Arkam Ventures - Middle India by Design

We are thrilled to officially announce the launch of Arkam Ventures, previously Unitary Helion. This has been a two year journey for us and we are grateful and excited to finally be here. Arkam in Sanskrit means limitless, boundaryless, or without constraints. This is the ethos of the firm. We seek to support founders with bold and unconstrained ideas that reshape the largest markets in India and positively impact the lives of hundreds of millions of Indians. We announced our first close with INR 325 CR in committed capital en route to our target of INR 700 CR for the fund. We have already made two investments with three more to be announced shortly.  

It’s never easy to start a VC firm. Like our start-up founders, we have been through the crucible of articulating a new idea via hundreds of pitches, facing skepticism, finding believers, and overcoming periods of self-doubt through mutual support and a dogged belief in our vision of a differentiated and new platform.  

We are deeply grateful to all our investors without whom we would not be here. Our institutional anchor investors have been the rock on which this platform stands and their belief in our thesis and vision for the firm has been very energizing. We would like to thank Vijay Shekhar, Binny Bansal, Sanjeev Bhikchandani, Rajesh Magow, Mekin Maheshwari and Kumar Sudarshan, among many others, for their support. 

We also like to thank our former colleagues, VC peers, and ecosystem friends who have cheered us on, and most importantly, the hundreds of start-up founders who have inspired us with their own journeys.  

We are fortunate to have an amazing and diverse set of advisors we can turn to for guidance. A special note of thanks to Ravi Venkatesan, former Chairman of Bank of Baroda, Ex-CEO of Microsoft India and former Co-chairman of Infosys; Vikas Choudhry, President, Reliance Jio; Anand Chandrasekharan, EVP at Five9 and previously Director, messenger platform at Facebook; Jeremy Lim, Co-founder of AMiLI and previously Founding Partner of Oliver Wyman’s healthcare practice; Arun Balakrishnan, CEO Xceedance and ex-CEO, Berkshire Hathaway Insurance India; Hari TN, Head of HR at Big Basket, veteran of four start-up exits; and Ameen Haque, Founder of Storywallahs, messaging and branding expert, and ex-Ogilvy.

Our thesis for this fund is “Middle India by Design”. We believe that the Next 400M market - consumers just below the top of the pyramid making between Rs 3L and Rs 20L a year in family income - will be the primary driver of a new digital India. Almost seventy percent of wallet share of these consumers is distributed across four sectors - financial services, healthcare, food/grocery and mobility. These will be our focus areas although we will not shy away from any opportunity that is genuinely disruptive. We know there are many outstanding founders with deep understanding of Middle India; founders who are designing tech-centric solutions for providing essential services to this market. They are the disruptors we seek to partner with and support.  

The COVID crisis has significantly accelerated the digitization momentum in our core sectors of financial services, healthcare, food/agri and mobility. It has likely forced permanent consumer, business, and regulatory shifts that would have taken much longer and followed an unpredictable path on their own. For example, regulatory changes that allow cross-state selling of agricultural produce; digital onboarding and streamlining of financial transactions; and digital health processes such as video consultation at hospitals are just some examples of a tidal wave of change that is likely to reshape these core sectors.  

While the short-term is likely to be challenging for start-ups with a lot of uncertainty around the business environment, we think it's a great time to start a new business or find ways to stay relevant with an existing one. Tough times are often the crucible from which brilliant ideas and market winners emerge and we don't believe that this crisis will be any different. 

We have immense respect and appreciation for the courage it takes to be a founder and the challenge of building a business. Not all start-ups succeed, but that does not, in our mind, diminish the effort, value and learning that each founder discovers along the way. We look forward to supporting you in your journey as valuable partners. We also have a role to play in the ecosystem and hope to work closely with our peers, the government, and various institutions in building a vibrant start-up culture in India.

Thank you for your support.

Bala and Rahul