Nikhil Kapur — Co-Founder

Day-zero investments in Infra/DevTools/AI startups from India for the world.Check Sizes: $125k-$1MStage: Pre-PMFStyle: Lead investor------------ After a decade spent in engg and product at Microsoft Office (10M+ mobile SaaS deployments), Pie (mobile productivity SaaS acquired by Google), TommyJams (founder), and STRIVE Japan ($200M+ AUM early stage VC), I've picked up a few pointers on how to build scalable tech businesses. 10 years ago, I started investing in SaaS and Infra being built out of Asia by exceptional technical founders, and developed a soft corner for open-source/infra/devtools companies.I've had the privilege to lead first rounds at Hasura/PromptQL, Classplus, 100ms, Testsigma, and several more. These companies have combined generated $100M+ in enterprise revenue and $2B+ in value.At Grayscale, our mission is to enable the next generation of infra/devtools/AI founders in their journeys - help them achieve their PMF and build their global GTM engines. I follow the mantra "Talk is cheap, show me the Product"------------ @Founders: You can read my thoughts on blog.grayscale.vc and feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn

Stackforce AI infers this person is a Venture Capitalist with a strong focus on SaaS and Infrastructure startups.

Location: Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Experience: 16 yrs 3 mos

Skills

Venture Capital
Go-to-market Strategy
Business Development
Entrepreneurship
Product Management
Software Development
Artificial Intelligence

Career Highlights

Led investments in multiple successful SaaS startups.
Expert in building global go-to-market strategies.
Strong background in software development and product management.

Work Experience

Grayscale Ventures

General Partner (3 yrs 2 mos)

Bytebeam

Seed Investor (4 yrs 2 mos)

Testsigma

Seed Investor (6 yrs 2 mos)

100ms

Seed Investor (6 yrs 2 mos)

Classplus

Seed Investor (7 yrs 2 mos)

Hypefast

Seed Investor (7 yrs 2 mos)

SKALA

Operating Partner (2 yrs)

PromptQL

Seed Investor (9 yrs 2 mos)

Ayoconnect

Seed Investor (10 yrs 2 mos)

STRIVE

Partner (7 yrs)

Pie (acquired by Google)

Product (0 mo)

TommyJams

Co-Founder, CTO (2 yrs)

Microsoft

Software Development Engineer (3 yrs)

Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz (DFKI)

Text 2.0 - Image Recognition (0 mo)

Mozilla

Intern (1 yr)

Deloitte

Intern (0 mo)

Education

Bachelor’s Degree at Delhi College of Engineering

Master of Business Administration (MBA) at National University of Singapore

Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) at IESE Business School

AISSCE at St. Columba's School

Technology Entrepreneurship at Stanford University

Nikhil Kapur

Co-Founder

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India16 yrs 3 mos experience

Most Likely To SwitchHighly Stable

Key Highlights

Led investments in multiple successful SaaS startups.
Expert in building global go-to-market strategies.
Strong background in software development and product management.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a Venture Capitalist with a strong focus on SaaS and Infrastructure startups.

Contact

tommyjams.bizspark@outlook.com LinkedIn

Skills

Core Skills

Venture CapitalGo-to-market StrategyBusiness DevelopmentEntrepreneurshipProduct ManagementSoftware DevelopmentArtificial Intelligence

Other Skills

AlgorithmsAnalysisAnalyticsAndroidBusiness AnalysisBusiness StrategyCC++Corporate FinanceCustomer AcquisitionData AnalyticsData StructuresDistributed SystemsEclipseHTML

About

Experience

Grayscale ventures

General Partner

Jan 2023 – Present · 3 yrs 2 mos · Bengaluru

India's only Day-0 fund focused on Infra/DevTools/AI Infra/Agent Infra/MCP Infra.
Investing $125k-1M from a $20M fund while leading first rounds in your company
Helping you build a category-defining product and 0-1-10 global GTM
Likely the only investor on your cap-table who understands code
Leaning on the learnings and founders from Hasura/PromptQL, Testsigma, Saleswhale, Olvy, 100ms, Bytebeam, Classplus and many more…

Venture CapitalStrategyEntrepreneurshipSoftware InfrastructureGo-to-Market Strategy

