Physis Capital

Physis Capital Research

Investment Thesis

Physis Capital is a Gurugram-based growth-stage venture fund co-founded in 2022 by Vinay Bansal, Ankur Mittal, and Mitesh Shah, the founding team behind Inflection Point Ventures (IPV), India's largest angel investing platform. The firm was built to close a specific gap in the Indian startup ecosystem: only around 2% of Indian startups progress beyond Series B, and Physis positions itself as the "structural" capital and mentorship layer that helps founders survive the harder growth-stage climb. Beyond a check, Physis offers an integrated ecosystem of technical, operational, and strategic mentorship, leveraging two IPV-linked platforms — CXO Genie, a network of 2,000+ senior operating professionals, and Founders Genie — to plug portfolio companies into hands-on operating help.

Stage Focus

Physis invests from Pre-Series A through Series B, with its center of gravity at Pre-Series A and Series A. The fund is explicitly growth-stage, not seed: it looks for companies with proven traction that need capital and operating support to scale rather than to find product-market fit.

Check Size

Typical initial checks run $1M-$1.5M, with follow-on reserves of $1M-$4M for its highest-conviction bets. Public materials also cite a broader $1M-$3M range per company. The fund reserves meaningful capital for concentrated follow-on investing rather than spreading thin across a large number of names.

Lead Tendency

Mixed evidence. Physis led Ben & Gaws' (Fabrication Bazar) $3M Pre-Series A round (August 2024), but co-invested alongside other leads (e.g., GVFL) in HRS Navigation's $5M Pre-Series A. Treat lead tendency as situational rather than a fixed policy.

Recent Activity

• May 28, 2026: Announced the final close of its maiden fund at Rs 400 crore (~$41.8M), raised from Star Union Dai-ichi Life Insurance and family offices of Haldiram's, Lotus Herbals, Ajmera Realty, Narayana Nethralaya, and DS Group.
• June 18, 2025: Reported crossing Rs 200 crore (~$23M) raised, with 8 deals in active pipeline and 3-4 expected closures within two quarters; investments in STAGE, CTPL, and Ben & Gaws confirmed as of that date.
• August 23, 2024: Led Ben & Gaws' (Fabrication Bazar) $3M Pre-Series A alongside Japan's ICMG and existing investor Inflection Point Ventures.
• HRS Navigation, a Bengaluru surgical-navigation medtech startup, raised $5M in a Pre-Series A co-led by GVFL, Physis Capital, and Sathguru Catalysers.

Fund status: actively deploying. As of the maiden-fund close, Physis had ~10 portfolio companies and is targeting a concentrated portfolio of 15-20 companies by December 2026. The firm has stated plans to launch a significantly larger second fund in Q4 2026.

Portfolio Highlights

Physis is sector-agnostic by mandate but is currently concentrated in consumer tech, fintech, and deeptech/healthtech:

• STAGE (stage.in) — regional-language OTT streaming platform
• CTPL / Creanovation Technologies (ctpl.io) — AI-driven CRM and enrollment software for higher-education institutions
• Hudle (hudle.in) — sports-facility booking and sportstech platform
• Recur Club (recurclub.com) — revenue-based financing / debt marketplace for startups
• HRS Navigation (hrsnavigation.com) — surgical navigation medtech, maker of the easyNav platform (20,000+ surgeries supported)
• Elevate Now — India's first medical, doctor-led weight-loss platform
• Olyv (formerly SmartCoin) — small-ticket personal lending platform
• Momentum, formerly Urban Harvest (uharvest.in) — hyperlocal HoReCa commerce/supply platform
• Ben & Gaws / Fabrication Bazar (bengaws.com) — asset-light, tech-enabled manufacturing platform for industrial steel products (storage silos, tanks, biogas equipment)
• Otipy (otipy.com) — farm-to-fork community group-buying platform for fresh produce; the company shut down in 2025 after being squeezed by quick-commerce competitors, a useful cautionary data point on Physis's willingness to back capital-intensive, thin-margin consumer categories.

Team

• Vinay Bansal — Managing Partner / Co-Founder. Former CFO at Wildcraft and GE; also Founder of Inflection Point Ventures. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinay-bansal-383b035/
• Ankur Mittal — Co-Founder. Former Credit Suisse M&A associate; also Co-Founder of Inflection Point Ventures. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankur-mittal-3ba773/
• Mitesh Shah — Co-Founder. Former CFO at Ola and BookMyShow; also Co-Founder of Inflection Point Ventures. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitesh-shah-0627873

Decision Process

The firm is run by its three co-founding Managing Partners as a partnership rather than a solo-GP or formal IC structure, drawing on IPV's broader network and CXO Genie / Founders Genie mentorship platforms for diligence support.

Founder Preferences

Vinay Bansal has publicly framed the thesis as backing "founders solving real, structural problems across India, whether it's access to capital, healthcare affordability, or building for the next wave of consumers beyond the metros," and looking for "teams building with conviction and depth." The portfolio skews toward founders tackling large, structurally underserved Indian markets (healthcare access, financial inclusion, regional-language content, industrial supply chains) rather than pure consumer-internet plays.

Geographic Focus

India-exclusive. Headquartered in Gurugram, Haryana (JMD Megapolis, Sector 48, Sohna Road), with portfolio companies based in Delhi-NCR and Bengaluru.

Application Process

Physis runs a public "Pitch to Us" intake form (accepting Angel through Series C stage submissions, pitch deck up to 10MB) rather than requiring a warm introduction, making it one of the more accessible growth-stage funds in the Indian market to approach cold.