Kansaltancy Ventures – A Decade Of Venture Capital, Building Startups And SME’s

From Early Skepticism to a Global Vision

There are conference room conversations that end the moment everyone stands up and leaves. And there are the ones that don't - the ones that follow you out the door, into your career, and eventually into the company you decide to build.

I heard Tushar Kansal recount one such conversation when I attended his talk. For Kansal, an entrepreneur and investment professional, it was a conversation he said had happened again and again during his years at Deloitte & Touche, post the Global Financial Crisis in 2009, and later while serving as CFO of a company owned by the US private equity behemoth Guggenheim Partners.

As he described those years, I could sense that these were not abstract observations for him. He had been sitting in those conference rooms, listening to people whose credentials and experience commanded respect. The rooms were full of smart, credentialed professionals. Yet, according to Kansal, almost all of them agreed on one thing: Indian Entrepreneurship was a gamble not worth taking seriously.

The Startup Ecosystem - if one could even call it that at the time - was written off as a phase. The safe money stayed safe. The ambitious money stayed quiet.

What struck me most as I listened to Kansal was that he did not interpret that skepticism as a reason to walk away from Indian Entrepreneurship. He told us that, instead, it convinced him that the ecosystem needed someone willing to bet on Founders before it was fashionable to do so.

That single realization, as Kansal explained it to me and the audience, eventually became the founding principle of Kansaltancy Ventures.

Turning Doubt Into a Decade of Deal-Making

When Kansal launched Kansaltancy Ventures in 2016, "Startup Ecosystem" was barely a phrase people used with a straight face. The numbers back this up starkly: at the time, only 436 Startups had registered under the Indian Government's “Startup India” scheme.

Today, that number has exploded past 2,00,000.

Kansaltancy Ventures didn't just watch that growth happen from the sidelines - it helped write it. From day one, the Firm refused to be just another name passing Term sheets back and forth. It understood something a lot of Capital-only players missed: an early-stage Founder doesn't just need a wire transfer. They need a war room.

That difference becomes particularly visible when one sees the response to Kansaltancy's work firsthand. At events, conferences and Founder interactions, the conversations around the Firm are rarely limited to the availability of Capital. Founders talk about access, guidance, introductions, strategic support and the ability to have a serious conversation when the business problem is bigger than a funding requirement.

So Kansaltancy built one - Capital, Management expertise, and a Global network rolled into a single support system, now spanning India, APAC, GCC, the US, and the UK. For Kansaltancy Ventures, success was measured by whether a Founder felt structurally, intellectually, and strategically backed enough to actually go the distance.

The Numbers Behind the Ambition

Beyond traditional Venture Capital, Kansaltancy Ventures has arranged more than $100 million in funding for Indian Startups and SMEs – a figure that puts the Firm firmly in the conversation with the country's most active VC players by providing assistance to more than 5000 Startups/ SME’s over the last decade as is evidenced by over 100 Testimonials on Kansal’s LinkedIn profile.

The numbers tell one part of the story. Conversations with the people who have actually sought Kansaltancy's assistance tell another. Having interacted with several Founders who have received assistance from Kansaltancy, it is difficult to miss a recurring theme: for many of them, the relationship goes beyond a single transaction. Funding may be the immediate requirement, but the discussion often extends to strategy, positioning, investor conversations,
business models and the next stage of growth.

But the Company was never willing to let Equity be the only tool in the box. Kansaltancy Ventures also became a serious force in IPO Funding and Debt advisory, backed by an affiliation with marquee Anchor Investors in the IPO space.

By building out both pathways, Kansaltancy sent Founders a clear signal: there is more than one way to survive past the hype cycle - and panic isn't a funding strategy.

Simplifying Life and Industry With Meaningful Talks

A Startup journey without conflict is a fantasy. Pivots happen. Deals fall through. Markets turn without warning. What separates a resilient ecosystem from a fragile one is whether Founders feel safe enough to bring problems to the table before they become crises.

Kansaltancy Ventures built that safety net publicly - not through a slogan on a wall, but through relentless, visible presence. And this is perhaps where the scale of his work becomes most apparent when seen firsthand.

At Talks, conferences, panel discussions and Podcasts, the response from Founders and members of the public is striking. The questions are not merely about funding. They range from Venture Capital and Entrepreneurship to Financial Literacy, Strategic Management, Market realities and the challenges of actually building a business. There is a visible appetite among audiences to hear Kansal speak directly and without excessive jargon about subjects that are often presented in complicated language.

Operating under the motto "Simplifying Life and Industry with Meaningful Talks," he has delivered thousands of Talks and Podcasts aimed squarely at demystifying Financial Literacy, Strategic Management, and Market realities.

The scale of that communication effort has itself become significant. Kansal's Talks, Podcasts and digital appearances have now crossed 100 million views. Having followed this content and witnessed the response around it, the number is more than a digital statistic; it reflects the size of the audience that has chosen to engage with the conversations.

That presence spans an unusually wide stage:

• Media & Television: CNN-News18, Business World, and VCTV (Venture Capital TV) 
• Specialized Shows: Business ki Pathshala series on Har Ghar Startup channel on Tata Play - including a dedicated Life-story feature, "The Hustler – Tushar Kansal" 
• Audio: A wide catalog of Spotify podcasts on Venture Capital and Entrepreneurship 
• Academia: Entrepreneurship cells at the IITs, IIMs and other marquee Academic Institutions 
• Public Forums: Over 1,000 videos and multiple TEDx appearances in the public domain 

What is particularly noticeable at these engagements is the level of engagement from the Founder community. People do not simply attend, listen and leave. They stay back to discuss their companies, their funding requirements, their concerns and their next steps. In several interactions, the conversations continue well beyond the formal Talk or conference session.

The strategy behind all of it is simple: the more Founders hear market truths spoken plainly and without judgment, the less likely they are to hide their mistakes out of fear of investor retaliation.

The Real Metric: What Happens to Founders Over Years, Not Quarters

For Kansal, a single Funding round was never the finish line. The real proof of an ecosystem's health shows up years later - in Founders who moved from Seed Funding to SME IPOs, took on bigger responsibilities, and grew with the economy instead of just riding a moment in it.

The Founders I have interacted with who have received assistance from Kansaltancy reinforce this point in different ways. Their businesses and requirements may be different, but the underlying expectation is remarkably similar: funding is valuable only when it helps create the next stage of the business.

That's why sustainable execution sits at the center of everything he teaches Founders. Not the Vanity Metrics. Not the Growth-at-all-costs playbook that burns out Teams and torches Balance sheets. Financial discipline. Unit Economics. Clarity of thought. A Business Model that can survive contact with reality.

There is also a larger lesson in the journey. The Indian Startup Ecosystem has moved from 436 Startups registered under the Government's Startup India scheme to more than 2,00,000 today. Kansaltancy Ventures has spent the same decade building its own position within that transformation - through funding, IPO Funding, Debt advisory, Management expertise, Global networks, Events, Talks and Podcasts.

And having seen the passion with which Founders and members of the public engage with Kansaltancy's work, the company's evolution is not merely a story of financial transactions. It is a story of relationships, conversations and an increasingly visible ecosystem around a Firm that chose to stay close to Founders.

A thriving Startup culture, in Kansal's world, was never just about the size of the cheque. It was about leaders quietly choosing to build companies rooted in resilience, honest communication, and a genuinely global vision - one Founder, one Funding round, one Hard Conversation at a time.