Google investee turns entrepreneur, keen on investing in Indian startups

Giving another boost to the startup ecosystem in the country, Silicon Valley startup entrepreneur Rahul Jain, whose company was recently taken over by Google Inc, has evinced interest in investing in startups in India.

“I am ready to invest Rs 1 to Rs 5 crore in Indian startups. This will be done along with a dozen investors whom I know from the Valley, with the intention of creating a pool of funds with a corpus of over $50 million. I have already approached a few parties in India on this front,” said 26-year-old Jain in a telephonic interaction with Deccan Herald.

Google Inc had recently acquired Appurify, an app-testing startup co-founded by Jain out of California. He is currently working as the Director of Engineering with Sidecar.

Jain made it clear that the investments in India would be opportunistic and dependent on project ideas. “These investments do not end with mere funding from my part. I would like to share my five years of experience in the product development realm with these startup companies which will help them immensely in reaching out globally,” he said.

Jain also pointed out that historically Indian companies have been services-oriented, and hence, failed to build large product companies like Google, Apple, Facebook and Linkedin.

“It would be very rewarding to be a member of the board of directors of a product company. I have been able to provide technical contributions to the companies I am currently associated with. I will bring the same expertise to all the investments I am planning in India. It will help these companies start off in the right direction and become successful,” he said.

On his investment priorities, he said importance would be given to startups working on IT development tools, IT platforms, Big Data and analytics, mobile and cloud computing.

Jain also evinced keen interest in Narendra Modi’s Digital India initiative. “I had a great upbringing in India due to our solid cultural and educational foundations. The Prime Minister’s initiative on Digital India is a step in the right direction,” he said.