
One of India's most institutional pre-seed and seed stage venture capital fund
Gemba Capital is an institutional, thesis driven, high conviction pre-seed and seed stage VC fund backing bold and ambitious founders. Set up in 2018, Gemba Capital has evolved from being a single-family office to a syndicate and then finally into a Pre-seed VC Fund. It is a seed and pre-seed stage specialist VC fund investing in category creators across Fintech, Consumer Tech and B2B Platforms.
Adith Podhar
Founding Partner
Adith has a total of 21+ years of work experience. Started his career with ICICI Bank as the Product Manager for Alternates in the International Private Banking Division. In 2007, he started his first venture in the F&B space called Crepeteria. Raised seed funding and grew it to 3 cities and multiple franchisees. Post exiting Crepeteria, Adith joined a boutique investment bank, where he learnt the fundamentals of investing and analysing companies. In 2014, he joined the investment team at Motilal Oswal PE Fund. 4 years at the private equity fund with 2 growth stage investments and 2 successful exits, laid the foundation of Gemba Capital. Adith has invested in 50+ startups over the years. He brings a mix of growth stage investing, early stage investing and IB experience along with himself being an Operator and an Entrepreneur. Adith has followed an unconventional path and has been a risk taker. His style of investing is more about assessing Founder Market Fit and directional tailwinds in the market. Besides investing and reading, he enjoys music, movies, travel and food.
Govind Lohia
Principal
Govind hails from a traditional Indian business community and has completed a full circle as an early-stage investor, startup operator, and Principal at Gemba Capital. He is passionate about Consumer Internet, Agri-tech, and FinTech. Most recently he was VP at Upscalio (joined as 5th employee; grew to 300+ employees and INR 300 Cr+ revenue in 2 years), where he led 7 M&A transactions and managed integration for 5 acquired consumer brands. Before that, he spent 5+ years at Contrarian Capital (seed-stage VC), leading end-to-end investments including Pratilipi (Series C+), Progcap (partial exit at 20x MOIC), Signzy (exit at 3x), SquadStack (Series B+), Minjar (exit at 3x), and Zvolv (Series A+). Earlier, he worked at the family office of the ex-MD of Castrol India, with exits in First Energy (3x) and Xoxoday (30x). MBA and CFA.
Kamini Shivalkar
Associate Vice President
Kamini is a founding team member of Gemba Capital, with 10 years of overall experience and 6+ years in early-stage investing. She focuses on SaaS, HealthTech, and Consumer Tech and plays an active role in building sectoral thesis and writing investment blogs. Prior to Gemba, she was an Associate at Axilor Ventures (SaaS and Enterprise Tech) and a Business Analyst at Indus Valley Partners (technology solutions for global PE and hedge funds). She began her career in EdTech, including as part of the early team at BYJU's (content creation, product development, and Chemistry teaching for engineering entrance exams). Holds an MMS in Finance from JBIMS and B.Tech in Electrical & Electronics Engineering from NIT Nagpur. Has completed 7 high-altitude Himalayan treks and a full Tata Mumbai Marathon.
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Vipul Rawal
Venture Partner – FinTech
Vipul is a serial entrepreneur and FinTech Venture Partner at Gemba Capital. He founded FinTechLabs (digital lending platform-as-a-service, acquired by Perfios in 2019), and its product Fin360 (acquired by FinBit, subsequently acquired by Yodlee in 2017). He was also CMO of Sattviko (packaged food) and founded Bakerybite (bakery marketplace, 2014). He worked as VP of International Business Growth at Perfios and is currently leading New Initiatives at smallcase (since April 2021). Holds 5 patents.
Ranjeet Pratap Singh
Venture Partner – Consumer Tech
Ranjeet is the Co-Founder and CEO of Pratilipi, India's largest storytelling platform with 1 million+ writers and 550 million+ monthly story reads across multiple languages and formats. Pratilipi has raised USD 80M+ from Krafton, Tencent, and Nexus. The Pratilipi umbrella includes Pratilipi Comics, Pratilipi FM, IVM Podcasts, and Westland Books. MBA from FMS Delhi.
Sahil Sharma
Venture Partner – Technology
Sahil is a technology leader with 20+ years of experience across FinTech, B2B, MarTech, and Consumer Tech, and holds 5 patents. He is currently Engineering Fellow and Head of GCOO Domain at NatWest (one of two such Fellows globally). He began his career at Cisco (built Virtual Services Exchange Platform, scaled team from 1 to 100+), then joined Intuit (AI/ML patent for agent support), PayPal (marketing technology platform transformation), and Mastercard (SVP Engineering, led Connect Platform — a marketplace of 180+ applications, 180+ engineers across India, Dublin, and US). At Gemba, he leads deal evaluation and post-investment portfolio support from a technology perspective.
Dr. Puneet Gupta
Advisory Board
Dr. Puneet Gupta has 20+ years of experience in strategy consulting, M&A, investment advisory, and board roles. He has served on the boards of UTI Pension Fund (~USD 30B+ AUM) and NCDEX e Markets Ltd., and currently sits on the board of Fusion Finance and advises the Startup Fund of ONGC. He started his career at Ernst & Young (Chicago) in strategy and transaction advisory, then held leadership roles at SAP and ACL Services (strategic planning, M&A, fundraising). He is a TiE charter member and delivers lectures on PE/VC at academic institutions. PhD from IIT Delhi; MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.
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