How Better Capital became one of India’s hottest early investors

Better Capital has made at least 75 seed investments in Indian startups this year, a fruitful burst of dealmaking that has elevated its profile among entrepreneurs and venture capitalists considerably.

Last month, Better’s Pune-based founder, Vaibhav Domkundwar, formalised an early-stage fund of $15.2 million and he is currently putting together a growth corpus to enter companies at Series B stage, a step-up from seed financing.

This kind of pace is generally associated with Cred’s Kunal Shah and Snapdeal’s Kunal Bahl, who have made several early-stage bets over the years. While they are among the biggest names in the Indian startup ecosystem, few people knew Domkundwar or his expertise as an investor and fund manager until a few years ago.

His journey of angel investing has been long and unconventional, and it’s set to figure more prominently in conversations as one of Better’s bets, fintech Slice, became a unicorn this week. This is the first $1-billion valuation in Better’s portfolio of at least 185 startups. Four other companies are valued at more than $500 million each and six at over $100 million. 

How did Better and Domkundwar get here? 

He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1998, and co-founded mobile roaming solutions firm Roamware in San Francisco in 2000. Three years later, he left the firm (now called Mobileum) and launched Better in Silicon Valley.