Roots Ventures

How to reach the fund

• Use the contact form on the Contact Us page. It asks for your name, company, email, phone number and a message.
• Or write to the general inbox, invest@roots-ventures.com.
• The site gives no deadline, no response time and no stated process, so keep talking to other investors while you wait.

Before you pitch

• The firm calls itself early-stage and sector agnostic, so open with what you are building and how far it has got rather than fitting a sector label.
• Read the portfolio page and the Insights page, which carries news, blogs and thesis notes, to see what the team has backed and how it writes about its approach.
• Its founders describe a first-institutional-investor role and follow-on support. Say in your note what you want from an investor beyond the cheque.

What to check

• The site does not say how large the fund is or what size of cheque it writes. Ask early, so you know whether it can lead your round or only join it.
• The site names more than one fund scheme and its pages differ on the second fund's registration. Ask which scheme would invest in you.

Roots Ventures is an early-stage, sector-agnostic venture capital firm based in Mumbai. Its site says it has made 25+ investments so far and calls itself a multistage investor, with an ethos of staying away from the crowd and the glamour of the go-go sectors, because it believes the best opportunities are available where no one is looking. It also says there is no right age for a founder, that educational degrees do not make it starry-eyed, and that distance does not stop it backing the right founders.

The firm's funds are registered with SEBI as Alternative Investment Funds, with Roots Ventures LLP as investment manager and sponsor. The site lists Roots Ventures-I as a Category II fund and a Category I angel fund scheme, and Roots Ventures-II as a further scheme. The site's own pages do not agree on the registration details of the second fund, so confirm which scheme would invest in you.

The portfolio page shows a spread of consumer, fintech and hardware names, among them Smytten, StockGro, Jar, Daily Object, Manastu Space and Railofy. Founders quoted on the site say the firm came in as a first institutional investor, led an early round, and kept investing in later rounds. One says it stayed supportive when the company later took a strategic partner.

The site does not publish a fund size, a cheque size, a stage definition or a selection process, and it does not describe an application window. The way in is a contact form (name, company, email, phone number and message) and a general inbox, invest@roots-ventures.com. It also has an Insights page with news, blogs and thesis notes, which is worth reading before you write to the team. You pitch an investor and, if it invests, it takes equity.