Artha Venture Fund I is a Rs. 225 crore ($33 million) early stage venture capital fund that will invest in 40 revenue stage companies following on in them in the Pre-Series A/Angel & Series A rounds. The fund's investment strategy is built on the experience I have gained from investing in 100+ companies, participating in 150+ funding rounds and delivering top quartile results. The fund is sponsored by Artha India Ventures (Family Office of Mr Ashok Kumar Damani)

Artha India Ventures is a Venture Capital & Renewable Energy investment firm. The company buys renewable energy projects that provide long term cash flows for investing in startups. As an active investor in its startups the company has delivered superior returns in its startup portfolio.The exits are utilised in buying new renewable energy projects. As of 31/03/2017 the company has 1.25 MW of wind turbines and investments in 50+ startups. Notable investments: OYO Rooms, NowFloats, Exotel , BabyChakra, Tala, Purplle, VPhrase, CapLinked, SuprDaily, LenDenClub and ConfirmTkt

Artha Energy Resources (“AER”), headquartered in Mumbai, is an advisory firm that is focused in attracting and bringing new investment into the renewable power generation industry in India across segments and asset classes. AER provides turn-key solutions for investors, governments and end-consumers alike.With a small team, I have geared the operations to build an extensive network of industry professionals across the power sector value chain collaborating with investors, developers, financers, leading EPC & technology partners and government personnel and boast a healthy project pipeline.

Artha Group is the umbrella entity of Artha Venture Fund, Artha India Ventures, and Artha Energy Resources.

After taking over the firm with two other friends in 2010, the three of us grew the firms business at 100% CAGR for 2 years before I decided to move back to India and join my family in building their footprint here.

Sales & Business Development

Texas First Energy was rechristened US First Energy and I was given charge of leading the sales effort for Texas. I built a sales force for USFE and besides being the top sales agent was also given the award for the being the top team leader and the top area leader in 2006. The same year I was also promoted to manage the much larger and lucrative state of Illinois where I built a sales team of 50 sales agents bringing in 600 MU of contracted power a year!Later on I went on to become the youngest Regional Leader managing the states of Illionis, New York and Texas and when the opportunity arose where I could take over the energy broking firm, 2 other friends and I took over the firm in 2010 under the name Pioneer Energy Resources with me as President.

Within 6 months I was one of the top sales people in the company and my passion for a challenge was tested when the company asked me to build a commercial sales program (which the company had failed in building on 2 previous occasions) with just a Regional Manager and me. At that time I was the youngest and the fastest persons promoted from a Sales agent to Area Manager. The TFE was selling for a small and niche player at that time – Stream Energy and post hurricane Katrina and Rita the sky-rocketing prices for electricity made the product offering too expensive and unviable. Undeterred by these initial setbacks the RL and I worked closely with Stream’s product team to bring in a median market product that gave Stream good margins while offering a small incentive to consumers. Armed with this product and with the sales skills assimilated from the best in the company, I recruited a small team and went out to personally test the product in the market. My team eventually smashed sales targets that were set out for a month in a day! Some of the records that were established by this small team still stand untouched.

Sales & Sales Management

Early in my career, I was smitten by the entrepreneurial bug and took up a door to door sales job with Texas First Energy (TFE) immediately after graduation.