Former Reliance Jio Exec Introduces $130M Fund for Tech-Driven Startups

Vikas Choudhury

Nitin Konde, Apoorva Bajj

Sep 12, 2024 — 2 min read

Former Reliance Jio Exec Introduces $130M Fund for Tech-Driven Startups

On 10 September 2024, the venture capital firm Playbook Partners, which was established by Vikas Choudhury, a former president of Jio and an investor in startups, announced that the first closure of its $250 million growth capital fund had been completed at more than $130 million. The fund will provide financial support to growth-stage, technology-enabled businesses operating in big addressable markets that have good operating margins and high growth. The fund will be raised from global investors from Europe, the United States, the Middle East, and India.

In addition to holding interests in firms such as inMobi, Myntra, Fractal, Nazara, PolicyBazaar, Rapido, and others, Choudhury is also a shareholder in ten unicorns, initial public offerings, and exits.

Vikas Choudhury, who was speaking about the new fund, stated that the strategy is not simply to fund, but to generate – cash, connections, and strategic insight – the necessary resources for visionary enterprises to master the art of scaling and institutionalize their leading position.

People Who Are Backing the Venture

Operating partners Manish Choksi (Asian Paints), Aakash Chaudhry (Aakash Education), and Milan Sheth (Ex Automation Anywhere) are among the backers. These individuals have expressed their participation either through their family offices or in their capacity.

Among the members of the fund's advisory board are Naveen Tewari (inMobi), Nitish Mittersain (Nazara), Sushil Jiwarajka (Ericsson), Dileep Choksi (Ex Deloitte), and Priti Rathi Gupta (Anand Rathi Group). Dushyant Singh, who formerly worked at McKinsey & Co., and Sumit Jain, who formerly worked for Sistema Asia Capital and Kalaari Capital, are members of the fund's senior investing team.

Before that, Choudhury served as the Chief Executive Officer of AIMIA, a loyalty analytics company, in India till 2017. According to the information provided on his LinkedIn profile, he was also a partner in the multi-family office Pivot Ventures, which specialized in alternative investments, until the year 2023.

India will be responsible for more than fifteen percent of the total growth of the world economy over the next ten years, thanks to the fivefold expansion of the digital economy, which will reach over one trillion dollars. According to Choudhury, the mission of the company is to provide India with the means to expand and transform at an aspirational scale.

What Playbook Does?

"Playbook Partners" is a company that specializes in operator-driven growth capital (GC) for the digital India market. With its headquarters in Mumbai, the company makes investments in growth-stage businesses that are enabled by technology and have shown that they have positive unit economics and are sustainably scaling to market leadership. The company exemplifies the "art of scale" by combining finance with the capability to provide India's most promising entrepreneurs with the fuel they need to succeed through a combination of data-driven and strategic approaches. Aspirational India is the target of this initiative, which focuses on digital transformation themes such as distribution and disruption, to promote consumption and innovation.