Venture Catalysts acquires India ops of Z Nation Lab

Incubator and accelerator Venture Catalysts has acquired the India operations of Silicon Valley, California-headquartered accelerator Z Nation Lab for an undisclosed sum. 

With this move, the Z Nation Lab looks to tap into ventures in emerging markets in India and South Asia while giving access and insights to their portfolio startups who want to explore opportunities in the USA, according to a statement. 

ZNL also aims to support moving startup headquarters to the USA by leveraging its expertise in helping set up startups in Silicon Valley, it added.

Z Nation Lab has operations in India and in the United States. 

"I have been working with the Venture Catalysts team for the last three years, and I have been incredibly impressed by their growth and deep penetration into the Indian startup ecosystem not just in the metros but also in smaller tier 2 and 3 towns. They have truly democratized early-stage investing in India in the last 5 years," Amit Jain, co-founder of Z Nation Lab said. 

Jain, who had previously worked with Citibank, PwC & KPMG in India and USA founded ZNL in 2016 with and Anup Mehta, who ran family businesses in real estate, healthcare and education. Later Neha Jain joined as co-founder along with Sunil Ranka and Ankur Garg, who sold their tech startups in the USA and joined the founding team. 

Z Nation Lab claims to have mentored more than 200 plus entrepreneurs and invested in startups like Fampay, Delightree, Knight Fintech, Gmetri, Ubits, Beehero, Datapoem, Odeko, Hotify, Conversion.ai amongst others through their seed fund in the USA. 

Z Nation Lab will continue to invest in high growth enterprise tech startups targeting the customers in the North American market and focused on M&A exits in 3 to 5 years. 

Founded in 2016, Mumbai based VCats has incubated and led investments in more than 150 startups.  

Some of its portfolio companies are BharatPe, Coutloot, Dukaan, Superbottoms, PeeSafe, HomeCapital, Beardo, Fynd and Suprdaily among others. 

Besides raising seed-stage and Series A investments for startups, Venture Catalysts has also backed an accelerator fund 9Unicorns which is known for investing in Idea Stage Startups.  

Last month, 9Unicorns reached the fourth close of its first accelerator vehicle at $50 million (Rs 371 crore).  

"VCats has recently entered the USA Market to promote and invest in startups founded by Indians who are aiming to expand in the USA and/or USA startups targeting Indian market. This collaboration with Z Nation Lab team will enable Venture Catalyst to leverage the network and expertise of the Z Nation Lab, to work together to reach and fund more entrepreneurs from India looking at global expansion and take them to exit” said Anuj Golecha, co-founder of Venture Catalysts.