gradCapital: The Student-Driven VC Funding India's Rebellious Young Founders

gradCapital bets on a founder the rest of the market ignores: the college student. The Bengaluru-based, student-driven venture capital firm — founded by IIM-A and BITS Pilani graduates Abhishek Sethi and Prateek Behera — exists to fund young people building projects and companies while still in education. Its tagline sums up the contrarianism: "We invest in rebellious student founders."

The offer is structured around how committed you are. gradCapital provides $300,000 for full-time projects, $60,000 for students who are one to two years from graduating and working part-time, and $1,000–$5,000 no-strings-attached grants to experiment with any idea. Two grant programmes run the experiment end of the pipeline: the Atomic Grant, worth $1,000–$5,000 for science and engineering projects, and the Feather Grant, a $1,000 grant to try out any idea at all.

The philosophy behind it is explicit on the firm's site: breakthroughs emerge when small groups of motivated people explore problems nobody has articulated yet, and traditional VCs miss student companies because such bets do not fit their risk profile. gradCapital's founders have argued that students from science, commerce, arts and engineering colleges are systematically overlooked by larger funds that lack the patience for emerging technologies, millennial consumers and new kinds of economies. The firm's answer is to fund young people with the capital to experiment, on the theory that ambition compounds.

Its most visible programme is Entreprenher, a dedicated $500,000 fund for female student entrepreneurs launched in 2021. The programme runs eight-week, cohort-based training — mentorship, workshops, office hours with experts and an investor-focused demo day — supporting six to ten student teams per cohort on a rolling application basis, with equity-free capital and even founder salaries. Its mentor network has included Richa Kar (Zivame), Priyanka Agarwal Chopra (COO, CIIE), Richa Natarajan (Unitus Capital) and Drishti Gupta (Now&Me).

gradCapital itself raised $1 million from CIIE.CO, and disclosed portfolio investments include Airbound, Pipeshift (YC S24) and Stimuler — early evidence that the student pipeline can graduate into institutionally fundable companies.