About Us
We are committed to being the first and most active VC partner to founders
Total capital raised by our portfolio
$943M
Combined investing experience of Partners
40 Years
Portfolio Companies
35
Why Us
We back contrarian founders and consistently spot opportunities before they become obvious to others
Doubtnut is among India’s top 5 Ed-Tech Apps and the first to cater to vernacular students from Tier 2+ markets
CityMall is India’s fastest growing, Tier 2 focused, e-commerce company focused on delivering daily groceries via a group buying, community driven model
Bijnis is a B2B platform giving a digital identity to and connecting over 4,000 factories directly with over 50,000 offline retailers to drive demand
Chalo is India’s largest platform for daily, mass commute enabling live bus tracking, trip planning and ticketing to commuters
Why Us
Our eclectic networks help us partner with pioneering global product teams from India
Atlan is reinventing data management for the cloud era by helping data teams in the modern data stack collaborate frictionlessly. In 2020, Gartner recognised Atlan as a Cool Vendor in Data Ops, and in 2022, Forrester named Atlan a leader in The Forrester Wave™ Enterprise Data Catalogs for DataOps
PocketPills is Canada’s leading digital health player helping chronic care patients reduce drug cost, improve medication adherence and provide easy access to pharmacists. Beyond e-pharmacy, their telemedicine APIs embed services into products and create integrated healthcare brands
Responsible Investing at WaterBridge Ventures
We are a signatory to the Principles for Investors in Inclusive Finance (PIIF) – a responsible investment framework housed within the PRI initiative for investors focused on expanding access to affordable and responsible financial products and services to those traditionally excluded
Our Founders & Portfolio
“From our first conversation itself, WaterBridge felt like true partners, trusting our vision, helping with connections and most importantly keeping it real and grounded”
Varun Deo, Abhik Ghosh, Anushka Mahanti – Trampoline
“WaterBridge has helped us more before deal closure than others would even from the cap table. We are glad to have found a partner who is long on ‘India-first’ businesses”
Manish Shara, Yash Desai – ZET
“WaterBridge has been a source of sage advice and constant support for us – a true partner in building Magicpin”
Anshoo Sharma – Magicpin
“Many can give you money, but only WaterBridge will help you think big, and will roll up their sleeves to actually help you get there. If you are a Series A or Seed stage startup, we would strongly recommend you to take WaterBridge over anyone else including all the big names”
Vinayak Bhavnani, Priya Singh, Mohit Dubey, Dhruv Chopra – Chalo
“From the get-go, WaterBridge respected our time, moved quickly and began to add value before they even made an investment”
Prukalpa Sankar, Varun Banka – Atlan
News & Insights
fund News
Manish Kheterpal named as the Vice Chair in IVCA’s VC Council for 2024-26
August, 2024
portfolio News
BimaKavach named Future Generali’s Top Premium Broker
July, 2024
portfolio News
Eloelo Tops Chart in Entertainment on Google Play, Ahead of Disney+ Hotstar, Jio Cinema & Prime Video
July, 2024
LinkedIn
portfolio News
Tanushree and Aditya on Serving the Forgotten India, with Doubtnut
July, 2024
LinkedIn
portfolio News
Chalo Wins ₹215 Cr Contract to Operate Nagpur’s Aapli Public Bus Service
July, 2024
Times of India
fund News
Manish Kheterpal on Venture Capital Key Trends with CNBC TV-18
July, 2024
YouTube
portfolio News
Magicpin enables KFC’s ONDC foray
July, 2024
portfolio News
Trampoline Raises $5M in Seed Funding
June, 2024
portfolio News
Ankit Alok Bagaria and Abhi Gawri (co-founders of Loopworm) featured in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia
May, 2024
portfolio News
Atlan Raises $105M in Series C funding
May, 2024
Investing in AI for Synthetic Biology
May, 2024
Investing in Generative AI
May, 2024
Why We Invested in Adster
April, 2024
fund News
Manish Kheterpal as a panelist at the GPC Conference in New York
March, 2024
LinkedIn
fund News
WaterBridge Ventures Conclave 2024
March, 2024
WBV Insights: Investing in Semiconductor Designing
February, 2024
Investing in Carbon Markets
February, 2024
fund News
That One Idea – Season 3
February, 2024
fund News
Anjali Sosale speaks at WeWork India Jumpstart 2024
January, 2024
LinkedIn
portfolio fund News
Adster joins the WaterBridge Family
January, 2024
LinkedIn
fund News
Women In Investing Mixer
January, 2024
fund News
Manish Kheterpal featured as a panelist at AVCJ Forum in Hong Kong
December, 2023
portfolio News
WaterBridge Ventures leads a $2M round for Fairdeal, a retail intelligence platform
November, 2023
portfolio News
Eloelo, India’s leading live entertainment and social gaming platform, has raised $22 Million in its Pre-Series B round
September, 2023
portfolio News
A milestone four generations in the making: BimaKavach secures its Direct Insurance Broking License
September, 2023
fund News
Anjali Sosale speaks at The Product Folks’ Product (Un)Conference 2023
August, 2023
fund News
FastForward VC Partners Meet
July, 2023
fund News
Manish Kheterpal spearheads the Mumbai and Benguluru edition of #VC101 conducted by IVCA
July, 2023
Easy to Plug In Hard to Plug Out: D2C Enablement
June, 2023
portfolio News
WaterBridge portfolio Chalo raises $45 million in fresh funding to digitize bus commutes
May, 2023
TechCrunch
fund News
WaterBridge Ventures announces second season of That One Idea, a podcast chronicling early-stage founder journeys
April, 2023
Youtube
portfolio News
Eloelo crosses 20M users and gets crowned as India’s fastest growing app
April, 2023
Business World
portfolio News
Atlan debuts as a leader in 3 categories in the G2 Spring 2023 Grid® Reports
April, 2023
Yahoo Finance
portfolio News
Magicpin becomes the largest restaurant aggregator on ONDC
March, 2023
Outlook India
fund News
WaterBridge Ventures hosts D2C Founders and thought leaders at the the D2C Roundtable
March, 2023
LinkedIn
portfolio News
Gold loan startup Yellow Metal gets $3 million in funding led by MSA Novo
March, 2023
Economic Times
portfolio News
Forbes India Covers Ankit Alok Bagaria and Abhi Gawri of Loopworm
February, 2023
Forbes India
portfolio News
Chalo launches 100% Digital bus in Indore in collaboration with AiCTSL
January, 2023
TOI
fund News
WaterBridge hosts a close-knit get-together for VC analysts and associates to bring in the new year
January, 2023
LinkedIn
fund News
WaterBridge Ventures announces the fourth edition of their annual seed funding program Fast Forward
January, 2023
LinkedIn
portfolio News
Asia Insurance Review covers Tejas Jain of BimaKavach
January, 2023
Asia Insurance Review
Popular View
Founders come from a traditional brick-and-mortar business with no tech-start-up expertise. K-12 Ed-Tech space requires differentiated content to succeed.
