Venture Capitalist
& Angel Investor

In 2000, before India had a venture capital industry worth speaking of, Mahesh launched Passionfund — one of the country's first angel investing vehicles. It was an experiment. Indian internet was small, exit routes were unclear, and most investors were not yet thinking about consumer software as a business.

Six years later, with a few early bets behind him, Mahesh co-founded Seedfund with Bharati Jacob. Seedfund became one of India's first institutionalised early-stage VC funds, writing cheques when the Indian startup ecosystem was still being assembled. The fund backed companies across consumer internet, mobile, media, and healthcare.

The most consequential bet was redBus — a small team in Bangalore trying to move bus ticket booking online. Mahesh backed them at seed stage in 2007. Six years later, Naspers acquired redBus for approximately $135 million. It was one of India's landmark startup exits at the time, and it arrived before most people thought Indian internet companies could produce exits at that scale.

Other notable outcomes: Geodesic, a mobile technology company, returned roughly 300x. CarWale became the dominant automotive classifieds platform. Chumbak grew into one of India's better-known direct-to-consumer lifestyle brands.

In 2015, Mahesh moved into space. He co-founded what became Satellize — building end-to-end sovereign space programs for governments that want to own their orbit rather than depend on foreign infrastructure. India's first private satellites launched in 2019, with further launches in 2020, 2021, and 2023.

Since moving to the UAE in 2022, Mahesh has been investing through AngelSpark, with a focus on founders in India, the Gulf, and MENA. The thesis has not changed much in twenty years: find a problem that matters, a team that can execute, and a market large enough to matter. The rest is patience.