Mahesh Murthy
Director @ SeedFund.in
Mumbai, India
Mahesh Murthy is a seed investor at SeedFund.in in Mumbai focused on Mobile and B2B. Mahesh Murthy has spent 30 years helping big brands with marketing and branding input, and 14 years helping startups with funding too. 19 of these years have been digital-intensive. Mahesh dropped out of college, sold vacuum cleaners door to door, worked with Grey in India and then Ogilvy in Hong Kong, where he won notoriety and awards as Creative Director on Unilever, The Economist, Pepsi and MTV. He then moved to a Silicon Valley agency, CKS Partners as CD and Partner, where he helped create the first commercial UI for Yahoo in 1995 and the now-classic launch campaign for Amazon in 1997. After a successful NASDAQ IPO, Mahesh Murthy moved to head marketing at iCat, an e-com firm in Seattle, later bought by Intel. He returned to India in 1999 to run and turn around Channel V, a rival to MTV, till its sale to Newscorp in 2000, then founded Passionfund to invest in startups. His investees include Geodesic, WebDunia, EBS Worldwide, Inkfruit and Doolally. Mahesh has penned reasonably infamous columns in Business Today, Businessworld, Tehelka and WSJ. On TV, he’s played the Donald Trump-like role in Business Baazigar in 2007, and the Dragon’s Den-like role on ETNow’s SuperAngels in 2011 and on Bloomberg’s The Pitch in 2013. In 2004, Mahesh Murthy found a need for a tech-driven, digital-first brand management firm – and set up Pinstorm. With over 100 people across offices in India, Singapore & Malaysia, it is now among South Asia’s leading digital brand management firms, creating award-winning work on the region’s largest telecom, banking, FMCG and retail brands, including Airtel, Cadbury Kraft, Nestle, ICICI Bank and Wipro. Mahesh has a passion for early-stage investing and teamed with Pravin Gandhi and Bharati Jacob in 2006 to set up Seedfund, voted India’s best VC fund in 2010. Seedfund has over 25 investees including Carwale, RedBus, AFAQs, Vaatsalya, MyDentist and Edusports. Mahesh is a sought-after speaker on marketing, digital brand management and starting up. His updates are avidly followed by over 100,000 folks across Twitter, Facebook, Quora and LinkedIn.
- Total investments:
- 7
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 29%
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Mahesh Murthy invests in
Stages Mahesh Murthy invests in
Countries Mahesh Murthy invests in
Round sizes
Contacts
| Type | Contact | Validation |
|---|---|---|
| Work email | ||
| Personal email | ||
| Work phone | ||
| Personal phone | ||
| Socials |
Round size
- Pre-Seed
- $500k–$600k
Investment Focus
Stage
- Seed 2 (29%)
- Pre-Seed 2 (29%)
- Angel 1 (14%)
- Series A 1 (14%)
- Venture - Series Unknown 1 (14%)
Country
- India 5 (71%)
- United States 1 (14%)
- United Arab Emirates 1 (14%)
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Funch provides chef-cooked, everyday meals to workplaces for working professionals. | $500K / Pre-Seed / Nov 29, 2025 | ||
| Saving companies up to 75% on AWS | $600K / Pre-Seed / Jan 06, 2025 | ||
| The Ken is a new, digital, subscription-driven publication headquartered out of Bangalore, India. Founded by a team of experienced journalists and entrepreneurs, The Ken's goal is to deliver fresh and original business insight through well-narrated stories to professionals, entrepreneurs, investors and leaders every morning. | $400K / Angel / Feb 20, 2017 | ||
| HandyTrain helps organizations effortlessly train their dispersed workforces using bite-sized content delivered on its mobile-first platform.HandyTrain has trained 300,000+ users in 15 Countries spanning 5 Continents in 12 different languages.Industry-leading organizations like HDFC Group, Grameen Foundation, Ujjivan Small Finance Bank,Cars24, HomeTown (part of the Future Group), Dr Lal PathLabs, India Infoline (Housing Finance), DTDC, Mahindra Insurance Brokers and Sleepwell, among others count on HandyTrain to train and engage their employees, partners, vendors and franchisees. | $1M / Seed / Nov 29, 2016 | ||
| Careers360- The Education Hub: A data enabled and technology driven education products and Services Company, Careers360 seamlessly integrates millions of student and institutional data points with user generated preferences of its 6 million plus monthly visitors to build sophisticated prediction and recommendation products to enable studentsexplore and achieve career plans based on their interests and abilities.From exam preparation to college recommendation, we have 250+ products used by a million students, cover 9000+ colleges and 200+ courses, driven by a 200+ member young team.We are a hub of activity on everything to do with education. Our products, content, forums, experts and events help students, parents, policy makers, educationists and academics take informed decisions. We are driven by data, tools & products. We predict and recommend. We will enable the best decision for every student, every time. We are Careers360 – The Education Hub. | Venture - Series Unknown / Jun 16, 2014 | ||
| Innoz is an Indian mobile technology start-up that provides solutions for mobile search applications and wireless market. Its products and services include: SMSGyan, a Q&A search engine on the phone that delivers knowledge bits over SMS; Miki, a personal search assistant that detects voice and delivers content over the phone instantly;TRANZ that enables the users to share photos, videos, and music with friends and family from GPRS and 3G mobile phones; and CellNXT, an SMS and voice marketing platform. In 2010, Innoz won RED Herring Global 100 and Asia 100 and also rated under Top 8 Emerging companies in India by Innoz was incorporated in 2008. It is based in Bangalore and has additional offices in Gurgaon, India; and North Wales, Pennsylvania. | Seed | ||
| Fetise.com, India's premier online designer outlet dedicated to men. Their mission is to make men's online shopping experience secure, fun, convenient, low-cost, and most importantly hassle-free! | $5M / Series A |
Co-Investors
About SeedFund.in
Seedfund is early-stage venture capital fund.
SeedFund.in Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
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Mahesh Murthy
Director
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Tarana Lalwani
Principal
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Bharati Jacob
Managing Director
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Paula Mariwala
Executive Director, Mumbai
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Paula Mariwala
Executive Director, Mumbai
|
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FAQ
What does Mahesh Murthy invest in?
Mahesh Murthy invests primarily in Mobile, B2B and Apps startups, most often at Seed and Pre-Seed stage. Most of the 7 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in India. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
What round sizes does Mahesh Murthy invest in?
Mahesh Murthy typically joins rounds of $500k–$600k at Pre-Seed. These are whole funding-round sizes, not Mahesh Murthy's own check, which is rarely disclosed: the 10th–90th percentile of the confirmed public funding rounds Mahesh Murthy took part in.
How do I contact Mahesh Murthy?
Public channels for Mahesh Murthy include LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and Facebook. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.
When did Mahesh Murthy last invest?
The most recent investment recorded for Mahesh Murthy closed in Nov 2025. Shizune tracks 7 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.
Is Shizune's investor data accurate?
Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Nov 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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