From Student Entrepreneur To Venture Capitalist: Richa Bajpai's Unconventional Career Journey

Richa Bajpai was still an engineering student when she decided to start her first company. There was no established career path to follow, little experience to fall back on and no certainty that the venture would succeed. But that early decision to build something of her own would eventually shape not just her career, but also her understanding of what makes an entrepreneur worth backing.

Her professional journey has been anything but conventional. After starting NextGen during her engineering years, she went on to co-found Goodera, a technology company focused on corporate social impact and volunteering. She later pursued an MBA at London Business School, served on the Investment Committee of The Creator Fund in the UK and Europe, and advised a London-based private equity firm before establishing Campus Fund, a venture capital platform focused on student entrepreneurs, recent graduates and dropouts.

Today, as Founder and CEO of Campus Fund, Bajpai finds herself on the other side of the table, evaluating young entrepreneurs who are often at the same stage of life she was when she first ventured into business. But unlike traditional investment approaches that place considerable weight on academic credentials, professional experience and institutional pedigree, she believes entrepreneurial potential is better measured through hunger, resilience, risk-taking and the willingness to challenge convention.

That conviction also raises a larger question about how India identifies and nurtures entrepreneurial talent. As artificial intelligence lowers the barriers to starting businesses and young founders increasingly pursue ambitious ideas in areas ranging from space technology to advanced science, the conventional assumptions about who is ready to build a company are being tested.

For Bajpai, the transition from entrepreneur to investor has also meant learning to balance the urgency of building a business with the patience required to back one. Her journey into a senior investment role comes at a time when women remain underrepresented in the leadership ranks of India's venture capital industry.

In a conversation with Outlook India, Bajpai reflects on the career choices that shaped her thinking, the lessons she carried from entrepreneurship into investing, and why she believes some of India's most promising founders may be those who have yet to complete their education.

You started your entrepreneurial journey as a student yourself. How did that experience shape the investor you became?

I started my first venture, NextGen, in my final year of engineering, working at the intersection of sustainability and technology. We pitched to investors, travelled to remote parts of India to set up plants and sold to people who had been working longer than we had been alive. That journey eventually led to Goodera, where we worked with senior leaders at Fortune 500 companies on creating social impact globally.

No classroom could have prepared me for those experiences. You can read everything about swimming, but until you get into the water, your knowledge remains theoretical. Building a company taught me endurance, persistence and grit. It also taught me what founders experience as they go from zero to one and beyond. Plans rarely unfold exactly as expected.

Today, when a young founder asks how to set up HR or hire their first senior employee, I understand. These aren't signs of weakness. They're part of building a company, brick by brick. My experience made me more empathetic, patient and flexible, and shaped how we support founders at Campus Fund.

What made you believe student founders were an overlooked investment opportunity?

Some of the world's biggest companies, including Google, Facebook and Snapchat, were founded by students or people in their early twenties. India has Zepto. Yet young founders have often been viewed through the lens of what they lack rather than what they bring.

Students can think big, without being constrained by what has always been done. In their naivety lies their power to defy convention. They have fewer preconceived limits and often a greater willingness to take risks.

India lacked institutional capital focused specifically on this stage. Campus Fund was built to write that first institutional cheque for students, dropouts and founders within three years of graduating. I believed in them because I had been one of them.

Has your thesis about student founders changed since you started Campus Fund? What have you got right, got wrong or been surprised by?

The core thesis hasn't changed. We back current students and those who graduated or dropped out within the previous three years. What has surprised me is their maturity. Despite limited professional experience, many know their sectors exceptionally well and are pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

What has evolved is our cheque size. Building companies from India costs more than it once did, particularly in deep tech. We now invest ₹3 crore to ₹8 crore at pre-seed, depending on the problem being solved. We want founders to have 15 to 18 months of runway to build peacefully before they need to raise again. They shouldn't be forced into fundraising before they've had the opportunity to prove what they're building.

What separates entrepreneurial potential from academic or professional achievement? What behaviours do you consider stronger indicators than credentials?

Academic excellence and entrepreneurial potential aren't the same thing. Academics often reward working within a defined framework. Entrepreneurship requires you to challenge that framework and sometimes abandon it entirely.

At Campus Fund, we look for what we call the “hustle quotient”. Did someone take leadership roles at school or in sports? Did they challenge expectations? What risks have they taken beyond what was required? Those answers can tell me more than a marksheet or CV.

Ultimately, I'm looking for hunger, courage, resilience and the desire to build. Pedigree alone cannot tell you whether someone will persevere when things go wrong.

What has your Student Scout Network taught you about where entrepreneurial talent comes from?

Our Student Scout Network is a superpower. Student scouts identify peers who are building companies. They speak the same language and understand what motivates them. We currently have more than 120 active scouts, with over 300 having participated since inception, representing roughly 25 universities across India.

The network has reinforced that talent isn't confined to famous campuses. Scouts can identify serious builders early, including people who might never reach a traditional VC network. A founder may feel intimidated pitching to a senior investor, but speaking first to a peer can be far more natural.

Scouts also see things a pitch deck cannot show: who is consistently doing the work, who is committed and who is simply following a trend.

Is being young actually an advantage when building a company? Where can lack of experience become a disadvantage?

