Gautam Tambay

From our PearX S25 cohort, meet Pravāh, the AI-native operating system for the electric grid When Mohak Mangal, Dhruv Suri, and Aman Gupta looked at the strain on the U.S. electric grid, they saw a system pushed to its limits. Exploding demand and unpredictable supply have made blackouts increasingly common. This costs the economy more than $150B a year, a number that could 10x in the next five years. Mohak Mangal and team founded Pravāh to help fix it. Their platform helps utilities and grid operators make real-time decisions on load, generation, and congestion, reducing blackout risks, optimizing power procurement, and bringing much-needed stability to the backbone of modern life. We’re proud to support the Pravāh team as they take on one of the toughest and most important infrastructure challenges of our time.

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What a joy to speak with this brilliant cohort of innovators in the The Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP) ENTICE (Energy Transitions Innovation Challenge) 2.0 program and taking on their sharp questions at the investor bootcamp. 80% of global GHG emission reduction goals for 2050 can be met through energy system decarbonization, efficiency and electrification. This represents a US $100 trillion opportunity according to the IEA.     A stronger, more stable grid is at the heart of building a #resilient #energy future. This year’s program challenges innovators to tackle:  1) Behind-the-meter digital twins: #AI tools to analyse consumption and create appliance-level insights  2) Industrial flexibility at scale: AI solutions using smart meter data to identify flexible assets and operational inefficiencies    Kudos to the entrepreneurs and the GEAPP team for curating and executing such a thoughtful program.     Looking forward to seeing how these #innovations scale #impact.  Synapses Dalberg Media Vaishali (Vish) Mishra Anukul Tripathi (He/Him) Jayant Sinha Saurabh Kumar

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This article, co-authored by Vardaan Ahluwalia and me lays out India's significant new Research Development and Innovation Fund initiative in the context of other successful interventions: when governments and the private sector work together, they can make a transformative difference to deep technology entrepreneurship. Equally, initiatives to help manage financial risk should be followed by structural reforms in areas ranging from intellectual property regulation, ease of clearances for start-ups, tax rationalization in capital gains and options that helps start-ups attract talent, and a visa regime that attracts leading global researchers. https://lnkd.in/gk92YSZa

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Backing a manufacturing startup at seed isn't the obvious VC move. But Vivek, Rahul and Aditya, the co-founders of Bidso had lived the problem across Flipkart, Udaan, and ITC, and had a very clear idea of how to fix it. Two and a half years later, the thesis has played out stronger than we imagined. Excited to share that Bidso has raised Rs 63 cr in Series A round and happy to welcome Blume Ventures and Alteria Capital onto the cap table. Thrilled to have Sadev Ventures (Formerly Eternal Capital) continue to back the team at Bidso. Sajith - genuinely looking forward to partnering with you and the Blume team. You think about long-term company building the way we do, and Bidso is exactly the kind of company that benefits from that alignment. We remain excited to continue backing Bidso as it progresses on its way to being a truly generational force that defines what "Make in India" actually means. Onwards!!!!! PeerCapital Karthik Prabhakar Rohit M A

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Operating across global markets has taught us that successful venture investing requires understanding when opportunities are genuinely local versus inherently global. The flexibility of a single global fund allows us to deploy capital where the strongest opportunities emerge without any constraints. In India, sectors like fintech and consumer are deeply contextual and built around specific local market dynamics. Meanwhile, AI, SaaS, and climate solutions typically have distributed teams between India and the US, which means we can invest from our Bengaluru office even when founders are based in Silicon Valley or Europe. The approach is working well. We're seeing excellent deal flow return to India in 2025, much stronger than 2022-23, with Seed to Series B activity picking up significantly. This recovery, combined with ecosystem maturation across practical AI applications, specialized commerce models, and underpenetrated consumer brands, reinforces our conviction to deploy roughly a third of our $1B fund here through 2027-28. In conversation with Aman Rawat from VCCircle https://lnkd.in/g8vRMTsF

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Cloaked has raised a $375M Series B led by General Catalyst with participation from HUMAN CAPITAL and Lux Capital. I am fortunate to have the opportunity to work alongside Arjun Bhatnagar, Abhijay Bhatnagar, and the team at Cloaked to fight against surveillance, spam, & identity theft.

