Rahul Mathur — Co-Founder

I’m a founder-turned-VC who has been through the rollercoaster — raised money from Y Combinator & Tier 1 investors (Lightspeed & Sequoia) in 2020. Made every possible mistake — yet somehow landed an acquisition offer in 2022. Along the journey, I discovered my interest in private market investing by putting my own money to work. Now, I’m very lucky to get paid to do what I used to earlier pay to do. My friends describe me as digitally omni-present but physically absent. Due to certain circumstances, I prioritize spending time with my family and therefore it may appear that I am ‘absent’ from time to time. (*) My individual private investments (in order of investment date) include: 1. OneCode (Seed) 2. BlueLearn (Pre-Seed) 3. Stoa School (Seed) 4. JarApp (Seed) 5. Hilo Design (Pre-Seed) 6. FastJobs (Seed) 7. EzoBooks (Angel) 8. FinSire (Seed) 9. CarEasy (Seed) 10. RevRag AI (Angel) 11. Cautio (Pre-Seed) 12. Jimmy’s Cocktails (Series B) 13. ToHands (Seed) 14. CirclePe (Seed) 15. Boba Bhai (Seed) 16. SaveSage (Angel) 17. Kubo Care (Angel) 18. gAI Ventures (Angel) (*) Please note that I no longer make individual investments as of May 2024. List of attributable investments at DeVC: 1. B2B | Specialty Chemicals — Pre-Seed round 2. D2C | Regional Snacks — Angel round 3. SaaS | Voice AI — Seed round 4. BFSI | Insurance Middleware — Angel round 5. BFSI | Collections Tech — Angel round 6. D2C | Edutainment/Gaming — Seed round Outside of work, I read a lot (150+ books now), write some essays (1000+ now) & regularly hit the gym or go for an outdoor run. I spend a lot of time with my family in Mumbai & a few close friends. You can find all of my book recommendations, book notes, podcast recommendations, historic investment memos & old blogs on my website which is linked in my profile. Views expressed on LinkedIn are my own and do not reflect those of DeVC, Z47 (f.k.a Matrix Partners India), fund LPs or any other affiliated partners. None of my posts should be treated as legal or financial advice. Endorsements are specifically called out.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a Venture Capital and InsurTech expert with a strong focus on product management and community engagement.

Location: South Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Experience: 7 yrs 7 mos

Skills

Investing
Community Management
Product Management
Leadership
Fundraising

Career Highlights

Raised $1.85M from top-tier investors.
Pioneered WhatsApp-based insurance journey for MSMEs.
Managed AI Analyst for streamlined deal flow.

Work Experience

DeVC

Associate Vice President (2 yrs 2 mos)

InsuranceDekho

Associate Director (1 yr)

Verak (now, part of InsuranceDekho)

Founder (2 yrs 5 mos)

FinTech Innovation Lab

Analyst (1 yr)

Asia InsurTech Podcast

Ambassador (1 yr 1 mo)

Laka

Insurance Product Manager (3 mos)

Insureblocks

Research Analyst (9 mos)

Willis Towers Watson

Insurance Consulting Summer Intern (2 mos)

EY

Summer Intern (1 mo)

Education

Master's degree at University of Warwick

High School at The Cathedral and John Connon School

High School at Campion School Mumbai

Rahul Mathur

Co-Founder

South Mumbai, Maharashtra, India7 yrs 7 mos experience

Most Likely To SwitchAI Enabled

Key Highlights

Raised $1.85M from top-tier investors.
Pioneered WhatsApp-based insurance journey for MSMEs.
Managed AI Analyst for streamlined deal flow.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a Venture Capital and InsurTech expert with a strong focus on product management and community engagement.

Contact

Skills

Core Skills

InvestingCommunity ManagementProduct ManagementLeadershipFundraising

Other Skills

AI ManagementAnalyticsCommunity & ContentCustomer AcquisitionCustomer Journey MappingCustomer ServiceEvent PlanningFund OSGrowth StrategiesInsurTechInsurance DistributionMachine LearningManagementMarket IntegrationMarket Research

About

Experience

7 yrs 7 mos

Total Experience

1 yr 2 mos

Average Tenure

2 yrs 2 mos

Current Experience

Devc

Associate Vice President

Apr 2024 – Present · 2 yrs 2 mos · Bangalore Urban, Karnataka, India · On-site

My role at DeVC is split into 3 broad areas:
(1) Fund OS
Venture Capital funds also require an OS (tech + process) to handle deal flow, track its portfolio & offer services to their portfolio founders.
I am responsible for managing our AI Analyst (hence, we don't require human Analysts)
(2) Investing
I meet (aspiring) founders at different points in their journey. We may invest in their companies.
(3) Community & Content
The DeVC community consists of our Collective (founders/executives who invest alongside us) & other well-wishers. We run regular DugOuts for founders across Bangalore, Mumbai & Delhi. Now 20 editions in with 1,000+ unique attendees.
On the content front, we publish a monthly newsletter & much more (still WIP)
Investments attributable:
(1) Regional snack foods product (Angel round)
(2) B2B construction chemicals specialist (Pre-Seed round)
(3) Voice AI foundational model company (Seed round)
(4) Insurance Middleware vendor (Angel round)
(5) Casual edutainment game (Seed round)
Anti-portfolio:
(1) Swish
(2) Alienkind
(3) Offline MFD business (unannounced)

