Playbook Partners: the operator-driven $250 million growth fund built by former Jio president Vikas Choudhury

Playbook Partners is a Mumbai-based, operator-driven growth capital firm founded and led by Vikas Choudhury, the former president of Reliance Jio (2017–2022) who also founded the family office Pivot Ventures. The firm closed its maiden $250 million growth capital fund's first close at $130 million in September 2024 — raised within four months from institutional investors across Singapore, Europe, the US, the Middle East and India — and can grow the fund to $250 million via a green-shoe option.

Playbook positions itself in the post-VC, pre-PE gap: growth-stage, tech-enabled businesses that have demonstrated product-market fit, positive unit economics and digital scalability, and are targeting large addressable markets. It typically invests at Series C, D and E in companies doing roughly $50 million in revenue with a three-year path to IPO, writing cheques of $10–20 million and leading or co-leading rounds. Choudhury has told the press the firm looks for companies with a revenue base of ₹100–200 crore and a positive contribution margin, and plans around 12–20 investments per fund across SaaS, e-commerce, healthtech, climate tech, B2B and B2C.

The differentiator is the operating bench. Playbook calls itself "operators for operators": its operating partners include Manish Choksi (Asian Paints), Aakash Chaudhry (Aakash Education) and Milan Sheth (ex-Automation Anywhere), who participate through family offices or in personal capacity. Its senior investing team includes Dushyant Singh and Sumit Jain, while advisors include Naveen Tewari of InMobi, Nitish Mittersain of Nazara, Tarun Khanna of Harvard Business School, Sushil Jiwarajka of Ericsson and Priti Rathi Gupta of the Anand Rathi Group.

Choudhury's personal investing track record includes 10 unicorns and IPOs such as InMobi, Myntra, Fractal, Nazara, PolicyBazaar and Rapido. The firm's portfolio and prior investments span Cure Foods, Renee Cosmetics, Exotel, Capillary, UltraHuman, GoQuick, FarMart, Jupiter and JAR. Recent fund deals include a $15 million lead investment in EverBrands (the operator of Subway and Lavazza in India), a $11 million round in enterprise technology firm KaarTech, and a roughly ₹130 crore acquisition of a 5% stake in Subway India, valuing the business at ₹2,600–2,800 crore.

The firm does not run accelerators or startup programmes; its offer to founders is growth capital plus hands-on operating expertise from people who have built and listed large Indian businesses. Its stated themes include distribution and disruption, digital transformation and consumption in aspirational India.