Nikhil Kamath, the co-founder of Zerodha, unveiled the WTF Fund on 11 October. It is a fundraising and mentoring program for business owners under the age of 22.
Young business owners in the beauty, home, fashion, and lifestyle sectors will be supported by the fund, and Kamath, Ananth Narayanan, founder of Mensa Brands, Raj Shamani, a content producer, and Kishore Biyani, the founder of Future Group, will serve as their mentors.
Kamath took to his official LinkedIn account to share the information.
"Introducing the #WTFFund! Young entrepreneurs under 22 years of age can now grab the opportunity to secure funding and receive mentorship in the home, fashion, beauty, or lifestyle sectors from Ananth Narayanan, Raj Shamani, Kishore, and myself," he wrote.
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The decision to start the fund was made during the latest episode of Kamath’s podcast ‘WTF is with Nikhil Kamath’.
While talking to Narayanan, Shamani, and Biyani in the episode 11, the Zerodha founder said, “We normally do charity with every episode. We thought we'll do it differently as an experiment this time. We will pick entrepreneurs (under the age of 22) in either fashion, cosmetics or any of the industries we discussed who would otherwise not have got funding and we will fund them by virtue of this podcast."
The group of four decided on a fund size of Rs 80 lakh with each of them investing Rs 20 lakh in it. This will help two companies grow with each getting Rs 40 lakh.
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The idea was inpired by the story of Zepto's co-founders, Aadit Palecha and Kaivalya Vohra, who received a fund of Rs 40 lakh at the age of 18, which eventually helped them build a brand like Zepto.
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