Early-stage venture capital firm Jungle Ventures is sharpening its focus on repeat founders and deep-domain operators while writing larger cheques at the pre-seed and seed stage, even as India’s broader early-stage funding market faces a slowdown.
“We do three to five seed deals every year based on large industry opportunities and founder profile,” said Rishabh Malik, managing partner for pre-seed and seed-stage investments at Jungle Ventures, in an interaction with businessline. “Our strategy is high conviction and lower velocity compared to peers.”
The Singapore-headquartered firm, which invests across India and Southeast Asia, is increasingly backing founders with prior start-up experience or sector expertise, particularly in large addressable markets such as AI, aerospace, defence, healthcare, specialty chemicals and consumer brands.
Cautious Time
Malik’s comments come at a time when seed-stage funding activity in India has moderated, with industry reports showing a decline in deal volumes and tighter investor discipline over the past year.
However, Jungle Ventures believes the quality of founders entering the ecosystem has improved significantly.
“Forty to forty-five percent of founders today have either been in start-ups before, are repeat founders, or have been part of growth journeys. Those are very encouraging signals,” Malik said.
The firm’s investment approach also reflects a broader shift underway in India’s startup ecosystem, where venture investors are prioritising concentrated bets over portfolio-scale deployment. Jungle Ventures typically invests $2-4 million at the seed stage, with plans to significantly increase capital allocation into portfolio companies as they scale.
“We want to deploy meaningful capital into fewer companies rather than spread smaller amounts across many businesses,” Malik said. “The playbook is more dollars per company and fewer companies.”
Steep Rise
The firm is also seeing a sharp rise in artificial intelligence-led start-up pitches. According to Malik, AI start-ups now account for nearly half of the investment opportunities evaluated by the firm, compared to a single-digit share about 18 months ago.
“We’re seeing 45-50 per cent of all deals as AI deals today. That shift has happened very quickly,” he said.
Despite concerns around liquidity pressures, muted IPO markets and foreign investor outflows from India, Malik said the firm remains optimistic about the long-term outlook for India’s start-up ecosystem, particularly as experienced founders and operators launch new ventures after exits and public listings over the last few years.
“We don’t see stress in the system. There is a lot of excitement,” Malik said. “People who built companies earlier are now coming back to build again, and that creates a very powerful flywheel for India’s start-up ecosystem.”