Transforming India
Profitably
@ Scale
An Opportunity Requiring Scale
By 2030, India’s middle class—projected to comprise 600 million people or nearly 45% of the population—will contribute around $1.8 trillion to the country’s GDP. For global investors, this dynamic and fast-growing segment presents a unique opportunity to engage with one of the world’s most promising markets, where growth is closely tied to rising aspirations, urbanization, and digital adoption. To realize impactful returns in this high-growth environment, investors require not just capital, but also an understanding of local markets, significant scaling expertise, and a dynamic approach to navigating India’s complexities.
With 12 years of middle-India investing experience and a growing portfolio of 20 companies, Capria Ventures is strategically positioned to assist investors in tapping India’s superior financial return potential while also demonstrating that profitable investing can have scaled social impact beyond what can be delivered through other channels. Investments in digital transformation and the “Future of Work” are not optional for India. Action is required to sustain the target economic growth of the country in the face of headwinds in the IT sector caused by AI and to weather the challenges of the agricultural sector caused by climate change. VC investors, incumbent corporate leaders, and governments must invest in the next generations of technologies and services that support scaled transformation and job growth.
Capria’s portfolio—spanning areas including affordable education loans, blue-collar workforce training, financial inclusion, and healthcare access—demonstrates how Capria combines local insights and investing in startups using advanced technology to address critical gaps in sectors essential to job creation and the sustainable growth of middle India. As they grow, startups like those in our portfolio will deliver impact profitably and scalably, better than the best-run NGOs and all but one of the most well-intentioned governmental programs. The notable exception to the latter is India’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), which is a foundation for transformation and economic accelerant without equal for the Indian economy. The smallest startups to the largest employers are all using DPI to support scale, and it’s working.
Target Areas of Transformation
Capria’s investment strategy offers investors a distinctive edge in generating returns while contributing to broad-based social and economic progress. Strategically investing in fast-growing tech-fueled startups serving sectors vital to job creation, skill development, health, and economic mobility delivers impactful transformation and targets financial returns commensurate with or better than VC returns in developed markets.
Example investments are BetterPlace and Eduvanz, which equip India’s youth with employable skills and increase access to education finance. They are key to improving both livelihoods and economic mobility across India. Through these and other investments, Capria supports a growing entrepreneurial network that contributes to:
- Economic Mobility: Enabling skill development, education, and job placement across vast segments of the population. This focus on social mobility resonates with NRIs who understand the power of opportunity for economic uplift and appreciate a vision that aligns progress with attractive returns.
- Efficient Skill Matching for Employment: Leveraging AI, Capria’s companies help match and uplevel workforce skills with market demand, leading to better employment rates and income growth—furthering the goal of an economically empowered middle class.
- Rapid Scaling with Minimal Capital Infusion: Our portfolio companies are all asset-light by design, using GenAI to scale within India and beyond, enhancing investor returns by reducing the time and resources needed for expansion.
- Utilizing India’s Digital Public Infrastructure: India’s DPI allows companies of all sizes to deploy services at scale, friction-free, with virtually no cost, cutting transaction fees and delivering high-impact solutions with impressive reach far into the population of tier 2, 3, and 4 cities.
Navigating the Complexity of Middle India
Middle India is a complex market with unique cultural and economic traits. Addressing this segment’s needs requires businesses to scale in ways that remain responsive to local realities. Capria’s portfolio highlights how combining technology with contextual insights can yield scalable, sustainable solutions:
- Applied AI: Generative and agentic AI are transforming sectors across India, bringing tech-driven innovation to local needs. Workforce management leader BetterPlace uses generative AI to deliver multilingual training for blue-collar workers, serving more than 2 million workers from India’s largest employers, including Reliance. BharatAgri supports smallholder farmers with localized AI-generated crop advisory services in their native tongue, while 5C Network uses agentic and generative AI to make radiology diagnostics faster, more accessible, and affordable across tier-2 and tier-3 hospitals.
- Financial Inclusion: Eduvanz has extended over $270 million in tailored credit for vocational education and training, addressing critical financing gaps for middle India. BetterPlace provides affordable early salary options for 2 million frontline workers, enhancing financial flexibility.
- Mobility Solutions: DriveU and BlowHorn have tapped into India’s extensive logistics sector, creating tech-enabled solutions that support India’s transportation and supply chain needs while improving tens of thousands of car and truck drivers’ livelihoods.
- SME Enablement: SMEs, the backbone of India’s economy, are gaining vital access to capital and tech solutions through SuperMoney and Agrizy. These companies have financed over $20 million for small enterprises in agribusiness and manufacturing, driving growth in underserved sectors.
