On 3 May 2026, a SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted off from California with Mission Drishti, a 190 kg satellite built by Bengaluru startup GalaxEye. It was the largest Earth observation satellite made by a private Indian company. By July, GalaxEye had announced it lost contact. Navam Capital backs the company, and its founder, Rajeev Mantri, explained to me how an investor should think about a bet like that.
Check out the video of the conversation here or read on for insights.
Rajeev has spent 19 years in venture capital. He studied materials engineering at Northwestern, started at Lux Capital in New York, then moved to India to invest his family’s money in unlisted companies. In January 2026 he closed Navam’s first outside fund, Navam Venture Fund I, at over ₹315 crore ($34 million).
Value investing, applied to startups
Rajeev teaches venture capital at the Indian School of Business, and his course rests on one idea.
“The principles of value investing apply just as much to venture capital as they do to other asset classes.”
His three rules: buy for less than the asset is worth, stay inside your circle of competence, and never overpay.
“If you overpay for an asset, that investment is DOA, dead on arrival. You can never claw back or make it good again.”
He compared early-stage investing to betting before the flop in poker, when the deciding cards are still hidden.
“One has to bet on the fundamentals of what something could be worth, well before that is obvious to others.”
“You’re underwriting the optionality embedded in that group of people in that early-stage company.”
Ather Energy shows how that can pay. It listed on 6 May 2025 at ₹321 a share, an IPO valuation of about ₹11,956 crore. By August 2026 its market cap was about ₹57,300 crore, roughly 4.8 times that. FY26 income was ₹3,823 crore, up 66 percent. One disclosure: Navam joined at the January 2022 Series E, so Rajeev used Ather to explain conviction and did not claim the first cheque.
The flip side is dispersion. India’s AIF rules are about 14 years old, performance data is thin, and few funds reach a second or third fund. Asked whether VC beats an index fund, Rajeev gave no headline return, which I think is the more honest answer.
“There are very few investments that are worse than a poorly run venture fund.”
Inside a ₹315 crore fund
On who funds Navam, Rajeev was proud of one thing.
“We have almost entirely rupee capital, which is something I’m quite proud of.”
AIF commitments in India reached ₹16.94 lakh crore by March 2026, up ₹3.45 lakh crore in a year.
Rajeev rejects “spray and pray”. He prefers 15 to 20 companies, with 5 to 7 percent of the fund per company over time. Press reports put first cheques at ₹5 crore to ₹8 crore. About half the fund is held back for follow-ons, to keep ownership in winners.
The economics are hard.
“A 10-year fund has to at least triple its money for there to be any meaningful carry. So it’s a tough business.”
“If you want to get rich quick, it is not the industry to be doing that.”
“Word of mouth is the most underrated and most powerful multiplier. This is a very gossipy industry, for better or for worse.”
Navam has backed more than 20 companies and 35 to 40 founders, who refer others. One investment came from a cold LinkedIn message, a first for a VC on my show.
Where the next deals come from
Rajeev looks for two triggers, technology and policy change.
“Policy changes throw up entirely new industries which were heretofore closed for private participation, or not available, or illegal.”
In December 2025 the SHANTI Act let private companies into nuclear power. Nasscom and Zinnov put 2025 Indian tech startup funding at $9.1 billion, up 23 percent, with $2.3 billion in deep tech, 91 percent of it AI-led. In space, Skyroot Aerospace became India’s first space unicorn on 7 May 2026 at about $1.1 billion, while Navam-backed Agnikul Cosmos was valued at about $500 million in late 2025 and signed a ₹200 crore government agreement on 25 September 2026.
Rajeev sees value pooling first in the layer everything else depends on.
“You can’t have AI if you don’t have chips. You can’t have a space economy if you don’t have launch. It’s as simple as that.”
GalaxEye tests the other end of that logic. Drishti validated key technologies in its first weeks, but a geomagnetic storm damaged it, and the company says recovery looks unlikely. This is what underwriting optionality looks like when a bet fails, and it is what the follow-on reserve is for. I don’t know what Navam will decide, and Rajeev has not said.
Who should skip it
“Probably most people should not be investing in venture funds.”
His test is liquidity. The asset class suits people with surplus capital they will not need for a long time. Everyone else has listed equities and REITs. To work in venture, he says fund operations is the easiest way in, since raising money and sourcing deals need relationships that take years to build.
“I think it is an industry designed for a certain type of weirdness.”
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Sources: Inc42, Entrepreneur India, Upstox, Equentis, Tracxn, ThePrint, Swarajya, Entrepreneur India on Agnikul, Satellite Today, Cafemutual, Zinnov, World Nuclear News