Sanjay Mehta

Sanjay Mehta is among the most prolific and successful angel investors in India, a Mumbai-based serial entrepreneur who has been a first-cheque backer of early-stage startups since 2011. Before investing, he founded MAIA Intelligence, later acquired by Datamatics. Across his personal career he has backed somewhere between 150 and 230+ startups in India and the US, and is widely cited as the only Indian angel with four unicorns to his name: OYO, crypto exchange CoinDCX, blockchain company Block.One, and US space-infrastructure firm AXIOM Space. His most celebrated outcome was a roughly 280x return from an early OYO position; a partial exit from Block.One returned several thousand percent in under three years. Mehta articulates a power-law philosophy — that a small fraction of a portfolio drives almost all returns, so investors should optimise for the magnitude of success, not its frequency, and be patient across three-to-five-year horizons. In December 2019 he institutionalised this approach by founding 100X.VC, India's first fund to invest using iSAFE (India SAFE) notes, sponsored by his Mehta Ventures family office, with an ambition to back 100 startups a year. Notable portfolio names include OYO, Wow! Momo, Box8, LogiNext, Unbxd, PrettySecrets, Coolberg and InstaSafe. He is also a prominent blogger and ecosystem thought leader.