RTP Global — Interview Brief & VC Insights

By the numbers

$1B

Fund IV (latest, closed 2023)

218+

Portfolio companies over 25 years

13

Unicorns produced (1 in 10)

20 yrs

Longest investment held

Investment strategy

Stage & check size

Primarily Seed & Series A (72 Seed + 68 Series A deals)
Seed avg: $4.77M · Series A avg: $12.2M
Also does Series B (avg $24.1M)
India/Asia cheque: $1–10M, comfortable leading or co-leading
~25–30 new companies per fund cycle in India alone

Fund IV structure

$660M — early-stage new investments
$340M — follow-ons for "breakout" companies
Capital entirely self-funded (proceeds reinvested)
No external LPs → zero LP pressure on founders
~equal split US / Europe / Asia

Sectors they back

AI/ML B2B SaaS Fintech DevOps / infra E-commerce Climate tech Edtech Health D2C brands Quick commerce

Geographies

USA — New York (HQ)
Europe — London, Paris, Amsterdam
Asia — Bangalore, Dubai
India gets ~1/3 of Fund IV corpus
SEA also active (Singapore, Indonesia etc.)

How they work — operating philosophy

Speed: "High-speed / low-drag" — fast term sheets, minimal bureaucracy, no LP approval bottlenecks
Self-funded model: Capital comes from reinvested proceeds (Datadog, DeliveryHero, SumUp). Founder and investor interests are perfectly aligned
Long-term hold: They've held investments up to 20 years. Not exit-hungry. Explicitly support founders "through the ups and downs"
Twice-a-week global syncs: Cross-regional team meets every week to share deal flow, trends, and local market colour across NY / London / Paris / Dubai / Bangalore
Founders Summit: Annual event connecting portfolio founders to share playbooks and build relationships
Platform support: Go-to-market help, HR/talent, enterprise sales coaching, market expansion. Not just a cheque
Operator-to-founder lens: Team includes ex-founders, operators, engineers (e.g. Nishit Garg — ex-Flipkart VP). They evaluate founders from that lens

Key team

Leonid Boguslavsky

Founder & Partner · NY

Nishit Garg

Partner, Asia · Bangalore · ex-Flipkart VP, Tiger Global

Madhur Makkar

Principal, Asia · India investments

Thomas Cuvelier

Partner, US & Europe · joined Mar 2025 · ex-Alven, GFC

Tom Sheridan

VP, US · trend analysis lead

Louis Dussart

VP, Europe · research lead

What they write & think about

Blog content categories

Industry trend pieces (annual predictions, sector analysis)

Founder stories (CoachHub, Conduktor, DeHaat, Tola, Datadog)

Portfolio investment announcements with "why we backed" narrative

Operator-to-founder research (original data with Tracxn)

Talent & culture — how to hire, scale teams, CPO insights

Go-to-market playbooks (B2B lead gen, enterprise sales)

Regional market spotlights (CEE, Italy, India, Europe vs US)

Themes dominating their 2024–25 writing

AI application layer — 2025 is "year of embedding AI in legacy biz"
India operator-founders — original Tracxn report, bullish on ex-Flipkart/Paytm talent building
Europe resurgence — Klarna, Revolut, Mistral as proof points; Italy next
Climate tech — especially India (Varaha, IBC) and EU regulation-driven
Quick commerce quality — FirstClub bet ("quality, not just speed")
Real-time data infra — Conduktor Series B ($30M), dbt Labs acquiring SDF
Personal AI / edtech — Praktika (language tutors), Aurora (family AI)

What signals they watch in founders

Operator experience: Strongly prefer founders with deep prior operator background (ex-Flipkart, Freshworks, Zomato, Paytm etc.) — "grounded, pragmatic mindset"
Vision + execution clarity: "Clarity, resilience, and ambition" — they spend significant 1:1 time with founders to assess this before committing
Global ambition from day 1: They explicitly back founders who think cross-border — and use their 7-office network to help them expand early
Category-defining potential: Not looking for niche plays — they want companies that could redefine a market (Datadog did this for cloud monitoring)
Capital efficiency: In 2024–25, tighter lens on unit economics and quality of growth vs. pure top-line speed

Notable portfolio

Datadog (Series A 2012 → NYSE IPO) Delivery Hero (Series A 2011 → €10B+ public) CRED (Series A 2018 → unicorn) SumUp (early → global fintech) Conduktor (Series B 2024) GoKwik · FirstClub · Trupeer · ZYOD (India 2024–25) Flam · Qomodo · Warmly (2024–25)

Smart questions to ask in your interview

"Your blog on operator-founders in India was fascinating — do you find that same pattern in the devtools/infra space globally, or is it more of an India phenomenon?"
"With Fund IV's $340M reserved for breakout follow-ons, how early do you identify a company is on a breakout trajectory?"
"Your 2025 prediction called out the AI application layer as the key opportunity — what specific verticals are you seeing the most authentic demand in right now?"
"How does the twice-a-week global sync actually work in practice for deal evaluation — do you rely on on-the-ground teams to lead, or is it truly consensus?"