Our View
Founders understand the student pain point better than >150 Ed-Tech start-ups we met in K-12. Product-first approach and content pull via DIY doubt-solving for Bharat will be the differentiated growth strategy.
WaterBridge led Seed in 2018.
Today
DoubtNut is India’s most used and fastest growing Ed-Tech App tapping into 135m vernacular students. Differentiated further by low CAC and a content development engine of >4m videos feeding into its ML engine. We exited DoubtNut during its acquisition by Allen Career Institute in 2023.
Popular View
Another grocery delivery app in a red ocean market with JioMart being an established behemoth. Group buying and small town focus is not a differentiator.
Our View
Trust based local and assisted commerce is more likely to work in small Indian towns. Contribution margins can make sense for daily consumables if local micro-entrepreneurs can be tech co-opted.
WaterBridge invested in Pre-Series A in 2020
Today
CityMall is a Series C company that has pioneered a locally driven, assisted, community driven, group buying platform in India. Targeting the over 300M value focused small-town Indian consumers for whom offline supermarkets options for attractive deals and offers are literally far and few. CityMall has built trust in transacting on mobile through local community leaders under an assisted group buying model with a market leading presence across 10 cities.
Popular View
B2B e-commerce already has Udaan as a winner, not sure about another B2B player. Business focused on footwear as a category and not sure of market depth or expansion possibility beyond footwear.
Our View
Founders are the right ‘horses for this course’ given family business background in footwear. Dogged supply-side focus together with tech-led disruption will create a profitable business and long-term moats.
WaterBridge led Pre-Series A in 2019
Today
Bijnis is a Series C Company with over 4,000 manufacturing units or factories using the app to drive demand and receiving orders from >50,000 registered retailers. With 100% of operations being tech-enabled, Bijnis has expanded beyond footwear into apparel and accessories and counts Info Edge, Matrix, WestBridge and Sequoia among its investors.
Popular View
An erstwhile auto-retail i.e. CarWale entrepreneurial team cannot solve for intra-city, public transport. This is a small and highly regulated market
Our View
Founding team has an optimum combination of operations and technology skill sets to disrupt the space. Bus mobility is 4x of ride hailing market. Tech-driven business model and supply side partnerships can create moats.
WaterBridge led Series A in 2017
Today
Chalo emerged as the best resurgence story in mobility post-CoVID. Chalo is India’s largest platform for mass daily commute. A Series D company, Chalo counts Avataar Ventures, LightRock, Raine and Xiaomi among its investors. Chalo has acquired other mobility startups like Vogo and Shuttl.
The Pitch
Prukalpa and Varun had launched “Data for Good” company SocialCops with customers like the UN and India’s National Data Platform.
Our Partnership
WaterBridge led the first institutional seed round in 2018 and SocialCops pivoted to build a product in the data management space. Atlan was born in 2020 as a home for data teams in the modern data stack. Marketing and sales focused towards the US with a global development model were architected along with early PMF.
Today And Ahead
Atlan is often referred to by experts as a “Data Discovery Rocketship”. Atlan’s cloud-native, governance-enabled DataOps platform creates a common collaboration workspace for diverse data consumers like analysts, scientists & business users. Its no-code query builder allows less technical teams to partner with data teams to explore data and allows the data to easily be pulled into analytics and Business Intelligence tools like Tableau & PowerBI. Raised $173 million cumulatively till date, with the latest round being a $105M Series C in 2024, led by GIC, Meritech Capital, with participation from existing investors Salesforce Ventures, PeakXV Partners and Insight Partners.
The Pitch
Pharma science graduates, Raj and Harj ran a pharmacy chain in Canada and IIT Delhi alum and technologist Abhinav had just taken his company Rocket Fuel public on NASDAQ. Together, they made for a formidable founder-market fit with both tech and industry expertise.
Our Partnership
WaterBridge led the first institutional seed round in 2019 when they launched PocketPills. They quickly secured a first mover advantage as Canada’s foremost online pharmacy and expanded to five provinces. Raj and Harj’s expertise from building an offline chain of pharmacies made navigating the regulatory maze easier and securing partnerships, early on, with big pharma companies.
Today and Ahead
PocketPills is the largest digital pharmacy in Canada. They bring a frictionless online pharmacy experience with subscription-driven models, free delivery anywhere in Canada and robotics-driven warehouse automation. Beyond pharma, they provide comprehensive care plans and telemedicine APIs to embed services into products. Raised CAD 35 million with WaterBridge participating in each round since our first.