Fund OSInvestingCommunity & ContentCommunity Management

Insurancedekho

Associate Director

Apr 2023 – Apr 2024 · 1 yr · Gurugram, Haryana, India · On-site

Joined InsuranceDekho along with my team from Verak as part of our acquisition in April 2023.
I was part of the team which started distribution of small business insurance ($ multi-million revenue line) and I kick-started our integrations with ONDC to offer embedded insurance options (1st to market).

Product ManagementAnalyticsSocial Media MarketingRecruitingLeadership

Verak (now, part of insurancedekho)

Founder

Oct 2020 – Mar 2023 · 2 yrs 5 mos · Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

I co-founded Verak Inc in October 2020; our first product - BimaPe - allowed customers to get a unified view of their family's insurance via a wallet offering. The product leveraged the India Stack to fetch policyholder details in an instant & used a proprietary machine learning model to decode the policy TnCs in simple words for consumers.
Verak Inc raised a total of $1.85M in venture financing with participation from Sequoia Capital India & Lightspeed India Partners. We were also a part of Y Combinator's W21 accelerator programme.
In September 2021, our first product - BimaPe was retired. And, the team focused on a new SMB insurance offering. We pioneered an end-to-end WhatsApp based journey for MSME owners in India with multi-lingual support from prospecting to purchase to after-sales support. The company on-boarded 5,000+ MSMEs in its first year of operations with a 8% self-serve purchase rate and subsequent 60% renewal rate.
Verak was acquired by InsuranceDekho in April 2023.

MarketingFundraisingProduct ManagementAnalyticsLeadership

Fintech innovation lab

Analyst

Sep 2019 – Sep 2020 · 1 yr · London, United Kingdom

I was the start-up lead in London for the FinTech Innovation Lab. This was a fun one year stint as the 3rd & junior most member. FIL is incubated by Accenture.

Asia insurtech podcast

Ambassador

Aug 2019 – Sep 2020 · 1 yr 1 mo · London, United Kingdom

Asia InsurTech podcast is Asia's first podcast dedicated to InsurTech and innovation in insurance
featuring entrepreneurs, thought leaders and investors.
The podcast can be downloaded or streamed via your favorite application or may be accessed via the AIP website: https://asiainsurtechpodcast.com/

Laka

Insurance Product Manager

Jun 2019 – Sep 2019 · 3 mos · London, United Kingdom

As an Insurance Product Manager at Laka, my role involved product design using the Jobs-to-be-done framework, product pricing, market research and product benchmarking.
Laka's unique business model, approved by the FCA, involves charging customers in arrears at the end of a calendar month. "Premiums" are computed for an individual customer as their respective share of the true cost of claims within an assigned risk pool.

Insureblocks

Research Analyst

Sep 2018 – Jun 2019 · 9 mos · London, United Kingdom

Founded by Walid Al Saqqaf, Insureblocks serves as a leading educational resource for blockchain, smart contracts and distributed ledger technology (DLT) in the insurance industry and beyond. My role was research based and focused on InsurTech in emerging markets.

Willis towers watson

Insurance Consulting Summer Intern

Jun 2018 – Aug 2018 · 2 mos · London, United Kingdom

Involved in a commercial lines motor insurance technical pricing project for a leading UK insurer. My role was focussed around data cleaning and development of risk models using proprietary WTW software.
Assisted in a capital model migration for a Lloyds syndicate.

Ey

2 roles

Summer Intern

Jul 2017 – Aug 2017 · 1 mo · Mumbai Area, India

Worked on a reinsurance premium pricing project for a leading European insurance firm.
Prepared regulatory documents as per the IRDAI (Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India) guidelines for an Indian general insurance company.
Developed Excel tools using Visual Basic to support a Life insurance modelling project for a reputed Indian life insurance firm.

Summer Intern

Jul 2016 – Aug 2016 · 1 mo · Mumbai Area, India

Involved in the development of an excel model to calculate Matching Adjustment (MA) spread for Solvency II and IFRS Valuation Interest Rate (VIR).
The spreadsheet model was used to reconcile key results with those extracted from a parallel Prophet model.
Gained significant knowledge about various facets of Actuarial work, in particular, projecting and discounting cash flows, risk adjusting cash flows using different methods, grouping cash flows as required and calculating IRR's.