Nisarg Shah-led Kettleborough VC launches Rs 80 crore fund II

Solo General Partner venture capital firm Kettleborough VC, led by early-stage investor Nisarg Shah, has launched its second fund with a target corpus of Rs 80 crore, marking its continued focus on inception-stage investing in deeply experienced founders.

The firm has announced the first close of Fund II at Rs 35 crore, with commitments from a cross-border base of family offices and entrepreneurs in India and the United States.

Founded in 2021, Kettleborough VC has built a reputation as a conviction-driven firm that backs founders at the moment of venture inception, particularly those with more than a decade of domain expertise and execution readiness. The firm’s approach contrasts with broad-based seed funding strategies by narrowing its focus to what it calls “the last straw moment”—when lived experience, market familiarity, and network depth converge into a founder’s next venture.

“We are extremely disciplined about backing execution journeys only,” Shah said in a statement. “Fund I has shown a clear product-market fit for this thesis—tracking nearly 2x in just about three years from final close—and we are now doubling down with Fund II.”

The new vehicle will write initial seed cheques between $300,000 and $500,000 (Rs 2.5 crore to Rs 4.2 crore) and allocate meaningful follow-on capital to the most promising portfolio companies.

The fund will retain a sector-agnostic approach but has expressed a preference for what it describes as “Dhandha-first” businesses, targeting opportunities in financial services (including NBFCs, insurance, and fintech infrastructure), full-stack commerce solutions (such as B2B platforms and consumer brands), and vertical software-as-a-service offerings, especially those powered by agentic AI.

Kettleborough’s Fund I backed 12 startups, including Zippmat, InPrime, Finhaat, Elivaas, Sumosave, and Gravity, with the firm providing the first institutional cheque to nine of them. Several of these startups have since raised follow-on rounds from marquee institutional investors such as Omnivore, Lightspeed, 3one4 Capital, and Bessemer Venture Partners. The firm is expected to complete deployment of Fund I this quarter and has begun preparing for its first set of exits.

Shah, who previously invested personally in over 30 startups and has notched 10 exits, continues to advocate for a high-conviction, low-velocity investing model. With Fund II, Kettleborough aims to back about 10 companies that align with its sharp thesis of founder-market fit at inception, emphasising business building over experimentation.