Fabled VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) to set up Bengaluru office; Anish Acharya leads effort
In 2022, a16z earmarked $500 million for Indian startups, but since Coinswitch, its only investment has been an undisclosed seed round in Plutus Labs, a hyper-casual gaming and prediction platform.
US venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, better known as a16z, is setting up an office in India's Silicon Valley of Bengaluru, multiple people familiar with the move told Mint.
Its San Francisco-based general partner Anish Acharya is leading hiring for India.
The idea is to scout for early-stage deals in the AI-focused and SaaS firms being built out of India that are servicing global clients, said a person with knowledge of the firm's plans.
"They will most likely begin with not more than two people who will help build the deal pipeline here," another person in the know said. The firm began its search for talent six months ago in April and has not yet hired any professional headhunting firm to help in India.
"They are speaking to some of the general partners (GPs) from local funds who are either in the process (of leaving) or have already left big VC firms. They are also keen on operators coming out of scaled-up startups and ecommerce companies who understand this market better," the second person added.
Queries sent to a16z on 7 October by Mint received no response at the time of publishing.
There has been chatter in the startup ecosystem in Bengaluru that another large Silicon Valley VC firm, Sequoia Global, is also looking to hire in India. However, Mint could not independently verify this.
Acharya leads hiring
A16z's general partner "Anish Acharya is overseeing hiring its investing team in the country," another person told Mint, declining to be named.
Acharya has been with a16z since August 2019, is a two-time entrepreneur, and is responsible for consumer and enterprise investing at the firm. Some of the investments that he has led during his time with a16z include AI music company [untitled], food supply chain software company Silo, wealth management firm Titan, software-driven general contracting platform Mosaic, and agentic artificial intelligence startup HappyRobot to name a few.
The firm has so far made only two investments in Indian startups. In 2021, it backed Bangalore-based cryptocurrency trading platform Coinswitch Kuber alongside Coinbase Ventures in a $260 million Series C round which valued the company at $1.9 billion as of October 2021, according to startup intelligence platform Tracxn.
In 2022, TechCrunch had reported that a16z had earmarked $500 million to invest in Indian startups. However, the only investment the firm has made in India after Coinswitch was a seed cheque of an undisclosed amount to Plutus Labs which runs hyper-casual skill games and prediction markets.
a16z has been an investor in some of the world's most well-known consumer, enterprise and AI companies since its founding in 2009. Notable examples include OpenAI, Slack, Lyft, Airbnb, GitHub, Coinbase, Databricks, Facebook, Figma, Instagram, Okta, Roblox, Pinterest, Reddit, Robinhood, BuzzFeed, imgur, and instacart.
The firm has made 1,762 investments to date, of which it has been the lead investor in 790 deals, according to Crunchbase. It currently has 969 portfolio companies and has over the course of its 30 funds, exited 259 investments.
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