Good Capital: The Startup Champion

Millennial investors and siblings Rohan and Arjun Malhotra are making the right connections around the world for Indian startups. Through Investopad and Good Capital, they are providing people with opportunities to learn and build things—just as their father used to do in the ’80s and ’90s through his IT education business.

- Anshul Dhamija

Forty-year-old Kashyap Deorah is a serial entrepreneur. HyperTrack, which he started in 2016, is his fourth venture. Developers use its location-tracking application programming interface to build applications for companies in on-demand delivery and logistics, and improving the productivity and efficiency of “giggers”, or freelancers that make the gig economy. Based in San Francisco, Deorah is also the author of the book The Golden Tap, which tells the story of hyper-funded Indian startups. He has first-hand experience of the phenomenon: He himself has funded 25 startups.

But there is a hint of wonder when Deorah recalls his association with Rohan (31) and Arjun Malhotra (29), co-founders of Investopad, a facilitator for startups in India. First off, the brothers were as excited as Deorah about the opportunity in dynamic location tracking. The three had met sometime in mid-2015 to explore investing in a startup in the last-mile logistics space. In a blog for HyperTrack, Arjun would write that what followed was a “deepening kinship”.

The Malhotras were looking to spot a winner. So Arjun was excited when Deorah said he was onto something that focussed on tracking. Arjun wondered, just tracking? Deorah said firmly: “I’m focussed on doing just this one thing and doing it well.” Arjun thought tracking was “a fairly small problem”. But after considering expert inputs, the brothers realised dynamic location tracking would be needed in various industries, and HyperTrack could supply mountains of data—something no firm could do without. So, in January 2016, Arjun parked a tidy sum in HyperTrack. Investopad was only two years old then.