Benzai 10

Funds managed

Fund name	Asset class – category	License no
Benzai 10 Investment Trust	Venture Capital	AIF Category 2 IN/AIF2/21-22/0887

About

Benzai10 Investment Ventures Private Limited has a SEBI Registration for a Category II AIF focused on investing in Agriculture & Allied sector. The fund is being administered by the best-in-class service providers. The company was incorporated in September, 2020. AIF – registered as a Trust. Investment Manager – registered as a Company. Independent Investment Committee. Trustee – Credentia Trusteeship Services. Legal Consultants – IC Universal Legal. Auditors – S. N. Dhawan & Co. LLP

Key staff

Sunil Khairnar, has been working in the agribusiness and development sector in India for more than 27 years. He is a B Tech in Agriculture Engineering and a Management Post Graduate from IIM Ahmedabad. Post corporate career (between 1993 to 2000), Mr. Khairnar has devoted 20 years of his life to work in the agri-rural development sector. In past two decades, he has co founded a number of social ventures in agriculture and health sectors with experience cutting across incubation (worked with 100 plus Agri-sector startups), providing access to commodity and financial markets, deployment of latest digital technologies as well as cutting edge technologies in Agriculture and allied sector.

Ashish Khetan is an MBA (Finance) from FMS Delhi and has more than 15 years of experience both in entrepreneurship & working with large corporate mainly in Agri commodity trading, Food Processing & Corporate finance with companies like General Electric & Morgan Stanley. He has been a significant factor in the Growth of Indigram Labs Foundation which focuses on investments in Agriculture, clean energy, education and healthcare. Mr. Khetan has made 15 investments in the last 2 years of which 5 portfolio companies have already received Institutional Capital in follow-on funding rounds from leading Funds.

Relevant Experience of the founders

Sunil Khairnar and Ashish Khetan, have been involved in operations of Indigram Labs Foundation which is operational since September 2016. Indigram Labs is an Agritech/Foodtech focused Technology Business Incubator (TBI) supported by Dept. Of Science & Technology, GoI. Indigram Labs has successfully supported more than 120 start-ups in the short span of 4 years since its inception. The annual combined turnover of Indigram Labs incubated companies is close to 200 million USD. Total fund raised by ILF incubate start-ups stands at 57 million USD till FY 21. The innovative start-ups at ILF have filed 14 high quality patents and 19 technologies have been commercialized in the last 3 years. ILF start-ups have created technologies that have impacted more than 6 Lakh farmers in India.Investments made through ILF into start-ups are market to market at around 3.5X in just 28 months showing the incubator success even onfinancial parameters.Both promoters have worked in the corporate sector with marquee domestic and international corporations. Both also have founded and run multiple for profit and not for prodit social enterprises too. Both have considerable domain strength, deep relationships across industry & capital value chain, healthy deal flow, track record and domain knowledge

Investment philosophy

The core philosophy is to focus on opportunities that are financially lucrative along with being in conformance with the ESG norms, thus being a unique offering. Benzao10 will follow a comprehensive approach to agrarian economy by enabling investments in portfolio companies that are devising farm-to- fork delivery models, enhancing value, upgrading quality, improving agri- logistics and making technology work for rural areas in such way that there exists an exchange of value in terms of money, nutrition and quality of food between farmers and consumers.

Analyst questions

Are there more people other than the founders, in charge of managing the fund?

Is there any lock in period of funds?

Considering the new incorporation, and the volatile nature of your industry, what were your target returns this year, and did you meet them?

Prepared by- Harshal Jain, September 2021.