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Most first-time fund managers chase speed.
Ankur Shrivastava chased alignment.
He launched Momentum Capital in 2022 and did what almost no one in venture does. He slowed down. For the first two and a half years, he made six investments. He gave himself the time to figure out where the fund was really going before he asked his LPs, his team, or himself to move faster.
Alignment was the point. Between the portfolio and the thesis. Between his LPs and the sector he was about to commit to for the next decade. Between his personal story and the work.
He found it in climate tech, in founders building globally with an India lens, and in a cross-border firm operating out of three countries. Then he stepped on the gas.
In the last 15 months, Momentum has made more than one investment per month. Twenty-three portfolio companies. A sharpened climate tech thesis. A Stanford-trained Principal who came in to build alongside him. Fund I nearly deployed.
This is the story of how he did it, and how the Decile Group stack made a non-template firm operationally possible.
The Firm
Momentum Capital is a cross-border venture firm investing in climate tech startups at pre-seed and seed, across energy, industrial, and resource transition. With a presence in Canada, India, and the US, the firm backs founders building technologies that can scale across the Global South.
The thesis is built on three core beliefs, developed over four years of close observation.
First, climate action is now driven by security, resilience, and competitiveness concerns, not by sustainability alone. Second, the climate challenge will only be solved by transition technologies that can scale across the Global South. Third, India is the world's most important proving ground for Global South scale.
In Ankur's own words: "We have strong affinity for founders driven by deep purpose, and we back teams tackling hard problems with lots of ambition. Our mission is to be an early and long-term partner for startups trying to solve the climate crisis at a global scale."
Engineer, Consultant, Founder, Investor
Ankur's path looks linear from the outside and feels anything but on the inside.
He grew up in an Asian family that defaulted to engineering. His father was an engineer. His mother was a chemistry lecturer. His sister was an engineer. So he followed the script: mechanical engineering undergrad in India, then a master's, then nine years in management consulting, including at BCG.
Consulting fit him because he was a generalist. He could parachute into a problem, find the pattern, and move on. The pace pushed him into work-life-balance burnout after nine years.
So he left.
He started Globevestor, framed in his own words as "a grand idea to get work-life balance." That part didn't work out. Building a company rarely does.
What Globevestor did do was give him a real classroom. It started as an angel investment platform bridging India and the US, then evolved into cross-border syndicates and nano-VC funds. He got backing from Tim Draper, Bill Draper, and Boost VC. Over eight years, he wrote 75+ checks across 40+ startups.
He learned how to spot founders. He learned how to lose money. He learned how to make it back. A graduate-level education in venture, paid for in tuition only an operator can stomach.
The Lessons That Built Momentum
The lessons from Globevestor became the operating manual for Momentum.
- Founder fatigue is underestimated. Personal financial runway gets ignored until it's too late.
- "Friends make the best teams" is wrong. Relationships break under business pressure. Investing in friends is risky when you're handling other people's money.
- Without a story or mission you're personally invested in, the energy fizzles in down cycles.
- Communication discipline matters from day one. Early at Globevestor, his was, in his own assessment, weak. He carried that lesson directly into Momentum.
Each of those lessons is now baked into how Momentum picks founders, builds its team, and communicates with LPs.
The Measured Start
When Ankur launched Momentum Capital in 2022, Globevestor proceeds gave him runway. He had no reason to follow the standard fund-one template just because that's how it was done.
So he didn't.
The first two and a half years produced six investments. Two in health. Four in climate. The portfolio was small on purpose. It was a signal to himself, and to the LPs paying attention, of where the fund was actually heading.
"Once I find the direction, I can get to the speed."
Most fund managers do it the other way around. They get to speed, then try to find direction. By then the portfolio is already telling a story the fund manager didn't choose.
The Climate Migrant
The thesis isn't only intellectual. It's personal.
Four years ago, Ankur moved his family from India to Canada. The reason wasn't career. It was his kid.
His child had a health allergy issue, and both his and his wife's breathing were being affected by Delhi air pollution. They left.
He calls himself a climate migrant. The phrase isn't a marketing line. It's a description of why his family lives where it lives.
His wife runs a startup that's now near-unicorn status in India. The cross-border family mirrors the cross-border firm. Three countries. Three people on the team. Every video call has a different city in the background.
A couple of his earlier climate investments did well after three or four choppy years. They gave him more satisfaction than other wins, like in fintech. Combined with his family's experience, the pattern became impossible to ignore.
"If we want to bring change, we have to lead the change."
He sees Momentum's job as being the bridge. Between climate innovators and capital allocators. Between North American and Indian founders and markets. Between the idea that climate investing is impact and the proof that climate investing actually makes money.
Stepping on the Gas
Once the thesis was clear, a Stanford-trained Principal came in to build it out with him. Together, they sharpened the climate tech focus into specific subsectors, founder profiles, geographies, and check sizes.
That's when the pace shifted.
Over the last 15 months, Momentum has made more than one investment a month. Twenty-three portfolio companies in total. Same fund. Different velocity. Same operator. Now with a sharp thesis to deploy against aggressively.
The Track Record
Earlier Globevestor investments include Agnikul, Snapmint, Chakr Innovation, Springboard, GHC, Wealthy, Oorjan, and Zoomcar.
Across his investing career, the aggregate portfolio valuation exceeds $2B as of end 2025, with over $500M raised in follow-on rounds from firms including Sequoia, Accel, Khosla, Menlo, and Insight. He remains invested in Agnikul, India's leading launch rocket startup, with a nearly 40x unrealized return.
Even though Momentum has a young portfolio with an average holding period of 12 months, more than a third of its companies have already raised follow-on rounds, and early portfolio marks are running ahead of expectations.
Why Decile
Momentum's setup is non-template by design. Three people. Three countries. Deployments in both India and North America. A two-and-a-half-year intentional measured start followed by an 18-month sprint.
That kind of firm doesn't fit cleanly inside the standard fund-one playbook. It needed the kind of operating stack Decile Group has been building for the last decade.
- Decile Hub provides the agentic back office that a distributed three-person team can actually run on. Fund administration, LP reporting, capital calls, K-1s, and pipeline management all live inside one system that operates 24/7 across time zones.
- The PACT structure gave Momentum a fundraising framework aligned with LPs who valued mission as much as math.
- Decile Partners handled the compliance and financial filings so the GPs could focus on deploying capital and backing founders.
- The VC Lab program provided the structured curriculum and fundraising sprints that kept the LP pipeline moving without burning out the GPs.
When Ankur eventually sharpened the fund's focus toward climate tech, none of his LPs asked to be dropped. He had brought them along with monthly updates early, then quarterly once execution kicked in. They saw the pivot coming because he communicated through it like a partner, not a salesperson.
That's the kind of LP relationship the Decile Group stack is built to support.
What Comes Next
Fund II is on Ankur's mind, at a much larger scale, with continued deployment into climate tech.
The door is open to climate tech founders building for global adoption and scale. Pre-seed and seed. Mission-driven. Hard problems. Big ambition.
If that's you, Ankur and Momentum are easy to find.
Ready to launch your own fund?
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