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**Bolna's Impressive Fundraising Highlights Self-Serve Success in India** Bolna's recent $6.3 million funding round led by General Catalyst underscores a significant trend in the Indian tech ecosystem. With 75% of its revenue generated from self-serve customers, Bolna is leveraging the growing demand for voice orchestration solutions. At ElevenX Capital, we see this as a strong indicator of how businesses are increasingly prioritizing scalable, user-driven tools. How can venture capitalists better assess the potential of self-serve revenue models in the future? #investing #innovation #venturecapital #entrepreneurship

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Yesterday’s encounter that reminded me why protocols matter more than platforms. Had an inspiring conversation with Rajeesh Menon, whose work spans the entire digital infrastructure ecosystem that’s quietly revolutionizing how we think about systemic change. From EkStep Foundation to Beckn Open Collective, Rajeesh embodies something crucial: building systems that serve rather than surveil, that empower rather than extract. What excites me most is exploring how our community-driven approach (SAOcommons) to human capital indexing (WellbeingProtocol) could plug into this broader ecosystem of digital public / common goods. The goal? Value redistribution that’s signal-based and equitable rather than platform-captured. But this conversation also surfaced some critical questions I’m wrestling with: 1) “Emission” vs “Collection” of data 2) Deep Thinkers' Collective. 3) Anti-hive-mind design - How does TheInternetOfValue preserve individual agency while enabling collective intelligence? 4) “Weaponising” context ? If you’re working on systems that put livelihoods with dignity at the center, Rajeesh Menon is building something remarkable. Worth following his journey. Thanks for the active listening and questions, Rajeesh!

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India has abundant expertise across every domain - logistics operators, subject matter experts, local service providers, etc. What's scarce isn't capability. It's the systems that coordinate this capability at scale. Most companies see this fragmentation and default to vertical integration: build everything in-house, own all capabilities, control every aspect of delivery. This works if you have unlimited capital and time. Most companies have neither. But there's an alternative approach that we've noticed two of our portcos execute remarkably well, in completely different industries - 1. When Meesho looked at India's logistics, and they saw thousands of fragmented local operators. Instead of building warehouses and delivery fleets, they built Valmo - an orchestration platform coordinating existing partners. Individual pilots with smartphones earn sustainable incomes, small hub operators build viable businesses, and Meesho gets coverage across 15,000+ pin codes at 12% lower cost than traditional third-party-logistics. 2. Entri saw similar fragmentation in education. India has abundant teaching expertise already running offline/online programs. Entri partners with them for content while owning demand generation, platform infra, quality monitoring, and placements. This allows them to launch new categories in weeks and scale across languages without the capital intensity of building in-house teams for every vertical. If I had to pull a common thread, it's that in fragmented markets like India, the orchestration layer often matters more than asset ownership. Coordinate what exists rather than rebuilding from scratch.

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Today marks a milestone for Salesforce Ventures, and a defining moment for enterprise security. Alphabet’s acquisition of Wiz has officially closed. Wiz has been a cornerstone of our portfolio since May 2021, when Nowi Kallen, Kartik Gupta, and team first invested in their Series B at a $1.5B valuation. We saw the potential early and invested deeply, backing the team through their Series C, D, and E rounds. From a $1.5B Series B to a $32B acquisition, one of the largest in enterprise tech history, the Wiz team’s execution has been nothing short of extraordinary. This outcome reflects our mission at Salesforce Ventures: identifying the companies that define the next era of technology and staying behind them for the long haul. But the real credit belongs to the entire Wiz team on the ground. Beyond the technology, it was the relentless grit and day one mentality of Assaf Rappaport and the team that turned a vision into a $32B reality. Huge congratulations to the entire Wiz team on this historic achievement.

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