Appo Deepo Bhava - Be a light unto yourself- these timeless words from Buddha have been an inspiration for generations. As we celebrate the festival of lights, let’s also take time to harness our inner light. It is this light that gives us courage to pursue our dreams and become a source of joy.
At Kalaari, we are grateful to all those who have contributed to our learning and success. As we celebrate Diwali, full of optimism, faith and hope, we pray for a brighter future for the world and peaceful coexistence.
As we light up diyas in our homes & hearts, we wish you, your family and your team a joyous and prosperous Diwali and holiday season ahead!
Climes is a voluntary carbon credit purchase platform that aims to make it easy to neutralize carbon from lifestyle activities. They bring together consumers & businesses (demand) and verified decarbonization projects (supply) to unlock untapped sources of capital for climate solutions.
In 2021, ~300M voluntary carbon credit trades took place, with a market value of ~ $1B. By 2030, the market for carbon credits is estimated to reach $50B.
Founders, Siddhanth Jayaram and Anirudh Gupta, bring deep passion and domain knowledge in their mission to democratize climate action by giving consumers the option of carbon-neutral consumption.
Deconstruct is building evidence-based personal care products for the knowledge economy. Their philosophy lies in helping consumers understand product formulations and its impact on their skin.
Beauty and Personal Care in India is a $20B market today, with ~10% penetration online. We estimate that online penetration will expand to 18% by 2025, as B&PC grows to become a $28B market.
Founder Malini Adapureddi brings strong consumer brands experience having spent time across P&G and Kraft-Heinz managing P&L for multiple brands.
Outscal is an upskilling platform for Gaming and Web 3.0. They help people land jobs in the gaming industry by upskilling them with courses, working with them on their portfolio and connecting them with industry mentors.
There are ~250,000 jobs in the global gaming industry annually, of which more than 50% are entry-level. In addition, there are 1.25M jobs globally if we combine gaming with Web3, which is estimated to be a $6.25B market.
Founder Mayank Grover is a seasoned professional in the gaming industry and aims to solve one of the biggest challenges in the gaming industry – tech talent.
Creative Galileo is a gamified learning platform that accelerates learning and builds strong foundational skills for global learners aged 3-12 years. Education, as we know it, is rapidly transforming – India is home to 271M children and ~25M children are now digitally native. The early childhood education market is estimated to be $10B today.
We are glad to welcome Affirma Capital, East Ventures, & Valiant Employee Investment Fund in the latest round.
Signzy offers API solutions to banks and financial institutions for digitally onboarding customers in real-time. The company also helps digitize business processes for background verification and contract signing. Signzy's unique No Code product has seen strong traction with financial services firms as the industry undergoes a massive and multi-year digital transformation.
We are glad to welcome Gaja Capital in the latest round. They join Vertex Ventures, Arkam Ventures, Mastercard, Stellaris Venture Partners, and us as investors in the company.
We are privileged to have been early partners in their journey.
Kalaari has always been at the forefront of supporting women entrepreneurs. We hosted our first CXXO No Ceiling Summit along with YourStory in Bengaluru. 200+ influential women, changemakers and emerging talent from diverse fields joined us to help build a robust community of empowered women. This celebration gave us a peek into the minds of the women who are at the forefront of progress.
To learn more about our CXXO initiative, click here.
#ConsumerCollective
Consumer tastes and preferences are evolving rapidly in India. Our virtual #ConsumerCollective conference provided a glimpse into the future of India’s consumer brands ecosystem through candid conversations with top corporate leaders, enablers and founders building for the D2C economy. We had active participation from over 300founders who tuned in to the event.
Our lineup of speakers included Vamshi Reddy (Kalaari Capital), Ghazal Alagh (Mamaearth), Kedar Lele (Hindustan Unilever), Jaydeep Barman (Rebel Foods), Ankit Nagori (Curefoods), Manish Chowdhary (WOW Skin Science), Tarun Sharma (mCaffeine), Radhika Ghai (Kindlife), Diksha Pande (Samosa Party), and Malini Adapureddy (Deconstruct) among others. We also held workshops with D2C enablers like Swift, Klub and Meta to help early-stage founders navigate the challenges of building digital-first brands.
As the world enters an exciting new era of deeptech innovation, we organized #KalaariConnect to discuss India’s future as a rising power in the global space economy. We tied up with Harvard Business School and ISRO to bring together some of the most influential leaders and startup founders in the Indian Space & Defense sector who shared their views on the opportunities for DeepTech startups in the decade to come.
Our lineup of speakers included Ravinder Pal Singh (Kalaari Capital), Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria (R) - Former Chief of Air Staff, Shri AS Kiran Kumar (Former Chairman of ISRO), Lieutenant General Vinod G. Khandare (R) - Principal Advisor, Ministry of Defense, Shri Shekhar Dutt (Former Governor of Chattisgarh, Former Defence Secretary of India), Shri Jayant Patil (Chairman, Indian Space Association, Whole Time Director - Defence and Smart Technologies, L&T), Vice Admiral Ashok Kumar (R) - National Maritime Security Coordinator, & Shri Amit Ghosh (Additional Secretary, Ministry of Roadways and Transportation).
