Sudhir Menon, Atul Hegde launch $50 mn startup fund

Industrialist Sudhir Menon and digital marketer Atul Hegde have joined hands to launch a USD 50 million early stage startup fund, Rainmaker Ventures, which will invest capital and mentor earlystage start-ups.
Rainmaker Ventures with presence in India, the US, Brazil and Singapore will aim at identifying competent tech-startups and invest not only seed-capital, but also, the partners' collective expertise of growing successful businesses.
"Rainmaker ventures will focus on helping budding entrepreneurs to build a strong business on the ground. We believe that is the only way to ride and survive this start up wave", Rainmaker Ventures co-founder Sudhir Menon said.

Rainmaker Ventures will look at mentoring 10-12 early stage startups in its first year of operations.
Expansion will also be enabled with more senior professionals from varied sectors joining the company as full time mentors, a release said.
"Simply infusing capital is not the only requirement. That's where Rainmaker Ventures come in. We want to create a value-establishment - one that creates and nurtures real businesses in today's virtual world," another co-founder Atul Hegde said.
Menon is currently the chairman and managing director, Dorf Ketal, a global chemical manufacturing and supply company. Hegde was previously the CEO of Ignitee Digital, a leading digital marketing firm.