India's GHV forms partnership with Japan's WiL

According to The Economic Times, WiL's co-founders, Gen Isayama and Masataka Matsumoto, will spend five days a month mentoring start-ups housed at GHV.

In addition, WiL will support the growth and expansion of GHV's start-ups in global markets, targeting Japan and the US. The group, which typically invests $5-30 million, will act as a Series A investor to the most promising start-ups.

"India today looks like what China was 10 years back and growth here will be much stronger in the next few years," said Isayama. "We would like to fund a couple of companies from GHV if there is a strong connection to Silicon Valley or Japan. If we see benefits of cross-border mentorship and regular dialogue, the next step will be to set up a fund or facility which we can jointly run to continue our relationship."

WiL has said it will leverage its network of companies in the US and Japan to help these start-ups expand globally. The japanese VC will also partner with GHV for its demo day, when start-ups pitch to investors, which will be held in Japan and Singapore.

Vikram Upadhyaya, chief mentor at GHV, added that he hopes the two parties will eventually develop a long-term engagement to target more global opportunities.

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• Topics
• North Asia
• South Asia
• Early-stage
• Venture
• World Innovation Lab (WiL)
• Japan
• India
• seed