Kae Capital: India's First-Cheque Pioneer, from Tata 1MG to Zetwerk

Kae Capital is one of the original first-cheque firms of Indian venture capital. Founded in 2012 by Sasha Mirchandani, the Mumbai- and Bengaluru-based fund has spent over a decade backing founders when belief matters as much as capital — and it has the track record to prove it.

In November 2022, Kae marked the final close of Kae Capital Fund III at Rs 767 crore (about $100 million), an oversubscribed fund backed by international institutions including Old Mutual Wealth, Velo Partners and Finext, domestic heavyweights HDFC Holdings and SIDBI, family offices, and a roll call of founder-backers such as Rajesh Yabaji of Blackbuck, Ashish Hemrajani of BookMyShow, Nitish Mittersain of Nazara, Deep Kalra of MakeMyTrip and Jitendra Gupta of Jupiter. Almost 60% of the corpus came from domestic investors. The fund targets roughly 25 companies, following Kae's second fund of $53 million.

Thesis: founder-first, sector-agnostic, capital-light

Kae is proudly sector-agnostic, but its sweet spots are clear: B2B commerce, consumer tech, SaaS, fintech and D2C brands. It invests at pre-seed to pre-Series A, with initial cheques of $1.5M–$2M, and looks for capital-light, scalable businesses built by exceptional teams. The firm's stated approach is simple: find exceptional entrepreneurs solving large problems, invest early, and support them through every milestone.

Portfolio: unicorns from day zero

Kae's numbers speak loudly: 90+ portfolio companies with a combined portfolio value of $7.7B+, and over $2B in follow-on capital raised by its companies. It was the first institutional investor in unicorns Tata 1MG and Zetwerk, as well as soonicorn Porter. Other notable names include HealthKart, Wysa, Fynd, Foxtale, Hatica, Bold Finance, Traya Health, Eternz and Supernova.

Partners

Sasha Mirchandani is the founder and managing partner, known for a people-first approach and for staying with founders through rough patches. Abhishek Srivastava is a general partner focused on enterprise tech, SaaS and B2B commerce; before Kae he was founding director at Endiya Partners and a principal at Ventureast Tenet Fund, with past investments including Darwinbox and Mylo.

For founders, Kae's pitch is being an all-weather partner rather than a fair-weather one — long-term support from the first cheque to scale, with hands-on help on fundraising strategy, operating discipline and industry connections.