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Mumbai-based Venture Catalysts, an integrated incubator and accelerator, has acquired the India operations of US-based seed and early-stage fund and accelerator Z Nation Lab for an undisclosed sum.

Anuj Golecha, Co-Founder of Venture Catalysts (VCats), said that since inception, Venture Catalysts has a collaborative approach in supporting the India Startup Ecosystem.

“This is a further step towards the same and simultaneously building inorganic growth of Venture Catalysts. VCats has recently entered the US Market to promote and invest in startups founded by Indians who are aiming to expand in the US and/or US startups targeting the Indian market. This collaboration with Z Nation Lab team will enable Venture Catalyst to leverage the network and expertise of the Z Nation Lab, to work together to reach and fund more entrepreneurs from India looking at global expansion and take them to exit.”  

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Z Nation Lab is co-founded by Amit Jain, who had previously worked with Citibank, PwC & KPMG in both India and the US, and Anup Mehta, who ran multimillion-dollar family businesses in real estate, healthcare and education. Neha Jain joined as a co-founder to build the investor ecosystem and corporate partnerships, whilst Sunil Ranka and Ankur Garg both sold their tech startups in the US and joined the founding team to help ZNL startups build products that can be scaled globally.

In a statement, Z Nation Lab said that it will continue to invest in high growth enterprise tech startups targeting the customers in the North American market and focused on M&A exits in 3 to 5 years.

With this move, the Z Nation lab business is underlining its strategy to partner with high-growth ventures in emerging markets like India and South Asian markets whilst giving unique access and insights to their portfolio startups who want to tap into opportunities in the US. 

Z Nation Lab also aims to support moving startup headquarters to the US by leveraging its expertise in helping set up startups in Silicon Valley.

Z Nation Lab has operations in India and in the United States, and has mentored more than 200 plus entrepreneurs and invested in startups like Fampay, Delightree, Knight Fintech, Gmetri, Ubits, Beehero, Datapoem, Odeko, Hotify, Conversion.ai amongst others through their seed fund in the US.

Venture Catalyst has a network of more than 4500 angel investors spread across 36 cities in 6 countries – India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, UAE, UK & the US and is known for its startup building capability, strategic guidance, generating business leads, leveraging its network across the globe through its partners. Besides raising seed-stage and Series A investments for startups, Venture Catalysts has also backed an accelerator fund 9Unicorns which is known for investing in Idea Stage Startups.

“I have been working with the Venture Catalysts team for the last three years, and I have been incredibly impressed by their growth and deep penetration into the Indian startup ecosystem not just in the metros but also in smaller tier 2 and 3 towns. They have truly democratized early-stage investing in India in the last 5 years,” said Amit Jain, Co-founder of Z Nation Lab.

Venture Catalysts provides an investment of $500K to $2 million per startup with incubation support for 18-24 months. Having started in 2016, Venture Catalysts have incubated and led investments in more than 150 startups.