Slice, Blue Tokai Backer 8i Ventures Floats Programme To Back Early Stage Startups

Early stage venture capital firm 8i Ventures, which has backed startups like Slice, Blue Tokai and M2P among others, has floated a seed funding programme to support early-stage founders.

Through this programme, Origami, 8i Ventures seeks to aid those businesses (pre-seed to early stage) which prioritise ‘speed’ as hallmark feature, the firm said in a statement. 

Under the programme, the VC fund aims to offer rapid industry access to the selected startups and also offer guidance and resources to the founders for faster growth. 

Besides, the selected startups will also be offered an initial funding ranging between $250K and $2 Mn. 

According to 8i’s founding partner Vikram Chachra, some major startups have been created in the deepest of funding winters. “Uber, Airbnb and Whatsapp were all incorporated during the great financial crisis of 2008,” he said.

“We believe that there has never been a better time to build than right now which is why we created ‘Origami’. Through this seed program we aim to invest in 8-10 startups this year, and if this initiative is well-received, we hope to double our allocation to $20 Mn,” Chachra added. 

Vishwanath V, partner, 8i Ventures, added, “Origami is meant to simplify fundraising for founders who would prefer to use their bandwidth on customers rather than on long fundraising cycles.”

Founded in 2019 by Chachra and Vishwanath, 8i Ventures marked the first close of its $50 Mn fund, with a green shoe option of about $15-$20 Mn in 2022. Back then, it said that the fund was expected to close by March 2023. However, it did not announce any further development thereafter. 

Recently, yet another accelerator programme for early stage startups has been launched by T9L in partnership with IndiaTech to support 25 startups.

Also, coworking space WeWork Labs floated a programme called Jumpstart for the early stage startups to equip founders with all the essentials they require to launch and scale their startups.

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