TILT Capital, The/Nudge Foundation’s impact-first investment platform, has unveiled its first ₹250 crore venture fund to back early-stage businesses serving India’s Next Billion.
The fund is backed by the Livelihood Impact Fund, along with prominent entrepreneurs, investors and philanthropists, including Deep Kalra, Amit Gupta, Hari Menon, Binny Bansal, Raj Nooyi and Vidit Aatrey.
TILT has been created to address a critical gap in India’s entrepreneurial ecosystem: the limited availability of patient, impact-first capital for ventures during their formative stages. The fund will primarily invest from seed to Series A, with cheque sizes ranging from ₹2 crore to ₹16 crore.
“At TILT, we believe markets move where capital points, and we want to reimagine how impact investing can work in India by directing capital towards opportunities that can create lasting value,” said Richa Singh, co-founder and managing partner, TILT Capital.
Singh said India’s Next Billion was increasingly ready for scalable market solutions, and the platform’s focus was on backing founders early and giving them time to build resilient models. This includes aligning capital more closely with the realities of the markets and communities they serve.
TILT will focus on science- and technology-led businesses across agricultural value chains, climate resilience, informal work and emerging employment models. This also includes micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) productivity, employability, financial inclusion, market access and distribution, and the application of technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to livelihood challenges.
TILT will also support areas such as research, market development, partnerships and ecosystem infrastructure, complementing the venture fund’s investment work because investment alone may not be sufficient.
Businesses serving low-income communities often take longer than conventional ventures to establish product-market fit, build distribution and develop resilient economics. While mainstream capital typically enters once growth prospects are clearer and risks lower, TILT is designed to support ventures earlier in their journey.
The fund will provide patient capital designed to reflect the longer timelines and operating realities of impact-led businesses while maintaining financial discipline and seeking sustainable value creation.
Atul Satija, founder and managing partner, TILT Capital, said that for the past eight years, The/Nudge had worked alongside hundreds of entrepreneurs building solutions across livelihoods and some of India’s most complex challenges. He said TILT took that work forward through a dedicated pool of patient, impact-first capital. “Over the next 15 years, we aim to back 150+ startups and meaningfully improve 100 million lives. We hope to show what becomes possible when capital is designed around the realities of impact-led businesses,” Satija said.
TILT builds on eight years of work by The/Nudge in supporting livelihoods-focused social entrepreneurs. Over this period, The/Nudge has supported more than 190 social enterprises and deployed approximately ₹180 crore in grants. The ecosystem has produced a strong record of recognition, including 23 Forbes 30 Under 30 founders, three Earthshot Prize winners and 18 Acumen Fellows.
As these ventures progressed from early validation towards scale, it became clear that many needed more than philanthropic support to realise their full potential. They needed patient, impact-first investment capital that could support them through the formative stages of building resilient businesses and reaching sustainable scale.
