Manipal’s Ranjan Pai to invest in Atul Gupta’s $250 mln fund

livemint.com:

Mint. Trident’s first-ever fund has already received commitments from various other investors. “The discussions are still in a preliminary stage and not much has been decided yet," one of the people cited above said.

The fund will typically focus on growth-stage companies and invest across multiple sectors, including consumer, financial services, enterprise software and technology, industrial and manufacturing, and healthcare. While Gupta did not respond to Mint’s request for comment, Ranjan Pai declined to comment. Besides Gupta, Rajesh Ramaiah and Pravan Malhotra are also part of the founding team of Trident.

Gupta, who announced the fund in July, brings a wealth of experience in overseeing some of India’s most renowned startups. Gupta, during his 15-year tenure at Premji, contributed to the growth of startups such as Lenskart, Policybazaar, Myntra, Flipkart, Purplle, FirstCry and Snapdeal, as per his latest post on social networking platform LinkedIn last month. Gupta aims to leverage his expertise in his new venture with several of these companies which are unicorns (or a startup with a billion-dollar valuation), publicly listed companies or are well on their way.

Meanwhile, Ranjan Pai, chairman of Manipal Group, actively invests in the new age and digital economy and is seen as a saviour for struggling startups such as Byju’s and Pharmeasy among other investments. “We have invested a lot in the Indian startup ecosystem. We believe that the kind of quality of entrepreneurs that are coming out of the Indian ecosystem is very promising and we will look at continuing to invest in the ecosystem," Pai told Mint in an interview last year.