Surya Chadha
Senior Managing Director
Get their honest, personalized take on your startup.
Sign in to pitch Surya →At a glance
- Full Name
- Surya S. Chadha
- Title
- Founder & Managing Director
- Firm
- Madison India Capital
- Firm Type
- Private investment / growth-equity firm (India-focused). Note: the stub-data label "Angel Investors" is not supported by the firm's own materials — Madison India is an institutional growth-equity investor, though it occasionally participates in early/seed rounds.
- Investment Stage
- Primarily growth / middle-market equity (Series A through pre-IPO); occasional seed/early participation (e.g., YoloBus seed)
- Check Size
- ~$10–35 million typical equity investment
- Target Company Profile
- Growth-stage, revenue-generating middle-market companies with strong management and market leadership potential
- Sector Focus
- Business services, consumer, financial services / fintech, healthcare, and technology
- Geographic Focus
- India (with select portfolio companies operating internationally)
- Location
- New Delhi, India
Background
Surya Chadha is the founder and Managing Director of Madison India Capital, where he oversees all of the firm's investment activities. He brings roughly 25 years of private-equity investing experience spanning business services, financial services, consumer, healthcare, and technology, and has served on the boards of multiple portfolio companies in both India and the United States.
Before founding Madison India, Chadha worked in the private-equity investment group at Sandler Capital Management. Earlier in his career he was at HarbourVest Partners, one of the largest private-markets fund-of-funds and direct investors, and began in the Investment Banking Group at Morgan Stanley. This mix of fund-investing (HarbourVest), direct private equity (Sandler), and investment banking (Morgan Stanley) shaped Madison India's relationship-driven, capital-markets-savvy investing style.
On the academic side, Chadha holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, a B.A. from Hamilton College, and a B.S. from Columbia University. He founded Madison India Capital in 2007; the firm today manages more than $1 billion in assets (plus distributions), operates across India, the UAE, and Mauritius, and has been investing out of successive flagship funds (most recently the Madison India Opportunities series). Madison India is a member of IVCA (Indian Venture and Alternate Capital Association) and a PRI signatory.
Investment Thesis & Focus
- Growth equity in Indian middle-market companies, writing checks of roughly $10–35 million per deal.
- Sector emphasis on financial services/fintech, consumer, business services, healthcare, and technology — verticals where Madison can apply "a deep set of industry and capital-markets relationships" for value-added investing (firm's own framing).
- Targets market leaders and scalable growth stories rather than early-stage bets; the portfolio skews toward companies that can reach IPO or strategic-exit scale (the firm cites 9 portfolio IPOs and multiple unicorns).
- Flexible across the capital structure and stage: while primarily a growth investor (Series C–F rounds), the firm has occasionally entered at seed/early stage (e.g., YoloBus).
- Long-cycle orientation — the team markets itself on 100+ combined years of experience "across multiple economic cycles."
Notable Investments
- Lenskart — omnichannel eyewear retailer; now one of India's most valuable consumer-tech companies.
- ixigo (Le Travenues Technology) — travel and train/flight-booking platform; IPO'd in 2025.
- Pine Labs — merchant payments / fintech infrastructure company.
- CarDekho — automotive marketplace and fintech group; unicorn.
- Five-Star Business Finance — NBFC lending to small businesses; publicly listed.
- India Shelter Finance Corporation — affordable-housing finance company; IPO'd 2023.
- Star Health and Allied Insurance — health-insurance major (Series F participation, Dec 2020); publicly listed.
- Finova Capital — NBFC serving small businesses (Series E, Oct 2024, alongside Avataar Ventures and Sofina).
- MedGenome — genomics and diagnostics company.
- Gupshup — conversational-messaging / AI platform; unicorn.
- Pixis — codeless AI infrastructure for marketing.
- RentoMojo — furniture and appliance rental subscription platform.
- UnitedLex — legal-services and legal-tech outsourcing company.
- YoloBus — intercity bus mobility startup (seed round, Dec 2019).
- Indian Energy Exchange (IEX) — power-trading exchange; publicly listed.
- Reported connections/co-investments around exits including Coupang (Korean e-commerce).
Unlock the full research
Get how to approach them, recent activity, sources, contact links — plus pitch their AI twin for a candid read on your raise.
One-time. Stays unlocked for you.