, Axilor Ventures ♦️ Shanti Mohan, Founder & CEO, LVX ♦️ Shiva Shanker, Partner, Ankur Capital Fund + 20 more investors joining us! If your mandate is built on clarity, not consensus, this is the circle that moves before the market does. Apply for Invite → http://4-2.co/4mqwq4O

Should entrepreneurs raise money? While transitioning out of Innovaccer, this was one of the top questions on my mind. My VC friends quipped: "Depends. What do you need the money for?" In healthcare, many of our ideas stem from deep emotional conviction instead of logic. I was building something I was deeply passionate about, but there was a likelihood that it might not scale due to lack of a viable business model. VCs are experts at evaluating and betting on businesses even when they are just ideas.They meet entrepreneurs day in and day out. They learn from their investments and from the ones they passed. So I was curious:  - Could I get more validation for my business?    - Could I find potential idea killers that were in my blind spots? This became my “why” to raise money (at least initially). So I decided to reach out. I chose cold outreach instead of network introductions.  I carefully tailored each message with just a sentence or two, enough to describe my business and enough to get them excited to want to meet. 200 DMs sent. 70 meetings scored. These initial meetings taught me something valuable about raising money from VCs:  You don't need a pretty deck to raise money. They didn't care about the format of pre-reads (mine was a four-page idea dump), but they always took the time to read it and arrived at the meetings prepared with insightful questions. My initial meetings often involved answering investor questions, which I meticulously recorded to update my FAQ document. This FAQ ended up being a great repository of things I didn't know about my startup, things I would have otherwise discovered along the way. There were follow-up meetings with 32 of them, and a follow-up to that with about 21. Like most first-time entrepreneurs, we thought we were nailing this. And then, the rejections started to pour in:  “We’d like to sit out of this round” “Not so sure about your product thesis” “We don't think the gross margins will hold.” But, it was easy to spot the ones willing to go the distance with us. We had three of them. - The first returned within two days of the initial meeting and expressed full commitment to our thesis, ready to send a check ASAP, regardless of others’ participation. - The second deconstructed our business in the very first meeting and concluded with a polite, “So how do we participate in this round?” - The third sketched our business model on the whiteboard and articulated it better than we ever did ourselves. This announcement is long overdue, but it gives me immense pleasure to announce that we raised our seed round from Axilor Ventures, Vertex Ventures SE Asia & India and Sparrow Capital to build Lenity Health. Ben Mathias, Himanshu Jain, Aakash Goyal, Yash Jain, Prachi Sinha, Kanika Mayar

Portfolio News | Fluxgen raises a $3.6 Mn in Pre Series A funding 🚀 🙌 We are thrilled to double down on our partnership with FluxGen in their Pre Series A round led by IAN's Alpha Fund. We led their seed round in 2023 on the back of an emerging thesis in the industrial water management space. The company has since doubled year on year and signed up an impressive roster of over 110 Enterprise Customers, most of whom have seen a 30%+ improvement in water usage efficiency.  This new funding will empower Fluxgen to expand globally, enhance predictive capabilities within their product, and continue driving innovation in sustainable water management. Congratulations to Ganesh Shankar, Emanuel Deepak and the entire team at Fluxgen! 👏 #watertech #sustainability #Fluxgen IAN Group (formerly Indian Angel Network) | Rainmatter by Zerodha | Axilor Ventures | Arali Ventures | Intersection Ventures IN | Force Ventures LLP | Nandan Venkatachalam  

Congrats to Vaishali Kulkarni, Arjun Bajwa and the KBCols Sciences Pvt. Ltd. (Official Account) team!

