Kalaari Capital accelerator Kstart has invested $500,000 each in three startups in healthcare, financial services and online video content management. Kstart is a unique seed program designed for the next generation of Indian entrepreneurs, picked out the following start-ups from out a pool of 400 applications : Active.ai, Affordplan and Indee.
Active.ai provides a tech platform for banks, wealth managers and financial services companies to interact with customers. Affordplan is a tech product for doctors and patients to co-design payment plans for non-emergency healthcare services and Indee is a web video streaming platform that helps film studios and entertainment companies to promote and test their content before releasing it to viewers.
"We are investing about $500,000 in each of them through a convertible note so that they can keep their options open in terms of future dilution and valuation," said Vani Kola, managing director at Kalaari Capital who expects to pick about four startups every quarter.
The firm is looking to invest up to $20 million in as many as 40 startups for the programme over the next two years. Kstart will invest $100,000-500,000 in 6-9 other start-ups this year.
For its startups, KStart has also roped in top executives like former Cisco chief technology officer Padmasree Warrior, Airbnb's global expansion head Varsha Rao, Ratan Tata and top lawyer Zia Mody.
Kalaari Capital which started in 2006, is an early-stage, technology-focused venture capital firm with $650 million in assets under management. The VC firm raised $290 million fund last year. Its portfolio include firms like Flipkart, Snapdeal, Urban Ladder, Simplilearn and Zivame.
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