Funds managed
| Fund name | Asset Class | License |
| Cornerstone Venture Partners Fund | Early Stage | SEBI AIF Cat 1 |
About the AMC
- Cornerstone Venture Partners is an early growth stage technology VC. Focus themes include AI Applications for Consumer Businesses, Vertical focused BI Solutions (SaaS models), AR/VR Applications for Enterprise, Blockchain for Enterprise, Nano-IoT, Autonomous / Robotics, etc.
Key staff
- Rajiv Vaishnav (Managing partner)- Rajiv has over 39 years of solid experience in building brands, developing teams, expanding the market share and building organisations from grass root upwards. He is a Member of General Body and Governing Council of Maharashtra State Innovation Society. He was heading Ecosystem & Partnerships at Reliance’s GenNext Innovation Hub and GenNext Venture Fund.
Investment Philosophy (for firm)
Early-Growth Participation- Investing in promising startups where capital enables meaningful scale
Thematic Investment Focus- Focused on tech-enabled solutions creating significant business impact
Patient Capital to build Tenacity- Ensuring capital access for sustenance; founders focus squarely on execution
Deep Domain Engagement- Engaging founders with customers, industry partners and domain experts
Media
Title: Ex-Reliance employees set up Cornerstone VC fund, Source: Economic times, Date: 24 September 2018
Two former Reliance Industries employees who were part of its GenNext Innovation Hub have set up Cornerstone Venture Partners Fund, an early-growth stage technology venture fund.
Rajiv Vaishnav and Abhishek Prasad recently received approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) for the fund and are now in the process of raising their first fund.
“The first fund will be a ₹300-400 crore ($40-60m) fund and we are targeting a first close of ₹100 crore,” Rajiv Vaishnav, managing Partner, Cornerstone, told ET.
The core team of General Partners has been put in place, which has Ganesh Natarajan, chairman 5F World, Ashith Kampani, chairman, CosmicMandala15 Group, Roshan Talera, executive director, Talera Group, Hemant Kank, MD, Yeshashree Group and Vijay Srirangan, director general, Bombay Chamber of Commerce & Industry.
“We would invest in firms that already have a prototype or a ready product in place with paying customers and not in very early -stage firms,” said Vaishnav, who was earlier with Nasscom.
The fund has identified a few core themes: AI applications for consumer businesses, vertical-focused business intelligence solutions, AR/VR applications and blockchain for small and medium enterprise, and deep tech like nano-IoT.
About 40% of the investments would be in firms working on solutions for B2B2C firms and enterprise solutions for SMEs respectively. The balance would be towards deep tech startups.
“We don’t want to take an operative role but invest in and support the startup from outside. We want to be the first institutional fund after the seed/angel round,” said Vaishnav.
Title: Tech focussed VC fund Cornerstone invests $2 mn in two B2B startups, Source: Economic times, Date: 09 July 2019
MUMBAI: Cornerstone Venture Partners Fund – I started by ex-Reliance Industries executives, Rajiv Vaishnav and Abhishek Prasad has invested $1 million each in two early stage B2B tech startups, Wigzo and IntelligenceNode Consulting.
Singapore and New Delhi based- Wigzo Technologies provides cloud based AI solutions for marketers to enhance customer engagement and improve investments on marketing spends.
Umair Mohammed, Co-founder & CEO, Wigzo, said “Cornerstone brings tremendous experience and expertise in scaling up companies via their network of GTM Partners.”
Cornerstone’s second investment of $1 million is in IntelligenceNode Consulting – a platform that helps retailers track billions of products and provides real time information on pricing, stock levels, trends, promotions, to help merchandizers improve their strategy and respond to market trends and demands.
“Cornerstone brings with it a huge network of corporates & investors that we can leverage to scale disproportionately. The team has already started opening the right doors for us, and with this, we plan to grow atleast 100% by 2020 and raise the next round of capital to support the exponential growth”, said Sanjeev Sularia, Co-founder & CEO, IntelligenceNode.
Nanika Kakkar, Investment Director at Cornerstone, said, “We have known Umair and Sanjeev for a while and seen how committed and patient they have been in building their respective companies as leading innovators in delivering measurable value for their customers. With significant customer traction and revenues achieved, this is the right time for us to come in and help drive the next phase of growth for these companies.”
