Big boost for startups! Helion’s Rahul Chandra launches $100 million fund

After backing over 30 early to mid-stage startups such as RailYatri, Crownit and Toppr, Helion Ventures’ managing director Rahul Chandra has launched a USD 100 million called 'Unitary Helion' fund that will invest in areas such as financial technology, digital marketplaces, logistics and healthcare.

The fund will create a portfolio of 18 to 20 companies under a common thesis – ‘technology-based innovation that will impact millions of lives’.

Announcing the launch of his new fund, Chandra said that venture investments in India are entering a new cycle with founders focussing on problems that are unique to India. “India is at a juncture where the platform for digital solutions has been laid with government-led initiatives such as Aadhaar, UPI, and GST.  We have a whole new generation of entrepreneurs leveraging this stack to reimagine solutions for challenging problems across large sectors,” Chandra said.

Unitary will receive operational and infrastructure from other Helion Advisors. Senior Managing Directors at Helion - Sanjeev Aggarwal and Ashish Gupta have joined as advisors to the new fund.

Chandra's new venture fund will also invest in developing a proprietary data science-based investment methodology to quantitatively understand startup health metrics like product market fit and user growth.

Jonathan Hsu, Partner and Head of Data Science at Social Capital will serve as a special advisor in developing in-house data analytics tools for all vertical focus areas.

In 2015, Helion Venture Partners saw an exit of its second line of leadership when Alok Goyal, Rahul Chowdhri and Ritesh Banglani quit in December. They have started a new VC firm called Stellaris Venture Partners. Earlier in 2015, Kanwaljit Singh, senior MD of the firm had quit Helion to start his own firm called Fireside Ventures.