Sandeep Aggarwal, founder of Droom, and his family office have spent more than ₹25 crore investment for 18 startups involved in tech, fintech, healthcare, and media content. Also, they are working to find 10-12 companies a year to invest in. This will likely boost the startup ecosystem in India.
Aggarwal disclosed the previous investments were in his personal capacity while the coming ones are made through his family office, Digital Karma. Aggarwal selects startups with a long-term view. There will be 10 startups selected and each company will receive an average of $50,000 USD investment.
Some companies in the list that Aggarwal invested in, including Lionbird, a US-based Venture Capital firm, Fixcraft, India-based full-stack cloud garage startup, Tyreplex, a B2B e-commerce firm in the aftermarket tire vertical, TSB Media Ventures, a media and content company, and Iridia, a DNA-based data storage solution.
In 2016, Indian invested in more than seven early-stage firms in India and overseas with the approximate ₹4 crore fund, including California-based firms Giveclub and Dataguise, Malaysia-based Duriana, Indonesia-based Dekoruma, and India-based Wittyfeed, Curo healthcare, Wydr, Clan Connect, and Shopsity.
Founded in 2014, Droom is a tech and data science-driven online automobile market. Currently, the platform has over 6.5 lakh automobiles listed. The firm also has raised over $125 million USD through six rounds of funding since its launch.
In the earlier years, Aggarwal founded the e-commerce platform ShopClues in 2011. Most of the selected invested companies are in the technology industry.
“Within tech, I like e-commerce or other consumer internet offerings – edutech, health-tech, e-commerce, and lately, I have considered and probably will be investing more in D2C (direct to consumer) companies. I think a lot of them (D2C) brands are coming in health, beauty, fashion jewelry, and other segments and it makes sense given India’s high domestic consumption…that sector is going to grow in a big way.”
The founder believes that in addition to creating wealth, the amount of job creation and social transformation can help India enter the global startup revolution.
