Taking Stock @WEH Ventures

“ The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Over the past five years, Rohit and I have been on a quest to find and back unstoppable founders. It is nearing three years since our debut fund "WEH Ventures” made its first investment (Pratilipi). When we began to put together the fund, we started with a blank canvas (all we knew was that we would pursue early stage investing). The pandemic has further tested our thought process and self-belief. We have now taken the opportunity to reflect on our journey and share our investing principles here (“Hope this article ages well!!”).

What is WEH Ventures?

We are a multi-sector early (typically seed) stage fund focused on opportunities predicated on the India market. We like to be the first institutional investor and ideally come in when our capital can help companies to get to early stages of ‘Product-Market-Fit.’

Quick status of our portfolio

 It comprises nine companies across sectors such as Indian language content (Pratilipi, Trell, Gifskey), Fintech (smallcase, Infino), Healthcare (Clinikk), DTC brands (Henry & Smith, Noto) and Agritech (undisclosed deal). Our average holding period at the moment is just under two years, during which time these companies have raised about 60x the capital (from prominent VCs) of what we invested in our first cheque. Seven of our companies have raised external follow-on funding and four companies are category defining or leading companies. The bulk of the follow-ons for our portfolio have happened during the pandemic- with most of the companies scaling well during this period. All this speaks to a healthy double digit IRR and multiple potential RTFEs (Return the Fund Exits) down the road.

Elements of our approach

1. Quality over quantity. As an emerging fund, we felt that with limited resources at our disposal (capital and deal-flow), we would rather invest in a deal only if we truly believed in it - rather than worry about missing the next Facebook or what other VCs were doing. We continue to believe in this maxim as we progress with multi-fold deal flow than in our early days. 
2. “Wisdom begins in wonder.”  We have been a lean team of 2 full-time heads which has made ideation, decision making and communication efficient and quick. Underlying that is an environment of democracy of ideas, safety and autonomy to engender conviction and first principles thinking. The license to toss around/pursue ideas and quick decision making has resulted in multiple "early conviction" situations for us and we hope to retain that spirit over the next few years.
3. Company Friendly: We strive to do what is right for the company. As a starting point, this means we tend to optimize for company (runway, quality co-investors) relative to our own interest in the round. We like to help our companies, and get our hands dirty in many areas where we can add value. However, we are mindful of “reducing value”- i.e, not to do an action unless it would add value. We believe our job is not to please founders, but to do the right actions for the company.

The questions we continue to ask ourselves are:

1. Are we still relevant to the startup ecosystem?
2. Are we motivated to keep investing and moving forward?

Just like when we first got together, we believe it is still true that many good founders, especially those who are new to entrepreneurship do not have easy access to quality capital. We are emboldened by our founders and fellow travelers in the eco-system who have given us the opportunity to participate in their journeys and shared deals, ideas and connections which has further lifted our confidence and conviction. 

Its still early days for India’s startup eco-system and we sense that it will grow manifold over the next decade. We are inspired to continue to find and back “unstoppable” founders for times to come and play our part in the eco-system.

Acknowledgements to Socrates for allowing us to quote his pearls of wisdom.