Bala Srinivasa

Managing Director Arkam Ventures; Award winning author; Bitsian

📍 India🔄 Updated September 2026💼 14 investments📅 10 years investing🗓 Last invested Jun 2026
VC🌍 IndiaInvested this quarter
14
Total investments
3
Early stage
7
Mid stage
2
Late stage
10y
Years active

Portfolio

14 investments · sorted by recency
All investments
Early stage
Mid stage
Late stage
Investor
Jun 2026
Secured Credit Card Infra. Connected Banking Infra
Investor
Dec 2025
India’s summers are getting longer, hotter, and harder to live with. But the air conditioners we rely on were never designed for this reality. Optimist was born from a simple belief: cooling for India must be designed for India. We design and manufacture air conditioners engineered for extreme heat, unreliable power conditions, and real Indian homes, delivering comfort that lasts, lower energy bills, and performance you can actually trust. We’re building climate-resilient cooling for a warming nation, backed by Accel and Arkam Ventures, and driven by first-principles engineering and in-house manufacturing. Launching soon in Delhi NCR, Jaipur, and Hyderabad.
Investor
Sep 2025
Mirana Innovations is a new-age toy manufacturing company which is transforming people’s playing experiences by providing them with a gaming platform of fun-to-play toys. These toys can be controlled either with a remote control or connected through the Mirana App on a smartphone. We have an exclusive set of products such as Air Football Pro, Remote Control 2WD ATV, App-based 2WD ATV and are building AR and MR toys to offer one-of-a-kind tactile play experiences for children above 5 years and adults alike. Creating a fun-filled gaming experience is Mirana’s goal. With a pool of modern ideas and a never-say-die attitude, our objective is to unite the physical and digital worlds with our innovative toys. As the toy industry continues to evolve, Mirana aims to be the frontrunner of this charismatic environment. At Mirana, we have a unique team of seasoned professionals such as engineers, developers, product managers, content creators, passionate gamers and technology geeks who collaborate together to breathe life to innovative concepts. Great efforts always get a shout out here and every employee is treated with equal respect, dignity and fairness. For a core gamer, Mirana is an ideal place to work and shape your dreams into reality.
Investor
Aug 2025
TransBnk is a Transaction Banking Platform enabling Corporate, Commercial & Institutional clients to make agile, secure & robust Transactions with Embedded Finance & SaaS. Our aim is to provide deep domain expertise to ensure seamless business transactions for domestic cash management and payments. escrows, trade finance, supply chain finance & custodial services in close collaboration with banks.
Investor
Apr 2025
91Trucks is India’s youngest and fastest growing commercial vehicle website that aims to be a one-stop solution for all needs CV. The website being launched in 2022, 91Trucks is a vision of some of the most experienced names in the automotive industry and is proud to have on board, talent that has an unbeatable mix of passion, energy, creative ideas and unparalleled dedication.91Trucks caters to audiences of all types, covering the entire commercial vehicle domain on a daily basis. Every single model that is on sale is covered to the minutest detail with daily updates to make sure its users remain abreast with the changes in the industry. The website also provides transparent reviews, detailed videos and updated specifications of all vehicles so that users can make an informed decision.Apart from generating meaningful content, we also work closely with automotive manufacturers and their dealer partners in more ways than one. In addition to connecting with their prospective buyers directly, we also provide the latest IT solutions that help them in their business including increasing conversion ratios. We have also partnered with many Banks and NBFCs to provide our customers with the best financial products while buying a commercial vehicle. We intend to become a one-stop shop for our customers when it comes to buying their commercial vehicle, from researching to connecting to a dealer partner, to getting the best loans available in the market.Going forward, 91Trucks will delve deeper into understanding the needs of a user when it comes to selling and buying used commercial vehicles as well. From listings to auctions to yards, to covering the entire process paper-free, 91Trucks will become your preferred choice for both purchasing and selling used commercial vehicles as well.
Investor
Dec 2023
Karkhana is an electronics manufacturing partner built for India’s fast-growing “missing middle” of hardware companies — businesses that need more than a transactional vendor, and more flexibility than a rigid EMS giant. Founded in 2018, we work closely with product companies across industrial electronics, medical devices, automotive & telematics, IoT, and consumer electronics to transform complex manufacturing challenges into clear, execution-ready solutions. We start by listening smart. Every engagement begins with deep curiosity about your product, timelines, scale ambitions, and supply chain realities. From first builds and NPI to full-scale production, we combine engineering-led thinking with integrated electronics manufacturing and turnkey box-build capabilities to deliver outcomes that are consistent, scalable, and reliable. We adapt swiftly through collaborative execution and flexible systems, without the bureaucracy, scale constraints, or inflexibility of traditional EMS players. At Karkhana, manufacturing isn’t just about building products. It’s about building confidence — in quality, in timelines, and in long-term partnership. If you’re building hardware for India or the world, we’re built to build with you.
