Asian VC firm JAFCO ropes in IAN exec to double down on Indian startups
JAFCO Asia, a Singapore-headquartered and technology-focussed venture capital firm, said it is doubling down on India as part of its regional investment mandate and has appointed Shahan Sud to run operations in the country.
The VC firm, which closed its latest fund eight months ago with a corpus of $130 million, has been investing in India for a decade and has bet on around 20 startups. It was previously making its investment decisions from Singapore and Japan till date. JAFCO Asia has an early-mid-stage VC investment bent and participates from seed to Series B stages.
Over the last 10 months, JAFCO Asia’s team headed by Yoshiyuki Shibusawa and Supriya Singh have made multiple investments in India. These include the investments which they led such as Akudo’s seed round in September 2021 and Pazcare’s Series A round last month.
They also took part in a few follow-on investments including MediBuddy in February 2022 (Series C) and Prozo’s Series A round, which was led by Sixth Sense Ventures in March.
The VC firm has now hired a full-time resource in the country by bringing in Sud, who has worked with Indian investment firms like Anand Rathi Advisors and Indian Angel Network.
At Anand Rathi, Sun was working as an analyst for a little over two years focusing on the consumer (FMCG and retail), healthcare and education domains.
At IAN, where he joined in February 2021, he was part of the investments team and was involved in the consumer vertical. According to his LinkedIn profile, some deals that he closed include those in Auntie Fung’s and Pidge. He also co-led investment in GameEon Studios earlier this year.
