A Fellow’s Roadmap in Venture Capital
My first exposure to the startup world and venture capital came through pop culture – “The Social Network” and HBO’s “Silicon Valley.” These showed me a world where failure was celebrated, college dropouts were idolized, and T-shirts and jeans were perfectly acceptable office attire. A world where “moving fast and breaking things” wasn’t just accepted – it was encouraged. To my 16-year-old self, nothing seemed cooler.
Building the foundation: From Education to Early career
While my interests evolved, the intersection of technology and investing – venture capital – remained a constant draw. After graduating from the University of Delhi from a program focused on Financial Markets and Investment Analysis, I started my career at Grant Thornton in Risk Advisory and Consulting. This role gave me invaluable exposure to various organisations and industries and helped me understand how organisations work, from private companies to large publicly-listed companies. After Grant Thornton, I got my first break into VC, my next step was joining Indian Angel Network’s investment team where I got my first taste of early-stage investing. I evaluated ventures across 8-10 sectors with significant ownership bestowed upon me by my superiors and mentors at IAN and learned directly from exceptional founders. Both my previous stints have helped me tremendously in my current role.
The Kalaari Fellowship: A Dream Realized
The Kalaari fellowship program had been on my radar since college, making it a significant career milestone when I got in. It’s a dynamic program that encompasses every aspect of venture capital, offering diverse projects and learning opportunities.
Deep Diving into Tech and Gaming
At Kalaari, I focus on SaaS, AI, and Gaming – areas that align perfectly with my passion for technology. Since joining the fellowship I’ve been actively developing investment theses around AI Agents and Services-as-a-Software, researching about the exploding landscape and talking to founders. The AI landscape has transformed dramatically in the past two years and is getting democratized very quickly. And with the rapid strides being in areas like on-device processing and inferencing, soon, state-of-the-art AI models will run smoothly on phones and personal computers, shifting focus from just AI technical expertise to business and consumer applications allowing even non-technical folks to reimagine user experience and evaluate decisions from not just the AI lens but also more from a consumer lens.
My lifelong interest in gaming has also found a professional outlet here. Attending this year’s Indian Game Developer Conference (IGDC) was one of the highlights for me this year, where I got witness India’s growing gaming prowess firsthand and connected with promising founders and leading investors and operators.
Having studied finance, it’s a boon to see amazingly cool tech every day. Be it trying to dumb down AI Agentic architectures for myself or researching about gaming markets of China and Brazil, it is diverse, often challenging but still fun.
A Day in the Life
“Change is the only constant” perfectly describes our fellowship experience. A typical day might begin with modelling a cap table, shift to crafting a research report, pivot to event planning, and end with reading up on AI to prepare for a founder call. Fellows participate in every stage of the deal cycle – from sourcing and evaluation, diligence to portfolio management.
The Kalaari Way
Our culture is best summarised by the saying: “How you do anything is how you do everything.” There’s a distinct “Kalaari way” of approaching tasks, where attention to detail matters regardless of the project’s size. The “work hard, play harder” ethos came alive when I got the opportunity to organize KCPL (our annual internal sports meet), where everyone actually began training for it a month in advance. The competition and banter made for a memorable event, allowing me to get to know my colleagues better and learn something from and about everyone.
Peer learning and Growth
They say you are the sum of who you surround yourself with and I find myself very fortunate to be part of a cohort with 11 other brilliant fellows. From pulling all-nighters to work on an urgent investment memo to hanging out outside of work, we’ve done it all together.
Among all this commotion, an extremely rewarding aspect which is probably my favourite is being able to interact with exceptional founders and learning from their diverse experiences. Being able to ask questions to folks who are down in the trenches building amazing things is an absolute privilege. Even on challenging or drab days, an inspiring founder call can completely shift the energy.
But even at technology startups, it is not just all about technology. It surprises me every day how much this business is about people, especially early-stage investing. This human element has certainly helped me emerge from my introverted shell through daily interactions with new people.
Looking Ahead
While I’m still learning the intricacies of Venture Capital, the fellowship provides an unparalleled platform for growth. As I continue this journey, I look forward to deeper insights and experiences that will shape my Venture Capital career.
If you are building in Saas, AI, gaming or frankly anything in tech, please feel to reach out to me at harsh@kalaari.com. Always up to chat about technology, startups, video games and football.