Most venture capitalists investing in women's health have never built a product for women's health. Navneet Kaur has spent a decade doing exactly that. She scaled multiple consumer brands, worked hands-on with hundreds of startups across emerging markets, and built one of the first ecosystems dedicated to women's health tech before she ever wrote a check. Now, as Founder and Investment Lead of TechThrive Ventures, she is turning that operator's eye into a pre-seed fund backing North American founders in consumer health, wellness, women's health, longevity, and CPG. On the Top Decile Podcast, she sat down with Connor Sattely of Decile Group to explain why this category is her life's work.

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For Navneet, the thesis is personal before it is financial. Growing up in India, she taught herself two things nobody around her talked about openly: financial literacy and healthcare literacy. That early struggle became a career. The market logic followed the mission. "Women make up to 50% of the population and influence 80% of healthcare decisions, yet many conditions affecting women remain under diagnosed, under treated and underfunded," she said. "And for me, it's not a healthcare gap. I think it's a massive investment opportunity."

She sees the same pattern that reshaped other overlooked categories now arriving in health. "We've seen that happening in financial services, education, climate technology, and I think women's health is now experiencing similar transformation. And that's why I'm like so bullish on the category."

The decision to raise a fund grew out of years spent close to founders who could not get past the next level. "Some of the greatest innovations, really amazing founders having great teams, but they were not able to scale or grow into next level," she said, "because their market size was really small or they were not able to raise funding." That firsthand view shaped how she thinks about her own role. Before raising, she did the homework, running market research with founders on what they wished VCs did differently. Her conclusion is a line she returns to often: "Our products are our founders." The fund is not just capital. It is hands-on building, network access, and distribution support for founders who often face challenges that go well beyond the first check.

Navneet frames the opportunity around what she calls three major shifts: data, demographic, and behavior. Health, she argues, is moving "from treating disease to optimizing human performance, which I'm personally really, really bullish on." She points to preventive health, the wide wellness category, and the ripple effects of new metabolic drugs as forces redefining what consumers buy and eat. She is watching longevity closely too, noting the shift from simply living longer to living healthier. "Companies being built today have a potential to define market and become next generation of healthcare unicorns in the longevity and health space," she said. Across all of it, she is clear that she wants to back founders "who are building with ethical considerations" and inside the right regulatory lines.

Navneet is candid that fundraising is part conviction, part education. Her LPs, she says, are mission-driven and aligned on the thesis, often for deeply personal reasons. Some are men who tell her, "I have two daughters and I want to invest in your fund because I believe in the sector." Others are women drawn to a mission they have lived themselves. She resists the pressure to bolt AI onto the pitch for its own sake. "Just adding AI would just not make us more excited," she said. "AI is anyways part of everything." She also treats fundraising as a chance to widen the circle. "Every woman is investor because women drive 80% of consumer spending," she said, "and we are already driving all the sectors and why not to own those sectors as well."

The most common pushback she hears is about size. Her answer flips the frame. Big funds have scale, she acknowledges, but "bigger funds can't contribute so much to the founder ecosystem. They only just giving capital." A smaller fund can go deeper with each founder, plugging them into global communities she has built across the US, UK, and India, and bringing visibility through her own media presence. "Media is currency these days and you have to have a great presence everywhere," she said. Her closing argument is disarmingly simple. "The small things can make a huge difference and I think that's why the small size fund exists so they can make a bigger impact in overall founders community."

TechThrive Ventures is a bet that the next generation of category-defining health companies will come from founders who have been overlooked, and from an investor who has spent a decade in the trenches alongside them. For LPs who see human health, longevity, and women's health as opportunities on the scale of any hot sector, and for pre-seed founders who want a partner rather than a passive check, Navneet Kaur is building exactly that. As she told Connor, she is not just investing. She is "hands-on building and adding our expertise, bringing my own network."

Learn more about the fund and request access on Decile Access: https://decileaccess.com/funds/techthrive-ventures

TechThrive Ventures is a Silicon Valley-based pre-seed fund backing North American founders in consumer health, wellness, longevity, women's health, and CPG. Navneet Kaur is the Founder and Investment Lead, having spent a decade as both an operator and an investor in this category, scaling consumer brands and working hands-on with many companies before launching the fund. TechThrive invests in diverse teams building for one of the largest and most underserved opportunities in health.

Watch The Full Episode Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ9s1lwTNl8