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Key people at Better Capital.
Better Capital operates as a US-based pre-seed venture capital firm, focusing on early-stage technology companies. It delivers both capital and strategic guidance, assisting founders from concept to product-market fit and through subsequent funding rounds. The firm's methodology emphasizes systematic, hands-on support.
Vaibhav Domkundwar, a seasoned entrepreneur with over two decades of operational experience, founded the firm. His transition to investing stemmed from a deep understanding of building companies, aiming to empower promising Indian founders. This insight drove Better Capital's establishment, leveraging his firsthand experience across product, growth, and sales.
Better Capital primarily serves early-stage founders in India, offering comprehensive support beyond financial backing. The company's vision centers on cultivating a new generation of impactful businesses by partnering with innovative entrepreneurs at their earliest stages. It aims to foster sustainable growth, ensuring portfolio companies achieve lasting success and make significant industry contributions.
Key people at Better Capital.
Better Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm that has positioned itself as a category-defining investor in India's startup ecosystem, backing bold innovators from day zero with a focus on fintech, education technology, consumer applications, and emerging sectors.[1][3] Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Santa Clara, California, the firm operates as a pre-seed and seed-stage investor with a distinctly India-focused mandate, though it maintains a presence across geographies.[4][5] The firm's mission centers on identifying and nurturing transformative businesses that reshape entire categories rather than incremental improvements, with a portfolio that has grown to over 200 companies boasting a combined valuation exceeding $7 billion and producing two unicorns.[1]
Better Capital's investment philosophy emphasizes early-stage conviction and hands-on support for founders navigating the critical pre-seed and seed phases. The firm operates with a relatively lean structure of experienced investors and maintains an industry-agnostic approach while concentrating its efforts across high-impact sectors including fintech, crypto, education technology, SaaS, software, agri-tech, health tech, and gaming.[3][4] This sector diversity reflects a deliberate strategy to identify category-defining opportunities across India's rapidly evolving startup landscape, where the firm has become a recognizable early backer of companies that later achieve significant scale.
Better Capital functions as a conviction-driven early-stage venture firm that builds alongside and invests in category-defining businesses, with a particular emphasis on India's entrepreneurial ecosystem.[1] The firm's mission is to back bold innovators at their inception, providing not just capital but strategic guidance and operational support to help founders navigate the complexities of building transformative companies. The investment philosophy prioritizes identifying founders and ideas with the potential to reshape entire markets rather than compete within existing categories, reflecting a belief that the most significant returns emerge from category creation rather than category participation.
The firm's sector focus spans fintech (including neobanking, lending, and payment infrastructure), education technology, consumer applications, agri-tech, health tech, and gaming, with emerging interest in AI and machine learning applications.[1][3] This breadth allows Better Capital to identify cross-sector patterns and support founders building infrastructure or platforms that serve multiple verticals. The firm's impact on the startup ecosystem has been substantial—its portfolio companies have collectively achieved significant valuations, with notable successes including Slice (a credit card challenger), Open (Asia's leading SME neobank), Rupeek (asset-backed lending), Khatabook (digital ledger for small businesses), and Teachmint (education infrastructure).[1] These exits and scale events have established Better Capital as a credible early-stage validator, influencing founder decision-making and attracting follow-on investment from larger funds.
Better Capital was founded in 2006, positioning it as an established player in the venture ecosystem with nearly two decades of operational history.[3][4] The firm's evolution reflects the maturation of India's startup landscape—beginning during a period when venture capital in India was nascent and gradually building expertise in identifying early-stage opportunities as the ecosystem developed. The founding team comprises experienced investment professionals with demonstrated track records in identifying and supporting early-stage founders, though the firm has maintained a relatively lean structure focused on deep engagement rather than large fund sizes.[5]
The firm's trajectory has been marked by a deliberate focus on India-focused opportunities, particularly as the country emerged as a global hub for technology entrepreneurship. Solo GP Vaibhav Domkundwar, who built his operator credentials before leading the fund, exemplifies the hands-on approach Better Capital brings to its investments.[5] This emphasis on founder-operator experience within the investment team has shaped the firm's ability to provide meaningful operational support beyond capital deployment. The firm's early bets on fintech and education technology proved prescient, as these sectors experienced explosive growth in India during the 2010s and 2020s, validating the investment thesis and attracting additional capital and founder attention to the fund.
