INVESTING IN BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE, HUMANE AND HEALTHY WORLD
India’s first investment fund focused on reducing harm to the planet, animals and human health
ABOUT US
The animal-based food and materials industries are among the most unsustainable industries on earth. We need new ways to produce food and materials that cause less harm to our planet, animals and our health.
Ahimsa VC invests in early stage startups that are leveraging and inventing new technologies to build better alternatives using plants, cells and fermentation, for the food and materials sectors.
We support our startups by investing in them, sharing our understanding of industrial ecosystems, and connecting them with our network of global experts.
PORTFOLIO
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Plant-based meats
Next-gen materials
Plant-based dairy
Demolish Foods makes whole cut plant-based meats using proprietary tech
Alt Foods makes plant-based milk using novel ingredients such as millets and amaranth
Ultraw makes affordable bio-based alternatives to leather
Precision Fermentation based Dairy
Phyx44 uses precision fermentation to create traditional dairy ingredients such as whey & casein without involving a single cow
TEAM
Investment Committee
Siddharth Kothari
Siddharth is the Chief Investment Strategist at the Om Kothari Group, founded in 1971 and it’s flagship company, Om Infra Ltd, is listed on the NSE and BSE. Siddharth invests in listed and private companies with a portfolio of 50+ firms in India and abroad. He is also a Venture partner at Venture Catalysts and Partner at 2Point2 Capital.
Parag Agarwal
Parag has been a corporate executive for more than 30 years and is currently CFO of Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, one of India's largest pharmaceutical companies. He is a chartered accountant and has worked with various MNCs including Unilever, GSK, and Reckitt Benckiser. Parag is also a co-founder and trustee of Tap India Foundation and Ahimsa Trust.
Jay Karandikar
As Principal of New Crop Capital Trust, a global alternative protein fund, Jay oversees the portfolio of the trust. Previously, he worked at hedge funds in the US and in Japan. Jay graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor's degree in Operations Research and Financial Engineering. Jay is a director of Wild Earth and a board observer of Gathered Foods and JUST.
Shaleen Shah
Shaleen is an entrepreneur and technologist with decades of experience in fintech and consumer lending. He is also an experienced non-profit executive and currently occupies senior roles at several foundations and non-profits such as the Ahimsa Foundation and Million Dollar Vegan.
Investment Team
Sandeep Sibal
Sandeep is the CEO of Fourth Frontier, a company that is inventing products to transform sports, exercise, and health. Prior to this, Sandeep was Qualcomm's Country Manager for India and South Asia & VP of Business Development. Sandeep has been an angel investor in the alternative protein space, and is on the board of GiveIndia - India's largest donation platform.
Sethu Vaidyanathan
Sethu is a serial entrepreneur and philanthropist. He comes with decades of experience in the corporate world and has invested and funded several successful start-ups in India and abroad. Sethu founded the Chennai chapter of the People for Animals, is a trustee at the Ahimsa Trust, a trustee at the Chennai Photo Biennale, and a trustee at the Indian Track Foundation.
Jinesh Shah
Jinesh is a 4 x Alt Protein Founder, 1 x Angel Investor & YCombinator Alum. He holds an MS in Computer Science & Math Finance from NYU. He's worked with Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs in their US offices and has independently consulted some of the biggest global Alternate Protein companies. At Ahimsa VC, Jinesh Leads the Investment Team apart from spearheading other activities of the fund.
Sushanto Mitra
Sushanto is an entrepreneur who has been associated with the early stage ecosystem in India for more than 15 years. with prior experience in consulting and financial services. As the Founder & CEO of Lead Angels – an angel network started by a team from IIT Bombay to assist early-stage investments in start-ups. Sushanto has now taken the network to over 200+ members/investors and 50 portfolio companies across the globe with prominent exits.
Advisors
Pranav Rajkumar
Pranav is a Chartered Accountant with 5 years of experience across the financial services, consulting and investment landscape. He was previously associated with Deloitte as an auditor followed by a stint with their M&A due diligence team. Prior to joining Ahimsa, he worked with a Real Assets - focused Private Equity firm.
Chris Kerr
Chris has over thirty years of leadership experience with start-ups and venture capital investing. He has spent the last decade focused on impact investing with a concentration on food markets and the plant-based foods sector. He is the CIO for Unovis, the pioneering venture fund in the sector through its seed fund, New Crop Capital, and its early-stage fund, NCAP Fund II. In addition to serving as executive chair of Gathered, he is a co-founder and director of Wicked Foods, director of BlueNalu, The Livekindly Collective, Pitcairn Financial Group, and Anark Corporation.
Guhan Jayaraman
Guhan Jayaraman is Professor and Department Head of Biotechnology at IIT Madras. Guhan's primary research interests are in the areas of metabolic engineering for biopolymer production & recombinant protein production. He has authored more than 45 publications & several patents. He was the joint recipient of the BIRAC Innovator Award 2019 and also mentored the IIT Madras Team which won the iGEM 2008 Awards in Foundational Advances and Best-Engineered Biobrick categories. He is also the founder of the Bioincubator facility at the IIT Madras Research Park, established to promote the incubation of start-ups in biotechnology.
Ryan Bethencourt
Ryan is co-founder and CEO at Wild Earth, the leading healthy, plant-based dog food company in the US. Ryan is also a Partner at Babel Ventures, Silicon Valley based biotech VC firm, and also Partner at Sustainable Food Ventures, a U.S. based alternative protein fund. Ryan was previously co-founder, former Program Director, and Venture Partner at IndieBio and has invested in over 110+ early stage biotech, food and technology startups as an Angel and Venture Capital Pre-seed and Seed investor (usually cutting the first check) with a combined market value of over $3 Billion.
Stephanie Downs
Stephanie is a serial entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience founding, building, and selling businesses. She also spent over a decade as a CSR Consultant advising companies on alternatives to animal materials. She founded her first company in 1999, an internet marketing company which she sold in 2014. She founded her most recent venture in 2016, Good Dot, which quickly grew to be the largest plant-based meat company in India. She has been awarded the 40 Under 40 Award in two US states; received the Dewey DoGooder Award from SxSW; and has been a TEDx speaker.
Partners
