Investor Profile: Ojas Venture Partners — Thesis, Cheque Size & How to Apply

Ojas Venture Partners funding belongs to the earliest chapters of Bengaluru's startup story. The firm is a $35 million early-stage venture fund sponsored by Nadathur Holdings & Investments and floated by Raghavan S Nadathur (N.S. Raghavan), the co-founder and former joint managing director of Infosys. Based in Bengaluru and led by Managing Partner Rajesh Srivathsa, Ojas was among the first India-focused funds to back hardcore technology startups — including semiconductor bets at a time when almost no Indian VC would touch chips.

Ojas Venture Partners funding: thesis and cheque size

In a Venture Intelligence interview, Srivathsa set two crisp criteria: the company and its team should be predominantly based in India, and the company must have a technology product or solution — Ojas did not back services companies, though consumer-services businesses qualified when a technology platform gave them real differentiation. Coverage spanned mobile technology, telecom, low-capex semiconductors, web applications and services, and consumer internet. On chips, Srivathsa was candid about the fund's limits: as a small fund, Ojas could only back companies on the embedded CAD or IP side, never full-chip builds that would exhaust its capital before validation. Typical cheques ran $250,000 to $1.5 million initially, with follow-ons of up to $3 million per company.

Notable portfolio

Ojas backed a string of technology names from its 2007 start: TeliBrahma, CoCubes.com, Tyfone (mobile banking and contactless payments), RiverSilica, Ziva, Mango Technologies, Vizury and Amagi Media Labs. It co-invested with Blume Ventures in Insieve Technologies — putting Ojas's Gautam Balijepalli and Srivathsa on the board — and with China's SOS Ventures in US social-gaming startup Play140. Its best-known deeptech bet was Arigami Semiconductor Systems: a sub-$1-million 2009 investment that helped the Bengaluru startup file patents and rent chip-design tools. Srivathsa later told VCCircle that Ojas withdrew the investment when Arigami's algorithms could not be validated — an honest footnote on fund discipline. He also admitted one famous miss: passing on Flipkart very early over concerns about the capital it would need.

Team, programmes and perks

The fund's public face was Managing Partner and CEO Rajesh Srivathsa, with Gautam Balijepalli also named on the investment team. Ojas ran no public accelerator, fellowship, or credits programme that could be verified — founder support came through direct partner involvement.

How to apply for funding

Founders should know the practical reality: Ojas has no current public-facing website or pitch form that could be verified, and its public documentation dates to the 2007–2012 era — there is no published application route. The profile stands because the fund's verified record, and its rare early conviction in Indian semiconductors, remains useful context for founders mapping deeptech capital.