Better Capital distinguishes itself through an unwavering commitment to pre-seed and seed-stage investing at a time when many venture firms have shifted toward later-stage opportunities. The firm's check size range of $0-$500K reflects this early-stage specialization, allowing it to deploy capital efficiently while maintaining meaningful ownership stakes and engagement levels.[5] This focus creates a structural advantage—the firm can move quickly, make conviction-based decisions without extensive due diligence bureaucracy, and build deep relationships with founders during their most formative years.
While headquartered in Santa Clara, Better Capital has built specialized expertise in identifying and supporting India-based founders, positioning itself as a bridge between Indian entrepreneurship and global capital markets.[5] This geographic focus is not a limitation but a differentiator—the firm has developed deep networks, pattern recognition, and operational knowledge specific to the Indian market that larger, generalist funds cannot replicate. The portfolio's concentration in Indian companies reflects this strategic positioning, though the firm maintains openness to US-based opportunities.
With over 200 portfolio companies, Better Capital has created a dense network effect where portfolio companies can support one another through customer relationships, technical partnerships, and talent sharing.[1] This density transforms the fund from a passive capital provider into an active ecosystem builder. The two unicorns in the portfolio and the $7B+ combined valuation demonstrate that this approach produces outsized returns while maintaining a high hit rate across a large number of bets.
Rather than restricting itself to narrow verticals, Better Capital maintains an industry-agnostic approach while developing deep expertise in high-impact sectors including fintech, education, consumer, and emerging technologies.[3][4] This balance allows the firm to identify category-defining opportunities across diverse markets while avoiding the trap of sector saturation that affects more specialized funds.
Better Capital operates at the intersection of several powerful macro trends reshaping the global technology landscape. The firm's emphasis on India-focused investments positions it to capture the digitalization of financial services, education, and commerce across a population of 1.4+ billion people with rapidly increasing internet penetration and smartphone adoption. The fintech concentration in the portfolio reflects the firm's conviction that traditional financial services in emerging markets represent a massive opportunity for technology-driven disruption—a thesis that has proven correct as Indian fintech companies have achieved unicorn status and attracted billions in follow-on capital.
The firm's influence on the broader ecosystem extends beyond capital deployment. By validating early-stage founders and providing operational support, Better Capital has helped establish a template for how pre-seed and seed-stage investing can function in emerging markets. The firm's portfolio successes have demonstrated that category-defining companies can emerge from India, influencing founder ambitions and attracting additional venture capital to the region. This has created a virtuous cycle where Better Capital's early bets attract follow-on investment, enabling portfolio companies to scale rapidly and achieve outsized outcomes.
The timing of Better Capital's India focus has proven fortuitous. The firm began concentrating on Indian opportunities during a period when the country's startup ecosystem was transitioning from early experimentation to sustained growth. The subsequent explosion of venture capital flowing into India, the emergence of multiple unicorns, and the global recognition of Indian founders as world-class entrepreneurs have validated the firm's geographic thesis. Better Capital's early positioning has allowed it to maintain a privileged position as a trusted early backer, even as competition for later-stage deals has intensified.
Better Capital stands at an inflection point in its evolution. The firm has successfully demonstrated that early-stage, India-focused venture investing can produce exceptional returns and build category-defining companies. Looking forward, the firm will likely face pressure to increase fund sizes and deploy capital at later stages, a common trajectory for successful early-stage investors. However, the firm's competitive advantage lies precisely in its early-stage focus and lean structure—maintaining this positioning while selectively supporting portfolio companies through follow-on rounds will be critical to sustaining its edge.
The emergence of AI and machine learning as transformative technologies presents both opportunity and challenge. Better Capital's portfolio companies will increasingly incorporate AI capabilities, and the firm may identify opportunities to back AI-native infrastructure and applications serving Indian markets. The firm's ability to identify founders building category-defining AI applications—rather than incremental AI features—will determine its relevance in this new era.
The broader question for Better Capital is whether the firm can maintain its early-stage conviction and lean operating model as the Indian startup ecosystem matures and becomes increasingly competitive. The firm's track record suggests it possesses the expertise and network to continue identifying exceptional founders at their inception. However, as larger funds establish India-focused practices and competition for the best early-stage deals intensifies, Better Capital will need to leverage its accumulated relationships, operational expertise, and portfolio density to maintain its position as a founder-preferred early-stage investor. The firm's future influence will depend on its ability to evolve with the ecosystem while preserving the conviction-driven, founder-centric approach that has defined its success to date.
