The playbook behind Fireside Ventures’ biggest consumer bets

When Fireside Ventures launched in 2017, few investors believed India’s consumer brands could deliver venture-scale returns. Nearly a decade later, the firm has backed some of the country’s biggest consumer startups, including Mamaearth, Licious, Wellbeing Nutrition, and Yoga Bar.

The VC generated over 18x returns from Mamaearth, being the babycare brand’s first institutional investor. Fireside realized about US$57 million from its US$3.1 million investment through the offer-for-sale during Mamaearth’s IPO in 2023.

Now, with a new US$253 million fund that closed in December 2025, Fireside hopes to complete at least 12 investments by the end of this year.

In this interview with Tech in Asia, founder and managing partner Kanwaljit Singh explains why the firm reserves 65% of its capital for follow-on investments instead of chasing new deals, how it decides which founders deserve more backing, and why ownership matters more than unicorn valuations.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Where it began

Fireside Ventures started in 2017, when consumer brands were still not a big category in India. What made you launch a fund focused on consumer brands, and what convinced you that this space would do so well?

When I was with Helion Ventures, I was observing the market and had always been fascinated by consumers and what was happening in the consumer space.

India has always been an interesting contradiction. We had a large and young consumer population but limited choices compared to markets like Southeast Asia.

The obvious reason was that building brands in India has always been a complex proposition because of the nature of distribution and the ways companies communicate with the consumer.

What got me excited was the emergence of digital infrastructure. It seemed to sit right at the intersection of these two dynamics. The question was: Can we disrupt the way brands get built, and therefore create a much larger ecosystem of brands that can meet these consumer expectations?

At that stage, it was still very early days, so my first instinct was exploratory. That’s when I decided to step out and start investing my own money.

What’s changing

Keeping the fire burning