Anirudh Damani is the Managing Partner at Artha Venture Fund. His professional journey started with humble beginnings. He found himself going door to door in West Texas, where he tried to convince homeowners to switch their electricity provider to Stream Energy. After all that hustle, he got the golden opportunity to work with one of the world's largest energy companies, Suez Energy, which now goes by the name Engie. As their National Sales Director, he set up, trained, and managed offices for commercial energy broking in Texas, Illinois, New York, and several other states. When he moved back to India in 2013, he decided to set out into the energy space on his own and founded Artha Energy Resources (www.artha.energy). Once he noticed how lucrative the returns were from investing in high-yielding renewable energy assets, he decided to re-invest some of their revenue into early-stage startups with high growth potential. This new investment arm, Artha India Ventures (www.artha.ventures), was part of our Family Office. He helped conceptualize a circular investment model that the Office still follows to this day. They generate their startup investment capital from their renewable assets, and in turn, use the returns from their exits to purchase and build more renewable assets. During his time with AIV, they had the opportunity to back extraordinary ventures like OYO Rooms, Exotel, Tala, NowFloats, Purplle, LenDenClub, BabyChakra, and more. They proudly deem themselves a leading early-stage investment firm with a portfolio of 75+ global ventures. After an enriching experience with AIV, Anirudh decided to branch out on his own. In 2018, he set up India's first Micro-VC Fund, Artha Venture Fund (www.artha.vc). his goal is to fund and build game-changing ventures from India! Having an impactful presence in the startup ecosystem, he has been featured by publishers like ET (The Economic Times), LiveMint, Bloomberg Quint, YourStory, VCCircle, and KRAsia, to name a few. He is always on the lookout to learn about new ideas from bright minds! He interviews many Founders and Investors on his weekly talk show #DamaniTalks. He also avidly blogs about his experiences as an early-stage investor on www.showmedamani.com. Something most people wouldn’t know about him is that he is a PADI-certified scuba diver with over 40 dives under his belt.