mid stageManufacturing
Investor
Oct 2022
Cusmat helps automotive service organizations reduce repair delays and improve technician productivity. We use AI to transform complex OEM service documentation into visual, step-by-step guidance technicians can use directly on the shop floor. ​ Our flagship product, AutoTechs AI, is built to address a major problem in US fixed operations: rising vehicle complexity, technician shortages, and too much wasted time spent searching, interpreting, waiting, or escalating when a repair gets stuck. That lost execution time becomes unbilled labor hours, longer turnaround time, and lower service profitability. ​ AutoTechs AI turns static service instructions into guided visual workflows that help technicians identify the right component, tool, and action faster. This helps service teams reduce dependency on tribal knowledge, improve execution consistency, and enable less-experienced technicians to take on more productive work with greater confidence. ​ We work with dealership groups, automotive OEM service organizations, and independent service networks that want to increase service capacity without waiting for perfect hiring conditions.
Investor
Feb 2022
9-12% Fixed Returns from Corporate Bonds that are handpicked by experts - on a SEBI-registered investment platform. Start with just ₹1000. We are backed by leaders that India trusts Senior finance entrepreneurs like Nithin Kamath (Zerodha), Kunal Shah (CRED), Lalit Keshre (Groww), Vasanth Kamath (smallcase), Deepak Abott (Indiagold), and several others have backed us. We are SEBI-registered broker, ensuring your investments are secure and compliant with all regulatory standards. Join 2L+ investors in earning predictable returns
Investor
Jan 2022
Businesses like ChargeBee, Turing, Airbnb, CRED, and more trust SpotDraft to help: - Their in-house legal team automate repetitive, mind-numbing aspects of contracting and free up time so they can focus on high-leverage work. - Their business teams close more contracts on their own without depending on legal for every small edit and review. - Bring more speed, visibility, efficiency & structure to the entire contracting process, and more. Founded by a Harvard Law School lawyer and two Carnegie Mellon computer scientists, SpotDraft is the perfect co-pilot for your legal team that democratizes legal paperwork and speeds up the contract lifecycle.
Investor
Sep 2021
Smartstaff aims to be India’s leading blue-collar staffing platform: bridging the gap between businesses and workers. Our journey began with a simple goal: revolutionizing and simplifying the way businesses find and manage their workforce. From worker sourcing to verification, seamless onboarding to end-to-end payrolling, weve mastered every step of the process. Our unwavering commitment to excellence has earned us a reputation for having one of the lowest attrition rates in the industry. But were not just about people - were about technology that empowers. Enter our cutting-edge HRMS software, a game-changer in managing your blue-collar workforce. Capturing attendance through our 99.99% accurate facial recognition technology, coupled with Liveliness Fraud Detection, ensures airtight accuracy. Join us in shaping the future of staffing, where technology meets industry expertise and human potential is unleashed. Connect with us to stay ahead of industry insights, trends, and opportunities
Investor
Oct 2020
At Signzy, we’re solving for lasting first impressions and seamless new beginnings. Signzy is the market leader in digital banking infrastructure and helps you build trust without hassle. We offer digital onboarding, identity verification, and monitoring solutions across 180+ countries through 340+ APIs. Our APIs can be easily added to any workflow with simple widgets and help you with KYC, KYB, AML, fraud checks, bank account verification, and age verification. We work with over 10 Fortune 30 companies, all the largest banks in India, a Top 3 acquiring Bank in the US, and have a strong global partnership with Mastercard and Microsoft. The best part? Our customers have seen some delightful results: -4x Applicant growth -99% Reduced fraud -80% Cost reduction -60% Less customer drop-offs Signzy has helped businesses like Stripe, HDFC, Paypal, Emirates NBD, and AmazonPay be more secure and globally compliant.
Investor
Sep 2019
Jumbotail is Indias leading B2B marketplace and New Retail platform, serving thousands of mom & pop stores (“Kiranas”). Jumbotail ecosystem has 4 in-house, proprietary platforms - B2B online marketplace, Supply Chain & Logistics, Fintech for SME Lending, and Retail platform that powers its J24 branded convenience grocery stores. Jumbotail transforms traditional unorganised kirana stores into J24 branded modern convenience grocery stores, owned and operated by kirana entrepreneurs, powered by Jumbotails New Retail platform and playbook consisting of J24 consumer branding, in-store GoldenEye retail technology, data driven product selection and merchandising insights, integrated supply chain with daily store fulfilments, Greencard loyalty program and payment solutions. Our vision is to organise the food and grocery ecosystem in India using technology, data science and design. We are building products, platforms and services for the next billion people of India, who have fundamentally different needs - access, language, selection, supply chain, financial, cultural, and the like. Our market potential is huge - in the order of hundreds of billions of dollars. We are reimagining and reengineering the food and grocery ecosystem through intelligent technology, intuitive design, and innovative business and supply chain models. We are a passionate team driven by our sense of purpose to solve a critical real world problem. Each team member will have significant ownership of key components that go into the next generation e-commerce, supply chain, demand generation, and credit technology platforms and services that we are building. The work you will do at Jumbotail will impact real lives and bring a lasting positive change for the next billion people of India. We promise a fun, fast paced ride with some of the smartest people, with full of opportunities to learn and grow, and leave a legacy. Come join us, make your one life count! Write to us at mission@jumbotail.com
Investor
Mar 2019
KreditBee is a FinTech Platform which facilitates instant personal loans to professionals, where they can avail loans up to ₹4 lakhs as per their requirement. With a strong focus on online tech-based and data-centric KYC, KreditBee envisions solving the financial inclusion gap in the varied demographic segments of the country. The platform is a Series-D funded entity, backed by Advent International, Premji Invest, Motilal Oswal Alternates, TPG-NewQuest, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, ICICI Bank and Mirae Asset Venture Investments. The company serves the credit and other personal finance requirements through its in-house RBI-registered NBFC - Krazybee Services Private Limited (Systemically important NBFC) along with partnerships with over 10 renowned financial institutions. The company currently serves 10 million customers across the country.
