Binny Bansal Backs TILT's ₹250 Crore India Impact Fund

India Gets an Impact-First Tech VC Fund

On 27 August 2026, TILT Capital — the investment platform of The/Nudge Foundation — announced the first close of its maiden ₹250 crore (approximately 29 million US dollars) impact-first venture fund. The fund targets early-stage science- and technology-led businesses that serve India's Next Billion: the hundreds of millions of people in lower-income segments who remain underserved by mainstream consumer technology products. The announcement adds a distinctly impact-oriented voice to India's otherwise deal-metric-driven early-stage funding landscape.

The/Nudge and TILT: What They Are

The/Nudge Foundation is an Indian non-profit that has spent over a decade developing programmes on livelihoods, financial inclusion, and rural economic mobility. TILT Capital — the name stands for The Impact Laboratory of Technology — is its investment arm, structured as a regulated alternative investment fund to attract capital from domestic and international limited partners. By separating the investment vehicle from the foundation, The/Nudge can write cheques into for-profit startups while maintaining the foundation's non-profit status and keeping its philanthropic programmes ring-fenced from fund economics.

Who Is Backing the Fund

The investor line-up for TILT's first fund reads as a who is who of Indian entrepreneurship. The Livelihood Impact Fund is an anchor backer. Named investors include Deep Kalra, founder of MakeMyTrip; Hari Menon, co-founder of BigBasket; Binny Bansal, co-founder of Flipkart; and Vidit Aatrey, co-founder of Meesho. The Raj and Indra Nooyi Family Office — a reference to former PepsiCo global CEO Indra Nooyi — is also a backer. The presence of multiple co-founders of India's most successful internet companies, alongside a family office with global business reach, reflects a deliberate strategy: attract backers who bring operating expertise alongside capital and who have direct experience building for large Indian user bases at scale.

What TILT Will Fund

The fund invests from seed stage to Series A, writing cheques of ₹2 crore to ₹16 crore per company. It focuses on science- and technology-led businesses across six broad areas: agricultural value chains, climate resilience, informal work and emerging employment models, MSME productivity and market access, employability and skilling, and financial inclusion. The common thread is that each area addresses a structural gap in the Indian economy that conventional venture capital has historically underweighted because the primary users are lower-income and the commercial path is longer and more complex than consumer internet businesses targeting urban high-income users.

The Role of Technology and AI

TILT's thesis is not that impact investing requires slower returns or weaker teams. It is that the technology tools now available — including artificial intelligence — create the conditions for profitable businesses that also serve underserved communities at scale. Agricultural AI for yield prediction and market price discovery, AI-powered credit scoring for informal workers who lack formal credit histories, vernacular voice interfaces for small business bookkeeping, and AI-driven learning tools for first-generation learners are all categories where the fund expects compelling businesses to emerge. These are not charitable applications of AI. They are commercially viable products for which large, unaddressed demand exists among India's lower-income population, and the cost of serving that demand has fallen sharply as AI tools have become cheaper and more capable.

Scale of Ambition

TILT's announced long-term ambition is to back more than 150 startups over the next 15 years and to measurably improve the lives of 100 million Indians through the combined portfolio. At ₹250 crore across the first fund, the initial portfolio is likely to be ten to twenty companies at early stage, with follow-on capital from co-investors and subsequent TILT funds expected to take the most successful companies through later rounds. The 15-year investment horizon is itself significant: it signals a fund structure designed for patient capital rather than the five-to-seven-year exit pressure of conventional venture funds, which is often what pushes founders building for lower-income users toward pivot decisions that trade mission for margin.

What This Means for Founders and Builders in India

For founders building technology that serves non-urban, non-English-speaking, or lower-income users in India, the TILT fund represents access to capital that is explicitly structured to support that mission rather than to steer the company toward a higher-income urban user base to improve short-term unit economics. That distinction matters in practice: impact-aligned capital is less likely to push a founder to pivot away from their core user when growth in that segment runs slower than in a premium one. For technology builders and engineering teams working on the AI, mobile, and vernacular tools that power these startups, it signals a growing pool of funded companies that will need deep, India-specific product and engineering expertise to build well.

The Bottom Line

On 27 August 2026, TILT Capital launched its maiden ₹250 crore impact-first venture fund to back early-stage science and technology businesses serving India's Next Billion. The fund is backed by Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, Meesho co-founder Vidit Aatrey, the Raj and Indra Nooyi Family Office, MakeMyTrip founder Deep Kalra, and BigBasket co-founder Hari Menon, among others. It will write cheques of ₹2 crore to ₹16 crore across seed to Series A in agricultural tech, climate resilience, MSME productivity, skilling, and financial inclusion — with a fifteen-year horizon to back 150 startups and improve 100 million lives.