Campus Fund, a venture capital fund focused on student and young founders, has earmarked up to $10 million from its $100 million Fund III to back students, recent graduates and college dropouts from around the world who choose to build their startups from India.
The initiative, called Build In India, will provide first pre-seed cheques to founders irrespective of their university, educational background, nationality or sector.
The fund said the initiative follows a rise in the number of startups in its pipeline founded by students from international universities.
In 2025, 518 of the 7,300 startups evaluated by Campus Fund, or 7.1 per cent, were founded by students from international universities, compared with 218 of 4,800 startups, or 4.54 per cent, in 2024. In 2026, 470 of the 4,420 startups evaluated so far, or 10.6 per cent, have been founded by international students.
Five of Campus Fund’s last 10 investments have been in startups founded by entrepreneurs who studied abroad and subsequently came to India to build.
Six of these companies have raised more than $24 million in follow-on capital, the fund said.
Richa Bajpai, founder and CEO of Campus Fund, told ANDEntrepreneur that the fund is seeing three distinct groups of founders choosing India.
“One is students who did their undergrad or schooling in India, went abroad to study and are looking to come back,” Bajpai said. “The second category is founders who are of Indian origin but never did their schooling in India whatsoever. They are also coming back, or they are trying to see if India can be a place from where they can build. And then there are completely foreign founders.”
Bajpai cited Serendipity Space founder Antariksh Pasricha, who moved back to India from Germany, and Arrowhead founder Devyani Gupta, who lived in Malaysia and studied in the US, as examples of the trend. She also pointed to a new pattern of Indian and non-Indian co-founders building companies with India as their base.
According to Bajpai, the reasons founders are choosing India vary. “For some of the problem statements, India is one of the largest markets to build,” she said. “If the market is here, people are coming back.”
She added that some founders are attracted by the possibility of building for India and then scaling globally, while others are solving problems that are specific to the country.
“There are two broad reasons why youngsters are choosing India to build,” Bajpai said. “Either it is a very India-specific problem and they personally relate to it, or if I can get the India business going, then it becomes easy for me to scale globally because of the sheer volume that I get.”
Bajpai said three factors have particularly changed the equation for founders who studied abroad: AI, geopolitics and the availability of capital and support in India.
“AI is a great advantage,” she said. “Second, the whole geopolitical thing that is happening. And third, just the kind of capital and support that this ecosystem is now providing in your own home.”
The fund said Build In India is not a separate investment vehicle, but a long-term commitment within Fund III. It will also engage with student associations and founder communities at universities overseas. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis with no deadline.
“For us, what matters is the founder and what they want to build, not their university, pedigree or nationality,” she added. “We want to back young founders, whether they are Indian, of Indian origin or foreigner, who choose to build from India, and be there with them from the start.”