Leveraging Global Alumni Ecosystem to Build Market Leaders

The alumni connect

The driving force behind IvyCap

In early 2011, the Indian start-up ecosystem was in its nascent phase dotted mainly with Angel Investors and PE firms with only a handful of Venture Capital funds supporting the growth of start-ups.

The need for a VC fund which helps start-ups through their growth life cycle, along with creating value for all stakeholders in the ecosystem, from the Entrepreneur to the Investor and finally for the society, led to the genesis of IvyCap.

Vikram Gupta, being an IIT alumnus himself, realized the importance of tapping the vast potential of this IIT alumni network since the inception of the fund and that came about to be the fund’s USP. Since a large number of IITians were conceiving start-ups on one hand and leading the biggest enterprises on the other, the IIT alumni network completed the entire value chain. Promising start-ups, in addition to funding, could receive invaluable advice from Industry leaders within this ecosystem which could also open up new avenues for Entrepreneurs to go beyond the Indian boundaries and tap global shores.

Giving back to the education ecosystem

Pioneering endowment funds in India

Globally, endowment funds have played a crucial role in strengthening an academic institution’s forte, such as in maintaining excellent standards in teaching, research, staffing, on-campus innovation and entrepreneurship and more. However, India’s education ecosystem, despite being a potent breeding ground for avant-garde innovation, has been alien to the concept of endowment funds, thereby never reaching its full potential.

At IvyCap, we have set ourselves on a mission to harness this untapped potential in college campuses across the country by enabling long-term endowment models. We helped create the structure and initial corpus for India’s first endowment fund at IIT Delhi with a target corpus of US$ 1 bn, launched by the Hon’ble President of India in October 2019. The endowment fund also became the passion for our alumni to create as much value for the IvyCap ecosystem and in return generating returns that could go back to their alma maters for further fueling Innovation and Entrepreneurship right on the campuses.

And we are on our way to enable more such endowment frameworks to be set up across other institutions in India. Our ultimate objective is to make the endowment system in India as robust as in the developed world and make our education system self-reliant. For IvyCap, a large part of the fund manager’s profits go back as endowments to various IITs.

The Endowment Anthem

Our investment philosophy

Creating value across the ecosystem

Our core philosophy lies in creating enduring value for all our stakeholders through capital and expertise, and is anchored on three key principles.

We nurture relationships

Investing in people

We firmly believe that it is the leaders who hold the key to avant-garde market disruption. Therefore, we invest in passionate founding teams with credible professional experience and strong academic backgrounds, helming highly scalable and innovative business models.

We believe in creating outliers

Investing across sectors

Stemming from our strong belief in people’s power to spark innovation & disruption, we invest in early to growth-stage start-ups (Seed Pre series A, Series A and Series B) that are building innovative technology-based products, services & business solutions and have a potential to scale, adapt and lead in a cut-throat market.

We are a sector agnostic fund with investments across sectors such as DeepTech, ConsumerTech, HealthTech, Fintech, EdTech, Saas, Enterprise Tech and others.

Explore our portfolio

We create meaningful impact while generating financial returns

Investing through the SDG lens

In today’s times, consideration of sustainability in investments is imminent. Our belief in the fact that Responsible investing can eventually create significant value for all stakeholders has led us to integrate Sustainable Development Goals as an integral part of our Investment Philosophy.

Our current portfolio companies have already started aligning the SDG’s in their business models and have identified indicators that they can use to measure and improve their level of sustainability.

Know more about our Sustainability framework

The IvyCap Advantage

Early start-up engagement for accelerated growth

Leveraging Global Alumni Networks

Harnessing the Alumni Ecosystem to create an Exceptional Advantage

IvyCap offers a unique platform with differentiated access to extremely high quality resources through its alumni ecosystem comprising of leaders from across the world from leading Indian educational institutes – IITs and IIMs. The Unique Alumni platform gives an edge in sourcing deals, finding right talent and mentors for our portfolio companies, extended support for exits through access to a vast international network of the Alumni.

Active Mentoring for Ground-up Innovation

Each start-up in our portfolio gets access to mentors who provide dynamic support for scaling up and help with strategy, coaching, capacity building, domain expertise, recruitment, go-to-market and more.

Explore our mentor board

IvyCamp - A Marketplace for Disruption

IvyCamp is our Startup engagement platform that connects Entrepreneurs, investors, institutions, and accelerators to aid entrepreneurs in building skills, accelerating their business, and connecting with investors.

Discover IvyCamp

High-Quality Governance Structure

IvyCap at a glance

The defining moments in our journey

2011

IvyCap Ventures

Launch of IvyCap Ventures Advisors Private Limited
Outreach to 75,000 alumni of IITs
IIT Alumni Trust as Sponsor
Initiation of Endowment Model through Venture Capital Fund