A few weeks ago Kiran Nadkarni-founded Kaati Zone, a fast food startup chain in Bangalore, got undisclosed funding from Erasmic Venture Fund. Nadkarni was one of the three founding partners at venture capital firm JumpStartUp Fund Advisors, one of maybe two or three early-stage investors who continued to back startups through the 2001-2003 nuclear winter. Some of the companies they seeded in 2000 include CustomerAsset (acquired by Firstsource Solutions), July Systems and Meru Networks.
The firm hit a rough patch a couple of years ago. They were in the middle of raising a new fund but it never took off. While Nadkarni seems to have found a new passion in flipping kaati rolls, I have lost track of the other two founding partners — Sanjay Anandaram and K Ganapathy Subramanian. Subramanian also seems to have gone the entrepreneur way and is currently heading up a mobile value-added services startup called MyDuniya Networks.
Anandaram’s LinkedIn profile says he is still with JumpStartUp. Back in 2004, when I was tracking the early signs of venture capital’s return to India, Anandaram was one of the first people to signal the changing complexion of the Indian entrepreneur — “The next generation (of entrepreneurs) will emerge from within multinational research and development outfits. Experienced managers will give up those plush jobs to strike out on their own,” he said. That trend started playing out a little over a year ago.