We are a group of entrepreneurs that love building and scaling tech products and companies. With First Cheque, we are now investing in the next generation of Indian technology entrepreneurs.
First Cheque invests within 1-2 calls with the founders. Reach out to any of us directly or get an introduction to any of us.
If you are excited to work on a problem with a non-concrete business idea – write to us and ask for a call. We will brainstorm with you. If you do not have a deck – write to us. We value product building skills over deck building. Large markets preferred over niche ones. And deep tech preferred over cupcake stores.
We follow a standard process of investing $100K at 2M valuation. To write fast cheques, we follow a productized approach: Fixed valuation, fixed cheque size, and a 1 week TAT to commitment. We believe that at early stage, we want founders to focus on building and not on legal work. Hence, we have standard shareholder agreement templates so that founders do not spend time or money in closing documents.
Please apply to First Cheque here
We make it our priority to be there for our founders whenever they need! Want help with Product and Growth? Legal? Hiring? AWS Credits? Secretarial? Fund raising? We are here for you!
Design growth into your product from day one, and then let the product take responsibility of growth instead of pushing it to marketing.
Work with us to choose the right battle-ready technologies and algorithms which can lay the foundation of rapid scaling. A thriving community that will enjoy troubleshooting for you.
Fundraising has its own nuances, especially in the early stages. We will help you track the right metrics and connect you with relevant funds for your next round.
Interview hacks, best offer strategies, designing the right job descriptions, ESOP schemes that people actually aspire for, we work with you on all of these.
A Startup’s journey almost never goes as planned. We are experienced troubleshooters and help founders deal with the uncertainties of this lonely journey.
We have made over 100 investments, some of our marquee investments include:
Rocketlane is purpose-built software to accelerate and streamline implementation and customer onboarding. With its unified workspace, it’s easy to collaborate with customers and deliver projects consistently and transparently.
Visit website →Anar is a platform where businesses can create a free profile and grow their business network all over India. They are empowering small and medium enterprises across the value chain—from manufacturers, retailers and resellers— helping them connect and interact with one another.
Visit website →Giva is a jewellery brand for Indian millennials. They provide modern, authentic and affordable silver jewellery which they co-create with their customers.
Visit website →Yellow Class is a new-age fun-learning platform where kids between 2-12 years of age can learn from a wide range of classes like dancing, drawing, personality development, creative writing and so on.
Visit website →Wint Wealth is an alternate debt assets platform that lets you invest in financial products that give higher returns than FDs, but that are not as risky or volatile as equities.
Visit website →Rigi is a platform for digital creators to manage, grow and monetize their community by launching subscription based groups. Rigi helps creators with tools for subscriber management and quick monetisation of their communities.
Visit website →Saveo is an Amazon + ShopX model for pharmacies in B2B space. They onboard pharmaceutical distributors, manufacturers & pharmacies on one platform – that helps pharmacies improve their margins, helps distributors reach more pharmacies, while saving substantial time and effort for both sides.
Visit website →Since we announced Anar’s fundraise from Accel India, Elevation Capital, and leading founders, multiple founders have asked me about raising angel money and who to raise it from. To nearly every one of them, my straight answer has been to go to First Cheque and raise from them. First Cheque connected us to many founders and operators to help us get relevant guidance wherever needed. Above all, they always pushed us further to believe in ourselves and Anar.
FirstCheque is really fast at moving forward. The team has been super helpful with industry and investor connects. The founder network they bring is active and has a culture of extending help generously.
FirstCheque was really our first cheque, they committed super quick and supported us in closing the first round. They didn’t lead our round but added so much value in our first 2 years of journey. Definitely recommend every entrepreneur to make an allocation for FC in their round.
Mon Oct 18 2021
Bellatrix Aerospace is an Indian New Space company specialising in In-space propulsion systems & orbital launch vehicles. Based out of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, the company is constantly evolving to facilitate the development of key technologies in electric propulsion, new generation propellants and launch vehicles.
Thu Oct 07 2021
Anar is a platform where businesses can create a free profile and grow their business network all over India. Nishank Jain, Sanjay Bhat, and the team at Anar are empowering small and medium enterprises across the value chain—from manufacturers, retailers and resellers— helping them connect and interact with one another. We had a very interesting conversation with Nishank, and this man is building a real rocket ship, so do stick around till the end of the episode.
Sat Apr 10 2021
Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal are the co founders of Meesho, an Indian-origin social commerce platform that enables small businesses and individuals to start their online stores via social channels such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram etc.
We get involved with the founders and help them reach their next critical milestone. Working with us unlocks access to a kick-ass network of successful founder angels, who have – been there done that. You can expect support from us on Technology, Product and hiring along with access to larger investors who could lead your next round. Besides support from us and our venture partners (Founder Angels), we are building a close-knit community of founders that we have invested in via our monthly meetups in all major Indian cities. These meetups are focused sessions on helping our founders reach product-market fit and solve for their next round.
We invest a standard $100K (INR 75L) across deals at $2M valuation. Usually founders ping us when they are raising $100K – 300K. We are happy to lead rounds or co-invest with someone else leading too. Typically, we see participation from friends, family, other angels/microVCs.
We don’t ask for any special terms. We are happy to invest at the same terms and valuation as your lead – in fact we will call it out if your lead sneaks in any predatory terms.
We have invested in 100+ companies since starting out in 2019. We do 25-30 investments every year.
Usually we decide to commit within two – three interactions with the founder. We like large TAM, tech first companies addressing white spaces. In case you can’t reach out to us directly, please fill in this form
We are happy to look at companies from all over India!
We highly recommend that you hustle to get an intro to one of our venture partners! If you are unable to do that, please send in your application via this form.
For anything else, please feel free to write to our Investment Associate Anurag at anurag@firstcheque.vc