A One-Stop Shop For New-age Consumer Brands

While most early-stage investors seek out technology firms to put their money in, Kanwaljit Singh’s Fireside Ventures has built an ecosystem comprising capital, mentorship, and promising ideas around new-age consumer brands.

- Aveek Datta

THAT KANWAL JIT SINGH, founder and managing partner of early-stage investment firm Fireside Ventures, has a keen eye for backing promising consumer-focussed companies that innovate for the all-powerful Indian millennial consumer, is evident from some of the investments in his portfolio. Singh, 55, was so passionate about investing in and nurturing consumer brands that he walked out of Helion Venture Partners (which he had co-founded; he was senior managing director) in 2015, since the rest of the team didn’t want to deviate from its focus of investing in technology-led companies. After quitting Helion, he turned angel investor and was an early-stage investor in firms that went on to become well-known brands such as Paper Boat, Epigamia, and Licious.

Singh, who spent 13 years in consumer marketing across companies such as Hindustan Unilever (HUL) and Intel India, soon realised there was only that much he could do as an individual investor and he needed to create an ecosystem to realise his vision of helping consumer-focussed firms grow through capital and mentorship. As a result, Singh founded Bengaluru-based Fireside Ventures in 2016 and by February 2018, the firm had closed its first fund of `340 crore with a slew of marquee investors including Westbridge Capital, Marico chairman Harsh Mariwala’s family office, Emami, Hero Enterprise Investment Office, ITC, and the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Family Office.