Kanika Mayar

Kanika Mayar joined Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India in 2020, where she leads and sources investments in India. She was promoted to Partner on 15 June 2022 (alongside Pui Yan Leung), a move Managing Partner Joo Hock Chua attributed to her being a "purpose-driven investment professional with extensive experience in investing and working with start-up founders." She is one of the relatively few senior female investment professionals across India's 500+ VC funds, and has led deals across agritech, B2B, consumer, and health tech.

Before Vertex, Kanika was an Investment Officer at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private-sector arm of the World Bank Group, where she invested in early-stage technology, telecom, renewable energy, and infrastructure companies across India and South Asia. Earlier in her career she worked in Goldman Sachs's Investment Banking division, covering natural-resources transactions in Europe. This combination — investment banking, development-finance/growth investing at IFC, and now early-stage venture — gives her experience spanning the full spectrum from late-stage to early-stage investing.

Kanika holds a Bachelor's degree in Economics from Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi, and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad. She is an active public voice on Indian venture — appearing on podcasts (The Desi VC, Humans Who Build) and speaking at industry summits (W3 Summit, D2C India) on topics like "category creators," deep markets, and D2C-enabler white spaces.

• Stage & pace: Invests primarily at early stage (seed–Series A/B) from Fund V, contributing to VVSEAI's target of roughly 10–15 new investments annually across India and Southeast Asia.
• Sectors: Consumer platforms and D2C brands, digital health/healthtech, fintech (both consumer-facing and financial infrastructure), agritech/B2B, and enterprise SaaS with AI.
• Discipline over hype: She stresses "disciplined entry valuations" and long-term partnership with founders rather than momentum investing, and in October 2025 framed India as "one of the most attractive venture markets globally" with valuations returning to "healthy" levels and a renewed focus on fundamentals.
• What makes her say yes: In her own framing, building durable companies requires "patience, unwavering customer focus, and excellence in execution." She looks for "category creators," deep and defensible markets, and white-space opportunities (e.g., D2C enablers, agritech variants).
• Hands-on value-add: Beyond capital, she emphasizes helping founders with business development, talent recruitment, go-to-market strategy, and downstream investor connections — which she notes matters most in tighter funding environments.