Eximius Ventures, a micro venture capital firm which counts startups like Jar, Eka.care and Stan in its portfolio, said Wednesday it has brought on board a former Flipkart executive as general partner and co-founder of the firm.
Eximius, which was founded by Pearl Agarwal in 2020, has appointed Preeti Sampat as general partner and co-founder.
Sampat, an alumna of the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Pilani and MIT Sloan School of Management, previously founded a micro-VC fund called Infinite Road based out of the US.
Prior to Infinite Roads, Sampat worked with consulting firms KPMG and Ernst & Young. She also worked with e-commerce giant Flipkart and was part of their formative team.
“There is a huge opportunity for early-stage investing in India, especially in frontier tech sectors that can create solutions for India and the world,” said Sampat.
At Eximius, Sampat will lead the fund's investment strategy and decisions, taking a thesis-driven approach to investing in startups that have the potential to scale globally. Sampat will also aim to use her global network and insights to support the portfolio companies with follow-on fundraising, strategic hiring, and partnerships.
“Preeti’s diverse background, encompassing experiences as both an entrepreneur and an investor, brings a unique perspective to our team. Preeti also possesses a grasp of the global venture and startup ecosystem, which will enable us to broaden our fund's reach across geographical boundaries and extend our investment focus into artificial intelligence (AI)/Generative AI, software-as-a-service (SaaS), health, and commerce," said Agarwal.
Eximius Ventures is a pre-seed VC firm. It invests up to $500,000 in early-stage startups in fintech, healthtech, media and entertainment, and frontier-tech businesses. In 2022, VCCircle reported that the firm was set to close its debut fund at a targeted $10 million. In August, Eximius led the $1.1 million pre-seed funding round of fintech startup Vegapay.
The VC firm aims to have a total portfolio of around 30 companies. It typically invests around 50% of its corpus for writing initial cheques and reserves the remaining 50% for follow-on investments.
