Steadview Capital: The crossover investor that stays past the IPO

The firm

Steadview Capital is an India-and-US-focused crossover investment firm founded in 2009 by Ravi Mehta, its Founder and Chief Investment Officer. Steadview's distinctive edge is an integrated public/private investing framework: one team backs founder-led companies in private markets and keeps investing in them through and beyond the IPO. The firm focuses exclusively on two countries — the United States and India — runs four offices (San Francisco, Mumbai, London, New York) with a lean team of about 27 people, and has invested in more than 50 private companies. Current assets under management are not publicly stated.

Thesis and sweet spot

Steadview is a long-duration, high-conviction investor: concentrated positions, held across market cycles, in companies it believes can become generational. It partners with visionary founders building in the US and India, embedding locally in San Francisco and Mumbai. The firm backs both listed and unlisted companies, making it a natural partner for founders who want an investor that won't sell at the IPO bell. India is its largest theatre of capital: the firm has pumped over $500 million into Indian private tech companies in a two-year stretch (per ET reporting) and at one point had about $2 billion invested in India across public and private holdings.

Notable portfolio

The firm's featured companies read as a roll-call of Indian tech royalty: Zomato, Nykaa, Policybazaar, Delhivery, Lenskart, Urban Company, CoinDCX, Innovaccer and Dixon, plus US healthtech bet Precision Neuroscience. Steadview was an early crossover pioneer in India — its first bet, Urban Ladder, dates to July 2014 — and later bought $85 million of Freshworks shares from early angels in a secondary transaction. Other India investments include Ola, Flipkart, Dream11 and Unacademy.

People

Ravi Mehta founded the firm after stints at Morgan Stanley and the hedge fund Maverick Capital; he holds a Harvard degree in computer science with a specialisation in artificial intelligence, and also runs the Steadview Foundation, a nonprofit focused on education and healthcare delivery in India. Co-founder Kalp Parekh serves as Chief Compliance Officer.

Programs and perks

Steadview runs no public accelerator or fixed founder-perk program — none is announced. The value proposition is structural: a single long-term partner that invests pre-IPO and stays post-listing, with the patience of an institution (endowments, pension funds and family offices back the fund) and a founder-led-companies-only rule that filters out mercenary capital.