Applied AI – Transforming the Future of Work in India
India has more to gain and lose from AI than any other country across the Global South, particularly in the areas of IT and call center operations which employ about 5 million people. While jobs will be lost in the short term, in the medium to long term we believe the AI revolution can create more opportunities than it takes, due to the equalizing power of information and education accessibility for India’s young population and the enabling of new startups serving the digitization of Indian and Global South economies. There will be disruption and change, the likes of which have not been seen for many decades if ever before. But that disruption is expected to lead to substantial gains. According to a report by Bain&Company, AI also represents a projected $500 billion opportunity in India by 2030. Capria’s investments in JobTech and middle India position us well to fuel and capitalize on these seismic changes in India’s workforce, both informal and formal.
Building Trust and Expanding Globally
In times of economic and technological disruption, trust is essential in middle India. Masai School exemplifies this with its outcome-based coding school model that aligns its success with student achievements. Over the past four years, Masai has developed a strong reputation, achieving a near zero cost of customer acquisition and 20,000 applications per month. AI is enabling them to scale without limit, and teaching the use of AI enables their students to scale as well. Meanwhile, global scalability, as seen in BetterPlace’s expansion as a market leader in Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia, underscores Capria’s ability to create “glocal” solutions that succeed in large, diverse markets.
Targeting High Returns and Sustainable Progress
Capria Ventures’ India Fund III offers a unique opportunity to combine financial returns with scalable solutions for sustainable growth. With recent profitable exits, such as the $100 million sale of Awign to Mynavi, and several portfolio companies preparing for IPO, Capria provides a clear pathway to financial success with lasting impact for investors attuned to India’s growth story.
Capria Ventures and Mynavi Corporation
Capria’s partnership with Mynavi exemplifies how we enable strategic international expansion. Mynavi, a leading Japanese HR services company and Limited Partner in Capria’s recent India fund, acquired our portfolio company Awign with our guidance and deep market connections. This acquisition reflects the alignment of Mynavi’s strategic goals with India’s expansive JobTech landscape, where demand for skilled labor and scalable staffing solutions is rapidly increasing. And it delivered handsome returns for our investors.
Capria’s Portfolio Highlights
Originating as a workforce management solution for India, BetterPlace will soon reach $300M in ARR and has expanded across Southeast Asia, adapting locally while scaling its workforce solutions to address regional opportunities.
Revolutionizing medical imaging for more than 7 years and having completed more than 11,000,000 diagnostic cases, 5C is providing best-in-class AI-enabled diagnostic solutions across India and is now entering international markets, including Japan.
Meeting middle India's educational and skilling financing needs, Eduvanz focuses on shorter-term loans for families with limited access to capital, with 70% of borrowers outside of Tier-1 cities and 40% very low income, leading them to rapid employment opportunities post-course completion.
Masai School's unique outcome-based education model is transforming India's approach to skilling, specifically for in-demand fields like software development and data science. With a rigorous, placement-driven curriculum, Masai ensures affordability through a "pay after placement" model, where students only pay tuition upon securing employment. Over 85% of Masai graduates find jobs within three months of completing the program, achieving an average starting salary increase of 40% compared to previous incomes. This approach is providing upward economic mobility to middle India's youth, with 60% of students coming from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities.
Targeting critical supply chain gaps in India's vast SME sector, SuperMoney provides tailored payments and credit solutions to key industries like steel, electronics, and consumer goods. By facilitating access to short-term working capital, SuperMoney enables small businesses to meet demand spikes without incurring burdensome interest rates. Over 70% of SuperMoney's clientele are SMEs outside Tier-1 cities, with many businesses experiencing a 30-40% reduction in payment cycles. This support is essential for sectors that are the backbone of India’s manufacturing and trade industries, driving growth and efficiency in underserved regions.
JobTech as a Showcase of Capria’s Value-Add
Capria made its first investment in JobTech for middle India in 2015. We’ve grown our work since then to include companies across the employment lifecycle, ensuring operational efficiency and scalability, including models for mass staff management supporting industry leaders like Reliance, outcome-based gig work, and AI-enabled skill development.
- Diverse Business Models: Capria supports staffing (BetterPlace) and gig models (Awign, DriveU, Bloworn, Gigforce), offering the ability for companies to reduce fixed costs and grow sustainably.
- Cross-Sector Synergies: Capria’s portfolio balances horizontal leaders like BetterPlace with vertical specialists like Bandhoo (construction) and Wify (home improvement), building resilience through sector diversity.
- Worker Engagement: Our focus on living wages and worker benefits enhances productivity and retention. For example, Wify, Blowhorn, and DriveU have each improved worker earnings significantly over time.
Investing in Middle India to Drive Scaled Transformation
Capria Ventures provides a strategic advantage beyond capital by delivering sector-specific knowledge, deep local insights, and scalable, impactful solutions for India’s rising middle class. For global investors seeking strong returns in India which is widely forecast to overtake Japan as the world’s fourth-largest economy in 2025 and to be the third-largest economy within 5-7 years, Capria’s experience and growing portfolio offer a compelling pathway to support India’s digital – and concurrently its socio-economic-transformation.