Cornerstone is a sector agnostic US $70 million fund investing in technology areas of consumer and enterprise businesses. The fund will make five additional investments over the next quarter and is targeting 12-15 investments in the current fiscal year.
Title: VC funding is drying up for media startups, Source: Economic times, Date: 11 August 2016
As venture capitalists exercise more caution and place fewer bets, they are leaving media startups behind.
Venture funding to media-tech companies slid for the third consecutive quarter to $91.7 million, the lowest amount since mid-2013, according to data from industry researcher CB Insights. Investment activity followed a similar trend, declining to the fewest number of deals since the second quarter of 2012.
While US venture deals were down overall in the first half of the year, the drop in funding to media companies has outpaced declines in other sectors, said Garrett Black, an analyst at researcher PitchBook. Investors worry the businesses are expensive to run compared with software makers and struggle to keep readers’ attention. “I do not think that VCs are seeing a lot of compelling businesses currently in the market that are worth ponying up the money for, especially given the broader backdrop of trepidation. With all of the consolidated players that are already so powerful in the space, it is really hard for new startups to figure out a new niche to target,” said Black.
The decline in venture funding comes amid a moment of reckoning across the digital media landscape. Web publishers like Mashable and International Business Times have fired dozens of employees this year. Smaller players are seeking new business models as they struggle to sustain themselves on digital advertising, which is being increasingly dominated by Google and Facebook. Many of them are shifting their business to focus on web video, where advertising rates are higher.
Media has not traditionally been the top investment area for VCs, but some big wins drew interest to the sector. AOL spent $315 million to acquire the Huffington Post in 2011, and the publication has become a cornerstone of Verizon Communications’s media strategy since it bought AOL. German publisher Axel Springer SE took over Business Insider last year in a $343 million deal, a win for backers including Institutional Venture Partners and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. VCs helped propel several newer media stars, including BuzzFeed, Vice Media LLC and Vox Media, but the startups’ recent financing rounds have been led by legacy media companies. In addition to those mega deals, media giants are incubating, funding or buying up young companies. Time Warner’s Turner division led Mashable’s $15 million funding round this year, which coincided with job cuts at the millennial-focused news company.
Title: Former Reliance JioGenNext execs float tech VC fund, Source: VCcircle, Date: 24 September 2018
Rajiv Vaishnav and Abhishek Prasad, former employees of GenNext Hub run by Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd, are raising capital for their debut venture capital fund, which will invest in early-stage technology startups.
The fund, which is christened Cornerstone Venture Partners, will focus on investments in applied artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and business intelligence solutions including software-as-a-service and augmented/virtual reality for small and medium enterprises, according to the LinkedIn profiles of Vaishnav and Prasad.
The fund will invest in startups at the pre-Series A or Series A stages.
The Economic Times, which first reported the development, cited Vaishnav as saying that Cornerstone is targeting a final corpus of Rs 300-400 crore ($40-60 million) and expects the first close to be Rs 100 crore.
The ET report also said that the fund has formed its core General Partners team that include Ganesh Natarajan, chairman of consulting firm 5F World, and Ashith Kampani, chairman of boutique investment banking firm CosmicMandala15 Group.
The venture capital firm has received the approval of markets regulator the Securities and Exchange Board of India for the fund.
Vaishnav and Prasad have worked with GenNext Innovation Hub, RIL’s accelerator programme that is now branded as JioGenNext.
At GenNext, Vaishnav served as the head of ecosystems and partnerships, while Prasad was head and mentor of investments.
Vaishnav, a science graduate from Mumbai University, has earlier worked with industry body NASSCOM for 13 years. Prasad, an IIM Bangalore graduate, is a committee member at NASSCOM.
Other VCs closing funds
Homegrown venture capital firms have been mushrooming in the country in the past years and a bunch of them have announced fundraising milestones.
Earlier on Monday, venture capital firm Pi Ventures closed fundraising for its debut investment vehicle at Rs 225 crore ($31 million) after exceeding its initial target thanks to CDC Group coming in as a Limited Partner in August. Other VCs such as Fireside Ventures, Prime Venture Partners, India Quotient and 3one4 Capital announced fundraising milestones earlier this year.
Meanwhile, mid-sized and large venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners, Lightspeed India Partners and Saama Capital also closed their new funds this year. Besides, Lightbox and Nexus Venture Partners have raised a bulk of their new funds.
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