Kunal Upadhyay

Co-founder

2007 - Current

Kunal co-founded IIMA Ventures (earlier referred to as CIIE) in 2007 - setting up India's first acceleration and seed-investing platform - backing seed stage startups across tech space through programs like iAccelerator, Power of Ideas, PowerStart, Bharat Inclusion Initiative among others. In 2013, Kunal helped incubate and set-up the VC platform at IIMA Ventures with 3 thematic funds - including the deep-tech focussed Bharat Innovation Fund, inclusion-tech focussed Bharat Inclusion Seed-fund and cleantech-focussed Infuse Ventures. Under Kunal's leadership, IIMA Ventures emerged as The Innovation Continuum - with its activities cutting across regional incubation, research-based insights and applied training for entrepreneurs. Kunal continues to play an active governance and mentorship role at IIMA Ventures.

Investments

2020

Help ADB invest in early-stage startups across South East Asia and South Asia in climate-mitigation and climate-adaptation areas across sectors like energy, mobility, financial inclusion, agri-tech, and health. Key investments include Captain Fresh, Euler Motors, Smart Joules, Revfin, Electrifi, Dastgyr, among others.

Co-founder and Managing Partner

2013 - 2023

Infuse Ventures is India's first climate-tech and sustainability fund set up in 2013 with investments across the climate-mitigation space. Kunal conceptualised Infuse Ventures, led the fund-structuring and fund-raising, setting-up a team of investment professionals to invest in pre-Series-A and Series-A opportunities across the sector including: Fourth Partner (full service renewable services company exited to TPG), REConnect (renewable forecasting and power sourcing on path to IPO), Silvan (home automation company acquired by Polycab), Tessol (thermal energy storage), cKers (energy focussed NBFC), Altizon (industrial IoT platform), Ecolibrium (SaaS platform for industrial and commercial energy management), among others.

Co-founder

2008 - 2008

Co-founded Sarvajal - a social venture built to deliver affordable, accessible and pure water to rural India.

Internal Consulting

2006 - 2006

Associate

2005 - 2006

1. Led the Strategic Cost Management - Coordinated with the top management at Citi Turkey to identify and track implementation of multi-million dollar cost-cut initiatives. Led teams of middle-management to outsource voice and non-voice processes. Reporting directly to the CFO. 2. Led BPR activities at Citi Egypt - Coordinate the re-engineering of credit initiation and approval process. Automation of several key processes.