When Sanjay Nayar, the former KKR India head, announced starting his own early stage venture fund Sorin Investments in 2022, it quickly became the buzz of town. This was in 2022, when the Indian startup ecosystem was already experiencing the bite of the funding winter. Nayar was not discouraged by the market mood.

But it was an unusual move to go from a private equity fund to early stage VC. At that time, Nayar reportedly said startups were incorrectly assuming that VCs were just waiting on the sidelines with dry powder and watching for the right opportunity. It turned out to be more than just temporary caution.

“This aberrant funding came as India’s startup ecosystem was at an inflection point,” Nayar said. His view was that in spite of the slowdown, there existed a gap in the market, which his new venture capital fund would try to bridge.

But Sorin also emerged in the era of micro VCs — in that sense, the INR 1,350 Cr corpus stands out among a sea of smaller funds looking to back innovative niches.

However, Nayar’s vision was always to go beyond capital. Mentorship, deep insights, and a global network are key pillars for Sorin Investments.

The maiden INR 1,350 Cr fund which was closed last year is something that few early stage funds have at their disposal. Sorin has made seven investments through the fund, with around 35%-40% of the capital already deployed.

When it comes to Series A and B rounds, where Sorin is looking to build its niche, startups are craving capital infusion, particularly those looking to scale up retail and D2C brands, as well as AI startups. Sorin is keenly eyeing this opportunity. So far, it has invested in enterprise AI assistant Beacon, fashion brand The Pant Project, procurement marketplace Venwiz, fintech startup Freed among others.

“We don’t just fund; we build relationships and drive the growth of these businesses,” Mandar Dandekar, partner and founding member of Sorin Investments, told Inc42 in an interview.

Sorin’s vision is to support startups not only with funding but also with hands-on mentorship and give founders a global perspective to help them build at scale and thrive in an increasingly competitive landscape. But given the large corpus of its first fund, naturally Sorin is taking bigger bets than traditional VCs or micro VCs.

“We’re planning to build out the bulk of our portfolio in 2025 and 2026. A majority of our primary capital will be deployed over these two years, with reserves set aside for follow-on investments,” the Sorin Investments partner added.

Dandekar also delved into Sorin’s USP and competitive edge in a crowded early-stage market and how it leverages its corpus bandwidth to identify and back long-term structural tailwinds.

Here are the edited excerpts from the interview:

Inc42: With Sorin Investment’s maiden fund now closed at INR 1,350 Cr, what differentiated your fund thesis in a crowded early-stage VC market and convinced marquee LPs like Henry Kravis and the Munjal family to back you?

Mandar Dandekar: The first thing, of course, is the complementary skill sets within our team—but also the depth and diversity of investing experience across the senior team: Sanjay, Angad, Subir, and myself. That depth gave LPs a lot of comfort.

Secondly, when we went to market in early 2022, our thesis was a bit broader........

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