Sprout Venture Partners Research
Investment Thesis
Sprout Venture Partners is a Bangalore-based early-stage venture fund that backs founders in India across two themes. The first is consumption-led: companies closing demand gaps in products or services as India's consumption opportunity expands. The second is technology-led: companies closing need gaps with new products, proprietary IP and frontier technologies, including B2B software built in India for global markets. The firm says it looks for team, TAM and tailwinds, but that conviction in founder-market fit comes above all else. It describes its aim as backing founders before the market catches up, usually as the first institutional cheque.
Stage Focus
Seed and pre-Series A. The website states the first cheque is typically INR 3 to 5 crore, and third-party sources describe the firm as a seed investor, with occasional Series A participation (CB Insights lists one Series A from August 2024). The firm is usually the first institutional money in.
Check Size
First cheques of INR 3 to 5 crore, roughly USD 350K to 600K at current exchange rates. Third-party data shows tracked rounds in which Sprout participated of about USD 0.55M (Lorazzo, January 2026), USD 0.8M (House of Zelena, September 2025) and USD 1.2M (Taqtics, November 2024). Those figures are round sizes, not Sprout's own cheque. Tracxn puts the average round size at about USD 779K across 15 seed investments.
Lead Tendency
Unclear. The firm positions itself as the first institutional cheque, but the public record shows syndicates with angel networks and other funds (for example Chandigarh Angels Network and First Cheque on Lorazzo, GSF India and M Venture Partners on House of Zelena, Capital-A and Java Capital on Taqtics). Lead versus follow role is not stated, so it is recorded as unknown.
Recent Activity
The firm is deploying from Fund II, a Category II SEBI-registered AIF (registered April 2022; CB Insights lists a USD 10M fund closing in November 2023). Recent tracked investments:
- January 2026: Lorazzo, seed (modern kitchen and bath fittings)
- September 2025: House of Zelena, seed (maternity products brand)
- November 2024: Taqtics, seed (retail store-operations software)
- September 2024: Newmi Care, USD 1.5M seed (women's health platform), reported in the press
On the exit side, Moneycontrol reported on 1 September 2026 that Sprout exited Rusk Media during its Series C, taking Fund I (a corpus of about USD 5M, set up in late 2017) to a 3x DPI. That follows partial exits from Pixis (reported as a 70x return) and Ripplr (13x), and a full exit from Fitso, acquired by Zomato. CB Insights also records CustomerGlu being acquired by Capillary Technologies in August 2026.
Portfolio Highlights
The site lists 20 companies across Fund I and Fund II, with status tags. Highlights:
- Pixis (AI marketing infrastructure): partially exited
- Ripplr (retail distribution tech): partially exited
- Rusk Media (GenZ digital entertainment): exited
- Fitso (bookable sports facilities): exited, acquired by Zomato
- Goals101 (data intelligence for banks and NBFCs): acquired by M2P
- Eat Anytime (healthy snacking) and AADAR (herbal and sexual wellness): exited
- Active: AdvantageClub.ai, Advarisk, ExtraaEdge, Fashor, House of Zelena, Lorazzo, Newmi Care, Raw Material, Taqtics
- Inactive: HealthFin, Trell
The mix is split between consumer brands and services (Fashor, Lorazzo, House of Zelena, Raw Material, Newmi Care) and enterprise software (Advarisk, ExtraaEdge, Taqtics, AdvantageClub, Pixis).
Team
- Sahil Gupta, Partner: over 15 years across venture capital, investment banking and entrepreneurship; previously ICICI Bank and MAPE Advisory Group; engineering degree from RVCE Bangalore and an MBA from Bayes Business School, London.
- Sunil Jain, Partner: over 20 years in investment banking and early-stage investing; founder and managing partner of Sprout Capital Advisors, an Indian investment bank advising on capital raises and M&A; Chartered Accountant with an MBA from SP Jain.
- Naman Sodhani, Investment Team: over 2 years in early-stage investing; previously She Capital and Deloitte USI tax consulting.
The firm was founded in 2017 by Sahil Gupta and Sunil Jain. The investment manager is Sprout Investment Advisors LLP and the trustee is Vistra ITCL (India) Limited.
Decision Process
Not disclosed. With two partners and one investment team member, decisions are likely made jointly by the partners, but that is an inference and is not recorded in the structured fields.
Founder Preferences
Founders with sharp insight into their market and the drive to build what others cannot yet see. Founder-market fit is the stated top criterion. The firm calls itself a small, hands-on team for the early, uncertain moments. Sunil Jain's investment banking practice means help with follow-on capital raises and M&A is plausible, though the site does not say so.
Geographic Focus
India. The site frames the opportunity as India's consumption and technology growth, and the portfolio is India-based, including B2B companies built in India for global markets. The office is at Unit 409, Prestige Centre Point, Cunningham Road, Bangalore 560052.
Gaps and Caveats
The site's /portfolio.html and /who-we-are.html links return 404, so the portfolio was read from the homepage. Fund sizes come from CB Insights and press (Fund I about USD 5M, Fund II about USD 10M) and are not stated on the firm's own site. Sprout's own cheque size, lead tendency and decision process are not publicly confirmed.