We hosted our first ever Fintech meetup in Bengaluru. More than 80+ founders, operators and fellow investors joined us for a fun evening. It was great to catch up and discuss our journeys and experiences in building India’s Fintech landscape over cocktails and dinner.
Follow news on all our meet-ups and sessions: here
1. “The role of a board changes dramatically as you go from Series A to beyond. The early days involve more hands-on, deeper work in building the core business. As the company matures, it becomes more about strategically thinking of building the future.”
Harsh Jain, Co-founder and CEO of Dream Sports, shared his thoughts on building and managing boards at T-Hub, Hyderabad.
Here are three key takeaways from the session:
In the early stages of a company, your founding team and board members collectively function as your larger CXO team. Their hands-on involvement helps you navigate the early challenges you’ll inevitably face in building your startup.
As your company matures, the role of the board becomes more strategic, covering areas such as market expansion, mergers and acquisitions, diversification, and more.
Be open about all your problems with your board. That helps them build a deeper bond and work on solutions with you.
2. “While selling a SaaS product, the buyer of your product may not always be the user of your product. It’s important for you to understand the nuances of your customer’s buying journey while creating your GTM strategy.”
Girish Ramachandra, Co-founder of Shopalyst, and Niraj Ranjan Rout, Co-founder of Hiver shared their insights on decoding initial GTM strategies in a recent #SaaSFromScratch session.
Here are three key takeaways from the session:
Focus on building product features that can be used by multiple customers, and not just one customer. Build products and features that be used as a foundation for future capabilities you are planning for.
Find a balance between what your customers want you to build and what you want your product to become. Customers typically want incremental improvements, but you, as a founder, must also focus on investing in completely new areas that will help you acquire more users.
Strive to get paying customers from early in your journey. Asking for money right from the beginning is a good test of whether what you’re building is truly valuable or not.
3. “In the healthcare ecosystem, it’s essential to drive trust both at the patient level as well as the doctor level. As long as you ensure that both their end goals are being met, trust building happens automatically.”
Sumit Sinha, Co-founder of Phablecare, and Harsimarbir Singh, Co-founder of Pristyn Care, discussed the nuances of scaling HealthTech startups in India, at our Kalaari HealthTech Roundtable.
Here are three key takeaways from the session:
Building trust in health-tech startups is an iterative process. On the patient side, it requires constant awareness and reminders for follow-ups. While on the doctor’s side, it entails a process of continuous feedback on product features and solving for their specific challenges.
There is a huge opportunity for technology to streamline many aspects of the healthcare journey in India today – access to health insurance, patient recovery and monitoring, EMR technology, HealthTech tourism and several more.
We will see the rise in consumerization of various healthcare services such as diagnostics, which stems from the rising consumer awareness on healthcare.
To access our exclusive library of learnings and knowledge: click here
At Kalaari, we have evaluated over 250 investment opportunities in AgriTech over the past year. Through the lens of these conversations, we highlight the market’s potential today and present our analysis of future trends in key sectors such as Input and Output Linkages as well as emerging sectors like precision agriculture and aquaculture. Our attempt in this report is to highlight key opportunities, metrics and business models for AgriTech entrepreneurs and investors today.
DAOs or Decentralized Autonomous Organizations are expected to be the next step in the evolution of corporate frameworks (Private Limited, LLPs, Public Limited Corps) that today organize humankind for all economic growth and progress. We see their adoption getting fuelled over the next 5-7 years.
"It’s very exciting to be a part of a successful team which is helping young companies evolve and reach their full potential. Kalaari’s vastly experienced team and investments in multiple sectors enables continuous learning and growth."
Adithya Viswanathais VP, Finance at Kalaari Capital. Prior to joining us, Aditya was a director at Deloitte’s India practice for M&A Transaction Services. He spent over a decade with the consulting giant and is a CA and Level-2 CFA. He has grown up in Bengaluru and loves to spend his free time playing Badminton and Volleyball.
Today, no corner of the globe is immune from the devastating impact and consequences of climate change. Environmental degradation, natural disasters, extreme weather conditions, food and water shortages, economic disruptions, conflicts over resources and terrorism are all fundamentally a result of rising global temperatures. Undoubtedly, this is the biggest problem we face as a society and the best time to do something about it was yesterday!
As a leading entrepreneur, technologist and venture capitalist, John Doerr’s book offers a refreshing outlook and approach. He presents an objective plan for the transition we must make with six chapters proposing six solutions.
Here are some key takeaways:
More than 15% of the entire emissions, around 9 gigatons a year, can be attributed directly to our food system—to industrial farming, livestock (especially beef cattle), rice production, and emissions from fertilizers and food waste.
At 24 gigatons per year, more than one-third of the global total, the power sector is the single largest source of carbon emissions. The world’s power sector will have to restrict itself to an annual emissions budget of just 3 gigatons of emissions by 2050 for real change to happen - that's about 90% less than our current usage.
CXXO No 
#ConsumerCollective
Kalaari FinTech Mixer