Bytebeam

Seed Investor

Jan 2022 – Present · 4 yrs 2 mos

Testsigma

Seed Investor

Jan 2020 – Present · 6 yrs 2 mos

100ms

Seed Investor

Jan 2020 – Present · 6 yrs 2 mos

Classplus

Seed Investor

Jan 2019 – Present · 7 yrs 2 mos

Hypefast

Seed Investor

Jan 2019 – Present · 7 yrs 2 mos

Skala

Operating Partner

Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 · 2 yrs · Indonesia

Collaborated with Innovation Factory (Salim Group) to help build a Pre-Seed program in Indonesia to solve local problems at scale using tech

EntrepreneurshipVenture CapitalBusiness Development

Promptql

Seed Investor

Jan 2017 – Present · 9 yrs 2 mos

Ayoconnect

Seed Investor

Jan 2016 – Present · 10 yrs 2 mos

Strive

Partner

Jan 2016 – Jan 2023 · 7 yrs · Singapore

Partner at STRIVE (f.k.a GREE Ventures), managing India and Southeast Asia investments for Seed stage Asia-focused fund with AUM > $200M
DevInfra/SaaS Investments:
Hasura: Seed -> Unicorn
Classplus: Seed -> Series D
Testsigma: Seed -> Series B
Ayoconnect: Seed -> Series B
100ms: Seed -> Series A
Saleswhale: Seed -> Acquired by 6Sense
Olvy: Seed -> Acquired by Amoeboids
Bytebeam
Other B2B investments include Hypefast (Seed->B), ReshaMandi (Seed->B), Raena (Seed->A), SuperK (Seed->A), Crowde (Seed->A), Recompound...
Exits include Kudo (sold to Grab for $100M), Luxola (sold to LVMH), Saleswhale (sold to 6Sense), Bukalapak (IPO), Olvy (sold to Amoeboids), PopXO (sold to MyGlamm), Vouch (sold to Qoala), Pie (sold to Google), Healint (sold to Aptar), and UrbanIndo (sold to 99.co)
Since 2023, I have moved to an advisory role at STRIVE and spun-out to launch Grayscale Ventures: https://grayscale.vc

Venture CapitalBusiness DevelopmentEntrepreneurship

Pie (acquired by google)

Product

Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 · 0 mo · Singapore

Pie, a productivity SaaS platform, was acquired by Google in 2016.
Performed customer segmentation and analytics while devising product marketing strategy. Created customer on-boarding PLG flows and user case studies for activating partner sales channels

EntrepreneurshipBusiness Development

Tommyjams

Co-Founder, CTO

Jan 2013 – Jan 2015 · 2 yrs · India

Led Tech at TommyJams, helping independent artists supercharge their earnings.
Bootstrapped TommyJams, a SaaS-enabled media/artist management platform. We operated in the Media-Tech industry, and expanded to 6 cities and 2 countries. We were profitable throughout and organically grew to over 10000 artists and 200 promoters on the platform.
I built and managed the tech platforms (mobile, web) and led the mid-market/enterprise sales engine for promoters and venues.

Product ManagementSoftware Development

Microsoft

Software Development Engineer

Jan 2010 – Jan 2013 · 3 yrs

Shipped the first version of MSFT Excel across iOS and Android to millions of users as part of a small 5-member dev team.
Specialised on Charts module in Office and led Office suite deployment across all mobile platforms. Youngest hire to work in the Knowledge Transfer team in Redmond. Mentor for LEAP - Onboarding program for new hires.

Software DevelopmentProduct Management

Deutsches forschungszentrum für künstliche intelligenz (dfki)

Text 2.0 - Image Recognition

Jan 2010 – Jan 2010 · 0 mo · Kaiserslautern, Germany

Developed an AI system using OpenCV to track human eyes using a simple webcam and applied to textual reading. DFKI is Germany's premier AI institution.
http://text20.net/

Software DevelopmentProduct Management

Mozilla

Intern

Jan 2009 – Jan 2010 · 1 yr · India

Optimized Mozilla Firefox for 20% load performance gains by using Milepost GCC, a Machine Learning based compiler. Developed genuine love for open-source.
http://ctuning.org/wiki/index.php?title=CTools:MilepostGCC

Artificial IntelligenceSoftware Development