Orios Venture Partners: Mumbai's Early-Stage Fund With a ₹1,000 Cr Ambition

Orios Venture Partners is a Mumbai-based early-stage VC firm founded by Rehan Yar Khan, one of India's most prolific angel investors — his personal angel bets included Druva, Ola (a ~₹1 crore first-cheque round) and MobiKwik before he institutionalized that record into Orios. The firm's current website reports 95 companies, 5 funds and 3 IPOs across its portfolio.

Orios built its name on seed-stage conviction in consumer internet and software, and its current investment thesis has widened to AI & automation, deep tech, IP sovereignty, energy transition, and the future of consumption — summarized as backing "disruptive founders building category-defining companies" and supporting them "at day zero" through every stage of growth.

On fund sizes, the track record is well documented: Fund I and Fund II were each ₹300 crore, anchored by domestic family offices, HNIs and SIDBI. In 2021 the firm raised Select Fund I, a $30 million follow-on vehicle, to double down on winners rather than get diluted in large growth rounds — backing Series D & E rounds of PharmEasy, Series B & C rounds of Country Delight and Series C of GoMechanic, alongside pre-IPO bets on Nazara Technologies and MobiKwik. Fund III targets ₹1,000 crore, which Orios said in 2023 it was raising in full.

The portfolio is one of the deepest in Indian early-stage: PharmEasy (online pharmacy, where Orios invested at seed and followed on into Series D & E), Country Delight (D2C fresh food; Orios invested ₹15 crore at seed and later sold a ~3% stake for around ₹225 crore — a roughly 45X partial exit), MobiKwik (digital payments), Nazara Technologies (gaming, pre-IPO), Vedantu (edtech), CarDekho (auto classifieds), ixigo (travel), Zostel (backpacker hostels), GoMechanic (car servicing), Kenko Health and FabAlley (women's fashion).

The firm is led by founder and managing partner Rehan Yar Khan, alongside partner Sukhmani Bedi, chief operating and financial officer Gaurav Bindal and president Ashish Mishra. Two managing partners, Anup Jain and Rajeev Suri, departed in 2023 to launch independent funds. The Mumbai-based team aims to make eight to ten investments a year.

Orios does not operate a public accelerator. Its follow-on discipline — a dedicated opportunities vehicle and the willingness to write $4–8 million follow-on cheques — is its real founder perk: day-zero backers that stay through pre-IPO. The firm has also publicly credited domestic family offices as anchors across its funds, giving founders a deeply Indian capital base that understands local market cycles.

Founders can reach Orios through [email protected] or the contact channels on oriosvp.com. Given the fund's roots in consumer internet and software and its current push into AI, deep tech and energy transition, teams building category-defining businesses in those lanes get the closest attention.