By Swathi Moorthy

Copyright indiatimes

Indian venture capital firms have a new wave of limited partners who are not family offices, founders, or institutional investors – technology professionals.Firms such as NuVentures, 247VC, and Wyser have a significant and growing share of investments from professionals who have spent over a decade in the sector in India and the US, looking to ride the startup wave.Technology professionals wanting to be LPs in VC firms, while common in the West, is a rising trend in India, investors said.”What began as a trend in the (Silicon) Valley is finding resonance in India now,” said Supria Dhanda, cofounder of venture capital firm Wyser. “This is unlocking newer forms of capital from both the Valley and India.” Krishna Mehra, AI partner at Elevation Capital, said this trend of tech professionals engaging more with the startup ecosystem as LPs in funds is likely to catch up going forward, with AI and deeptech gaining traction.These professionals include executives from startups, large multinational companies, and those with niche domain knowledge in areas such as space, healthcare, and semiconductors. These professionals invest close to Rs 1 crore, which is the required minimum to invest in alternative investment funds. Shashank Randev, general partner at 247VC, which is raising $30 million for its maiden round, said about 70% of the cheques for the company’s latest fundraise have come from technology professionals from sectors such as space and semiconductors, and the rest from family offices. Venk Krishnan, founder of NuWare and NuVentures, which recently raised $75 million for its maiden US LP fund, has two senior executives from large multinational companies in the US as LPs. They have put in close to ₹1 crore each. In the case of Wyser, about 50% of its investments have come from operators and professionals from India and the Valley. Their LPs include Namit Sharma, head of global delivery centre for analytics, FICO, an American data analytics company.Seafund’s Narendra Bhandari said they have seen increasing interest from tech professionals to become LPs. With the India IPO boom, a lot of technology professionals have made money and want to invest in startups without taking the risk themselves, said an investor who is talking to startup executives for his fundraise. Many of them have also burnt their fingers through angel investing and are looking for safer ways of investing that can give them access to quality startups, he added.