I see more advantages than disadvantages. Young founders often have fewer responsibilities and a greater appetite for experimentation. They can test ideas quickly, fail cheaply and remain frugal.

AI strengthens that advantage. Students are experimenting with emerging tools as they arrive, often before established businesses have worked out how to use them.

The most obvious disadvantage is access to networks. Experienced professionals have relationships a 20-year-old may not. But networks can be built through genuine work and consistent execution. The fearlessness of youth can be harder to recover later.

What has surprised you most about the businesses and ideas being built by young founders today?

The scale of their ambition. Many are working on hard scientific problems rather than simply making everyday tasks more convenient. Some ideas sound like science fiction until you see the teams building them.

In our portfolio, EtherealX is developing reusable launch vehicles, Sarla Aviation is working on flying taxis and Serendipity Space is exploring medicines manufactured in space. These are complex, capital-intensive challenges.

The quality of student founders is improving as India's startup ecosystem matures. It is also why patient early capital matters. Hard-science companies cannot always demonstrate progress on the same timelines as conventional software startups.

Is the Indian education system adequately preparing students for entrepreneurship?

Our education ecosystem needs to catch up. Too many institutions still prepare students for conventional careers, with a heavy emphasis on exams and fixed pathways.

The National Education Policy 2020 offers greater curricular flexibility, including opportunities for students to take time away to pursue their ideas. But more institutions need to embrace that spirit in practice. BITS Pilani, for example, offers students a gap year to pursue entrepreneurship before making a more permanent decision.

Learning happens by doing, not only by reading and repeating answers. The behaviours that make entrepreneurs effective, questioning convention, taking risks and leading, are often discouraged in classrooms. Colleges should make it easier, not harder, for students to try building something.

How is AI changing what it means to be a young entrepreneur? As barriers to building products fall, what becomes more important?

AI has dramatically lowered the barrier to creating a product, including for people who cannot code. That changes the competitive equation. Building is easier; finding and retaining customers is the real challenge.

Distribution is the new moat. Speed and an instinct for reaching users matter enormously. Young founders are often native to the channels where their customers spend time, whether Reddit, Instagram, creators or online communities. They understand how products spread.

AI also makes it conceivable that a very small team, even a solo founder, could build a billion-dollar business. That possibility makes ambition, execution and distribution more important than the size of an engineering team.

What do you think the next generation of Indian founders will look like?

They will be more aggressive and audacious. Indian founders have sometimes been criticised for thinking smaller than their American counterparts. I expect that to change.

Three shifts are converging: AI tools are increasingly accessible wherever you live; India has more risk capital to support ambitious ideas; and teams here can build world-class products at a cost advantage.

The result will be founders building from India for global markets, including companies tackling frontier science. Many will start while they are still students because technology has reduced the age at which someone can create something meaningful.

What does the Indian VC ecosystem still misunderstand about very early-stage founders?

Too much emphasis is placed on academic signalling, the college someone attended or the credentials on their CV. Pedigree can feel reassuring, but it isn't necessarily a predictor of entrepreneurial ability.

Think about cricket. Great talent doesn't emerge only from big cities or elite institutions. Entrepreneurship is no different. Investors should look at what founders have actually done, how quickly they move, what setbacks they have survived and how determined they are to build.

Of our 42 portfolio companies, 22 were started by founders outside the typical elite Indian and global colleges and universities. That is why we look beyond familiar campuses.

What has being an investor taught you that being an entrepreneur never could?

Patience. As a founder, you are consumed by immediate decisions and the urgency of execution. As an investor, you learn that potential takes time to compound.

I also have to see situations from three perspectives: the entrepreneur's, the investor's and our limited partners'. Their outcomes are connected, with the founder at the centre.

Being an investor has made me more optimistic too. You cannot back students at pre-seed without believing that what seems impossible today might become real tomorrow. Entrepreneurship gave me empathy for the chaos; investing taught me to give it time.

What is the biggest misconception about entrepreneurship at a young age?

That you need a huge network and a lot of money before you can begin. You don't. Start small, demonstrate something real and build from there. Networks and capital can follow execution; they need not be entry tickets.

AI has reduced the cost of getting started. India also has public support mechanisms for innovation, including programmes associated with Atal Innovation Mission, MeitY, BIRAC, iDEX and TDB, particularly for technical ventures.

The more important question is whether you're willing to start, test your idea and keep going.

What is the larger ambition for Campus Fund from here?

We want Campus Fund to become the default fund that a student entrepreneur, anywhere in the world, wants beside them at the beginning.

The first institutional cheque can be transformative. We want to provide meaningful pre-seed runway, support from people who understand building companies and a scout network that helps us discover founders early. Through Fund III, we plan to back 60 to 80 startups, with a significant portion reserved for follow-on investments.

In October 2026, Campus Fund was named among the first cohort of fund managers selected under the government's ₹1 lakh crore Research, Development and Innovation Fund, through ANRF. For us, it reinforces the importance of backing young founders working on hard science and frontier technologies.

If you had to articulate your investment philosophy in one sentence, what would it be?

Catch them young. Back founders when their naivety is still their power to defy convention, and remain patient enough for that courage to become a company.