Mehul Bhagat and Rostam Zafari closed their first $20 million fund with hopes to invest in early-stage startups that could change the world for the better.
The two Emory University graduates want World Within Ventures to focus on humanitarian innovations and invest in a small group of seed-stage startups so the firm can help them grow.
That’s different from the typical venture capital strategy, in which investors make bets on a wide range of early-stage companies and stick with the ones that are successful. World Within is an “anti-venture capital firm,” Zafari said.
For Bhagat and Zafari, the investments are less about turning profit and more about funding innovations that would benefit society.
"If we can actually fundamentally change how we respect and celebrate founders rather than playing the lottery with early-stage companies, there’s going to be so many more solutions that are going to be meaningful in the world,” Bhagat said.
World Within has invested in nine companies right now and plans to have around 10 portfolio companies in total. The firm invests in innovation around the world and currently doesn’t back any Atlanta startups.
The firm’s portfolio companies tend to fall into three broad categories: healthcare and life sciences, agriculture and infrastructure, Bhagat said.
For example, World Within invests in Chicago-based Mesh++, a startup that connects WiFi routers into a mesh network to solve “last-mile” broadband access problems. That mesh technology is usually used in buildings to strengthen the WiFi connection rather than expand it to new places.
"It’s using a novel technology that fundamentally changes how people live,” Bhagat said. “Those are the ingredients we look for.”
World Within’s first, $20 million fund closed at the end of June. It includes support from family offices, angel investors and Brookhaven City Councilmember Joe Gebbia, father of Airbnb founder, Joe Gebbia Jr. The firm’s advisory board also includes Kat Cole, former chief operations officer at Focus Brands in Atlanta.
Both Bhagat and Zafari have experience in venture capital and health before raising this fund. Bhagat is the board chair of the Emory Global Health Institute, and Zafari is a former executive at Sage Hill Capital Partners, where he led more than 50 early-stage investments.
The two met in a poetry class at Emory. Bhagat says the founders continue to use their poetic training, even in the venture capital world.
“Ideas that we find in poetry — beauty, faith, purpose, love — are the concepts that make life worth living,” Bhagat said. “Sometimes you get in the weeds of buldling something, you start to lose sight of those things. Poetry always brings me back.”
