South Park Commons (SPC), a tech start-up community and early-stage venture fund, has opened an outpost in Bengaluru, its first international location outside the US in collaboration with Flipkart Co-founder Binny Bansal.
SPC is also planning an India dedicated fund to back some of the most talented founders in the country. It has closed its third fund, founders Aditya Agarwal and Ruchi Sanghvi told businessline however they not shed light on the total corpus, it is likely to be larger than its first two funds.
SPC, which follows a differentiated model of backing tech start-ups, has raised $1.5 billion across two funds and has funded 150 start-ups and are cumulatively valued over $40 billion.
Its USP lies in the fact that it brings together the technical community, where they can brainstorm ideas that can be turned into a start-up, which is into its philosophy of -1 to 0, which means looking at proposals, which are just on paper.
Lookout for partners
Currently, SPC is on the lookout for two partners who will lead its operations in India. One partner will solely focus on India, while the other will be a global partner responsible for bridging the gap between the US and India start-up ecosystem.
It aims to have 15-20 community members in India and help them through the -1 to 0 journey. SPC’s journey in India will be similar to what the incubator does in the US. Its first cheque is typically a $1 million – split in two tranches with an ownership of around 11-12 per cent.
“We will back entrepreneurs who want to tackle big ideas,” said Aditya Agarwal. This would also see active participation from Binny Bansal, both as an investor and mentor, to any of the potential start-ups.
“We will see how we can support these entrepreneurs and try things out that make it into a reality,” Bansal said.
SPC is looking to supports founders when they are most vulnerable and is looking to bring together the most talented technical founders.
SPC believes there is a deep technical talent pool in India and the Indian start-up ecosystem has reached a maturity where it can attempt to tackle very ambitious ideas.
The earliest members of SPC included future founders from companies like Anthropic and Imbue, as well as early engineers from OpenAI. SPC aims to replicate this emphasis in India, it added.