#2: Transforming the Automotive Sector through Industry 4.0 The 2nd series of our roundtables with The Economic Times in #Chennai & #Delhi focused on the transformative impact of industry 4.0 on the automative sector. As technology reshapes the automotive landscape, CIOs play a vital role in driving innovation in autonomous vehicles, tech-heavy EVs, and new mobility services. Joining us for the roundtable were Sumit Bhatnagar (ANAND Group India), Supriya Kaul (CNH), Ankit Kumar (Action Construction Equipment Ltd.), Avra Banerjee (SwitchOn), Ganesh Shankar (FluxGen), Srivats Ram (Wheels India Limited), Suresh Mahadev (Renault Nissan Technology & Business Centre India), Jayakumar G (Valeo), Prashant K. (Shriram Pistons & Rings Ltd.), Gaurav Johri (Doppelio), Sanjay Nagpal (PMI Electro Mobility Solutions Private Limited) and Aniruddha Banerjee (SwitchOn) Thanks to everyone who participated in the roundtable and helped shed light on some very insightful points on the following topics; - Revving up India as a hub for tech-centric automobiles. - Shifting from manufacturing to R&D for automotive innovation. - Innovating data capabilities for future products and services. - Creating new markets through technology. - Enhancing partnerships to support the ‘Make in India’ initiative. - The evolution of software-driven vehicle design. - Responding to changing consumer needs with purpose-driven vehicles. - The impact of AI, ML, and digital twins on user-centric design. Axilor Ventures The Economic Times Nandan Venkatachalam

#1: Building Resilient Supply Chains for Auto The 1st series of our roundtables with The Economic Times in #Chennai & #Delhi were focused around emerging opportunities in automotive supply chains. As the automotive industry evolves, especially with the rise of electric vehicles (#EVs), companies face critical decisions to enhance their supply chains. Through the discussion, we were able to discuss this in detail along with the following points; - Future Resilience: Strategies for robust supply chains. - Global OEM Opportunities: Leveraging market potential in 2W and 4W sectors. - Startup Innovation: Enhancing operational efficiencies. - China+1 Strategy: Expanding Indian market presence. - Adapting to EV Demand: Shifting supply chains to meet consumer preferences. - Maximizing Stakeholder Value: Key factors for success in new models. - Engaging Tier 2 & 3 Suppliers: Building direct relationships for better outcomes. Thank you to everyone who contributed to this discussion, adding valuable insights that are vital as we work towards creating adaptable and resilient automotive supply chains. Keerthi Prakash VM (Renault Nissan Automotive India Pvt Ltd), Muthu Maruthachalam.C (Daimler India Commercial Vehicles), Ramanan Ranganathan (TVS Supply Chain Solutions), Ganesh Mani S (Ashok Leyland), Rajesh Raghavan (Rane Group), Pulkit Baldev (Metalbook), Mohit Jauhari (Shriram Pistons & Rings Ltd.), KULDEEP SINGH (Kinetic Green), Amit Tyagi (Marelli), Aman Tibrewal (Metalbook), JASPREET SINGH (WIZ), Pradeep Ghai (BAXY | Mobility), Ramkumar Ramachandran (WIZ) The Economic Times Axilor Ventures Nandan Venkatachalam

Axilor Ventures partnered with The Economic Times to host an exclusive series of roundtables with 30+ CXOs from across the ET 500 companies. In a series of 7 round tables in over 3 months across Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru, CXOs were brought together to discuss new age disruptions and emerging opportunities across the Automotive & GCC sectors. Through the events, we explored aspects critical to; - Building Resilient Supply Chains for Auto - Leveraging Industry 4.0 in Auto and - Nurturing the Talent Pool and addressing Employee Experiences for GCCs Thank you to the participating companies and their CXOs. We remain excited about partnering with companies building in these sectors. Over the next series of posts, we will share more about each of these themes and their core discussion points/learnings.  The Economic Times | Ashutosh Sinha | Nidhi Kapoor | Verginder Kaur | Ozaswita Saikia Axilor Ventures | Nandan Venkatachalam | Sanjana Manku #Economictimes #Automotive #GCC #Supplychain #Employeeexperiences