Z21 Sets Up 5 M Fund To Invest

Z21 Venture Capital firm sets up a $5 million fund to invest in early-stage companies that are technology and talent specific. It aims to focus on and provide value to both startups and investors, by the growth in the Indian startup ecosystem.  Z21 is an early-stage venture capital firm.

It was founded by Abhinav Shashank and Raj Singh. Abhinav Shashank is CEO and co-founder of the healthcare technology company Innovaccer, which was valued at more than $3 billion in 2021. Raj Sing is the COO and co-founder at Hyperspec AI, a deep tech company developing technology for autonomous driving. He was also one of the founding executives and head of product at Innovaccer between 2017-2022.

The fund aims to create a large pool of seed-funded technology startups that are ready to disrupt various sectors across the world. The goal is to identify early-stage technology companies and invest in them and then support them in their growth with the help of a community of investors who are subject matter experts in different technology and business domains. It has onboarded Experts like Pallaw Sharma (chief data and analytics officer, Cisco), Piyush Agarwal (founder of Scholr – acquired by Byju’s), Sachin Saxena (founding member and head of marketing at Innovaccer), among others.

“Today, there are lots of different kinds of companies in the startup ecosystem – we have companies building EVs, med-tech devices, it’s not just software anymore. The seed funding stage in India is not very mature, accounting for just about 10% of the total investment in startups, and the advisor network is weak too. It’s difficult for early-stage startup founders to connect with experts in specific fields for guidance. That’s the problem we’re looking to solve,” said Singh.
 
The experts will not only invest as limited partners in the fund, but will also participate in selecting, supporting and guiding the early-stage companies on their GTM, product strategy and product market fit, etc.