Investor
Mar 2016
Upstox is an online trading app for Demat Account, Share Market, MF, IPO with 1cr+ customers. Backed by Ratan Tata and venture capitalists such as Tiger Global, Upstox offers a best-in-class technology-enabled trading platform. Headquartered in Mumbai, Upstox holds memberships with the NSE, BSE, MCX, and MCX-SX. For more details, visit - https://upstox.com/
Experience · 20 entries
All (20)
Investments (14)
2026
Investor
Jun 2026
Secured Credit Card Infra. Connected Banking Infra
2025
Investor
Dec 2025
India’s summers are getting longer, hotter, and harder to live with. But the air conditioners we rely on were never designed for this reality. Optimist was born from a simple belief: cooling for India must be designed for India. We design and manufacture air conditioners engineered for extreme heat, unreliable power conditions, and real Indian homes, delivering comfort that lasts, lower energy bills, and performance you can actually trust. We’re building climate-resilient cooling for a warming nation, backed by Accel and Arkam Ventures, and driven by first-principles engineering and in-house manufacturing. Launching soon in Delhi NCR, Jaipur, and Hyderabad.
Investor
Sep 2025
Mirana Innovations is a new-age toy manufacturing company which is transforming people’s playing experiences by providing them with a gaming platform of fun-to-play toys. These toys can be controlled either with a remote control or connected through the Mirana App on a smartphone. We have an exclusive set of products such as Air Football Pro, Remote Control 2WD ATV, App-based 2WD ATV and are building AR and MR toys to offer one-of-a-kind tactile play experiences for children above 5 years and adults alike. Creating a fun-filled gaming experience is Mirana’s goal. With a pool of modern ideas and a never-say-die attitude, our objective is to unite the physical and digital worlds with our innovative toys. As the toy industry continues to evolve, Mirana aims to be the frontrunner of this charismatic environment. At Mirana, we have a unique team of seasoned professionals such as engineers, developers, product managers, content creators, passionate gamers and technology geeks who collaborate together to breathe life to innovative concepts. Great efforts always get a shout out here and every employee is treated with equal respect, dignity and fairness. For a core gamer, Mirana is an ideal place to work and shape your dreams into reality.
Investor
Aug 2025
TransBnk is a Transaction Banking Platform enabling Corporate, Commercial & Institutional clients to make agile, secure & robust Transactions with Embedded Finance & SaaS. Our aim is to provide deep domain expertise to ensure seamless business transactions for domestic cash management and payments. escrows, trade finance, supply chain finance & custodial services in close collaboration with banks.
Investor
Apr 2025
91Trucks is India’s youngest and fastest growing commercial vehicle website that aims to be a one-stop solution for all needs CV. The website being launched in 2022, 91Trucks is a vision of some of the most experienced names in the automotive industry and is proud to have on board, talent that has an unbeatable mix of passion, energy, creative ideas and unparalleled dedication.91Trucks caters to audiences of all types, covering the entire commercial vehicle domain on a daily basis. Every single model that is on sale is covered to the minutest detail with daily updates to make sure its users remain abreast with the changes in the industry. The website also provides transparent reviews, detailed videos and updated specifications of all vehicles so that users can make an informed decision.Apart from generating meaningful content, we also work closely with automotive manufacturers and their dealer partners in more ways than one. In addition to connecting with their prospective buyers directly, we also provide the latest IT solutions that help them in their business including increasing conversion ratios. We have also partnered with many Banks and NBFCs to provide our customers with the best financial products while buying a commercial vehicle. We intend to become a one-stop shop for our customers when it comes to buying their commercial vehicle, from researching to connecting to a dealer partner, to getting the best loans available in the market.Going forward, 91Trucks will delve deeper into understanding the needs of a user when it comes to selling and buying used commercial vehicles as well. From listings to auctions to yards, to covering the entire process paper-free, 91Trucks will become your preferred choice for both purchasing and selling used commercial vehicles as well.
Show all 20 entries ↓
Investment activity
2016–2026 · 14 investments
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