Ironclad Floats INR 200 Cr ESOP-Focused Fund

Ironclad Asset Management Launches INR 200 Cr ESOP-Focused Secondaries Fund

SUMMARY

Ironclad Asset Management has introduced Ironclad Ventures, an INR 200 Cr SEBI-approved fund dedicated to employee ESOP secondaries

The fund will support liquidity for startup employees, with a strategy to invest in 30–40 startups across fintech, consumer, SaaS, AI, and digital sectors

Backed by industry veterans, Ironclad Ventures aims to strengthen long-term ownership incentives and hiring in India’s startup ecosystem

Investment firm Ironclad Asset Management has launched INR 200 Cr ($22.5 Mn) ESOP-focused fund Ironclad Ventures to provide liquidity to employees in the Indian startup ecosystem.

In a statement, the asset management company said that its Cat-I AIF fund Ironclad Ventures would comprise a base corpus of INR 100 Cr ($11.3 Mn) along with a INR 100 Cr green shoe option.

It plans on executing 30-40 secondary transactions in a range of INR 1-4 Cr in startups across segments like fintech, consumer, SaaS and AI. These investments would be executed through company-led periodic liquidity programs.

Ironclad’s founder and CEO Krishna Killa told Inc42 that the fund would enable employees to partially liquidate vested ESOPs in their companies each quarter. For instance, an employee with INR 25 Lakh in ESOPs vesting in a year could sell 5% each quarter, unlocking about INR 5 Lakh in annual liquidity.

The firm is also onboarding an advisory ecosystem comprising industry experts, including Arpit Maheshwari, former advisor at Stellaris Venture Partners, Apurva Chamaria, global head of venture capital and startup partnerships at Google and Shrey Badhani, cofounder of Kapiva Ayurveda.

Founded in 2024 by Killa, Ironclad Asset Management is an asset management company which launched its portfolio management services (PMS) fund called Flexicap PMS in early 2025, which is a public market offering. It claims to have delivered returns of 20% year-to-date with the fund.

The launch of the ESOP-focussed secondaries fund comes at a time when more Indian startups are relying on ESOP buybacks to control employee attritions.

For instance, Inc42 recently reported that IPO-bound PhonePe had launched an ESOP buyback programme worth up to INR 700 Cr to INR 800 Cr earlier this month. Other notable ESOP buybacks undertaken by startups in recent months include Darwinbox’s INR 85 Cr ESOP buyback, Flipkart’s $50 Mn ESOP buyback, among others.

Important to note that ESOPs have been one of the key strategies employed by Indian startups to ensure talent’s enthusiasm to join them after seeing their employer branding impacted by strings of layoffs in the past.

According to an Inc42 survey in 2024, about 55% of founders were banking on Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) to bring the Indian workforce back to the startup ecosystem in 2025.