Before a startup has customers, it has a peculiar sales problem. The founder must persuade someone to finance the search for customers. The spreadsheet has columns but few useful numbers. The product may still be a sketch. Eximius Ventures has chosen this awkward interval as its place of business. It calls the investment “Cheque Zero,” a small phrase that puts the firm precisely where it wants to stand: before the reassuring evidence arrives.
- Entry point: pre-product or early traction; typically $500,000-$1 million.
- The next bet: Fund II targets $30 million, with half planned for follow-ons.
- The offer: capital plus hiring, operator connections and fundraising help.
A fund born from the wrong question
Pearl Agarwal did not arrive at this problem by reading pitch decks alone. After working at UTIMCO, Merrill Lynch and Global Infrastructure Partners, she returned to India and built DotReview, a platform intended to help founders understand investors. Her team biography describes conversations with more than 1,000 founders. Those conversations helped turn an information problem into an investment thesis: finding the right first investor was itself a substantial obstacle.
There was an earlier lesson, too. Agarwal told Business Standard that a fintech venture she built while studying in Austin had reached a ceiling. Entrepreneurship had given her a view from the other side of the table. DotReview then supplied a more specific question: what happens to capable founders before an institutional investor considers them ready?
Eximius is her answer. The company dates to 2020; its $10 million debut fund launched in March 2021. The distinction matters because this is an investment manager, with funds underneath it, rather than a startup selling one product. Its stated ambition is to help founders build from India for markets at home and abroad.
The cheque has a second half
The current website puts a typical first institutional investment at $500,000-$1 million. At Fund II’s January 2025 announcement, the plan was more specific: a $30 million target corpus, initial cheques of $500,000, and investments in 25-30 companies. Half the capital would be reserved for follow-on rounds.
That reserve is the revealing detail. A fund that invests early encounters uncertainty twice: when choosing the founder, and when deciding whether the first experiments justify more money. Keeping capital available gives it the option to back progress. It also means the headline fund size cannot simply be divided into first cheques.
Reserved for follow-on investments
*At the $30m target, the reserve equals $15m. The remainder also needs to accommodate fund expenses. This is a plan, not a deployment report.The firm sits between two constituencies. Limited partners commit money to the investment vehicle; founders receive that money to build businesses. Fund II launch coverage described prospective backers including wealthy individuals, founder-investors, family offices and Japanese corporate venture investors. A founder reading the announcement should therefore distinguish the fund’s target from money already invested in startups. The announced corpus describes the intended pool of capital, while each company still needs its own investment decision and terms.
For a founder, the cost is ownership. Venture investment exchanges capital for equity and brings expectations about growth and eventual liquidity. A $500,000 cheque is not a price list: dilution depends on the valuation and negotiated terms. For the fund, a larger paper valuation is encouraging, but it becomes spendable success only when an investment produces cash.
A portfolio of ordinary frustrations
Look past the sector names and the portfolio becomes easier to understand. Jar addresses saving in small amounts through digital gold. Skydo tackles the friction of receiving international business payments. Eka.care organises health information across patients, doctors and laboratories. These businesses serve different users, but each begins with an activity people already need to perform.
The firm’s current thesis groups opportunities under FinAI, Enterprise AI and Consumer AI. Its website names lending infrastructure, industry-specific software and content-related tools. Earlier descriptions gave healthtech and gaming more explicit billing. The labels have shifted towards AI; the portfolio still shows a broader history.
CuePilot AI makes the newer emphasis concrete. Eximius lists it as a 2025 Fund II investment. Its voice-first software turns teachers’ observations and classroom narratives into structured child timelines and progress summaries. The proposition is specific enough to examine: can software turn information teachers already hold into records they can actually use?
“My first duty as an investor is to be a confidant of my founder.”From Eximius’s founder-support video
Help has to travel the last mile
Eximius Edge is the name for the support around the investment: hiring assistance, HR resources, mentors, operator introductions and help preparing for subsequent fundraising. Partner Preeti Nellore Sampat brings experience from Flipkart and the US micro-VC Infinite Road. Advisors listed by the firm cover product, technology, finance, governance and growth.
In 2025, the firm opened a Bengaluru office. Thirteen existing portfolio companies were already based there, according to the launch coverage. That makes the move less mysterious than most expansion announcements. If the service includes working through hiring and product decisions, being nearby can reduce the effort required to ask for help.
The alternatives include angels, syndicates, accelerators and other pre-seed funds. Eximius’s pitch combines a first institutional cheque with sector research and an operating platform. Those features give a founder concrete things to compare: does the investor understand the customer, can it help recruit an early team, and can it introduce the next round’s backers? The relevant comparison is the help available at a company’s present stage. A familiar investor name, by itself, answers none of those questions.
The claim still deserves a founder’s scrutiny. Ask which person will help with which problem, and talk to portfolio founders about what happened after signing. Access to a network is useful when an introduction reaches the person who can remove a real obstacle.
Borrow the question, then build the proof
You do not need an Eximius term sheet to copy the useful part of its approach. Read the published thesis. Interview prospective customers before treating a product idea as demand. Build a use-of-funds budget around what the money will establish: whether customers care, whether they return, and whether serving them can make economic sense. Eximius’s work with WeWork Labs on a pre-seed fundraising guide makes that preparation available beyond its portfolio.
This approach requires a business suited to equity funding. A founder who wants steady income without pressure for a large exit may prefer another route. A capital-heavy project may need more than an initial pre-seed cheque can establish. And introductions cannot rescue a product customers will not use. The practical test is wonderfully plain: after the first cheque has been spent, what will you know that you cannot demonstrate today?